Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/66

 to twelve hundred yards long. The tail, made of red and blue paper, or red and white, in alternate rolls, is coiled in a great open chest, from which the ascending kite draws it, and it is at this huge appendage that rival kites aim their flight. As the kite is pulled down from the clouds, the spectators struggle to possess themselves of the tail, which is generally torn into fragments in the scramble. A feast for all that have assisted to fly the kite terminates the ceremony. Vast, however, as are the dimensions of the furoshiki-dako of Tosa, the pride of place, so far as size is concerned, belongs to the "two- thousand-sheet kites" of Suruga and Tottomi provinces. A "sheet" refers to the form in which paper is ordinarily manufactured, namely, a rectangular [sic] measuring a foot by seven inches, approximately. Thus the superficies of a two-thousand-sheet kite, allowing for the joinings of the sheets, is from a thousand to eleven hundred square feet, or about the size of a carpet that would cover a room thirty-three feet square. Such a kite requires a cable to fly it, a sum of from five hundred to six hundred yen to construct it, a special building to store it, and a score of strong men to control it. At the opposite extreme of the scale of kite-flying districts stand the provinces of Owari and Mikawa. There the smaller the kite, the more highly it is esteemed. Tiny representations of dragon-flies, cicadas, and bees