Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/261



—The nobori is a species of flag, or standard. A strip of cotton cloth, varying in length from three or four feet to thirty or forty, and in width from a few inches to a yard, is fastened at both ends to bamboo rollers, and attached lengthwise to a long bamboo pole capped with a gilt ball. On the cloth large ideographs designating the occasion are inscribed. The nobori looks like an extravagantly elongated sail bellying in the wind.  —The name of a place in Tōkyō where wrestling-matches are held annually to determine the national champions.  —The "Willow Bridge" is the name of a district in Tōkyō celebrated as a resort of the geisha (danseuse) class.  —  —Rice cake (mochi), Japanese turnip (daikon), potatoes (imo), a species of sea-weed (kombu), haliotis (awabi), a burdock (gobo).  —This saké is called toso, though the term is properly limited to the spices themselves. The custom came from China, where it existed certainly as far back as the third century before Christ. It is said to have originated with an old hermit who distributed among the villagers packets of physic, directing that the packet be let down by a string into the well, taken up again on New Year's day, and placed in a tub of saké, a draught of which would prove a preservative against every kind of disease. The practice was introduced into Japan at the beginning of the ninth century, and etiquette soon elaborated the ceremonial by prescribing a special kind of saké for each of the first three days of the year,—toso, biyakusan, and toshosan. It is de rigueur that the youngest of a party should be the first 