Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/77

 pirouette twice before it springs again from the ground, and, all the while, she and her companions chaunt a song in unison with these lithe movements. Victory depends upon not letting the ball escape beyond the range of circle and stroke, but victors and vanquished alike have the satisfaction of displaying to the full that "eloquence of form" which constitutes the speech of the coquette. There are other methods of playing the game, but they need not occupy attention here; unless, indeed, exception be made in favour of o-te-dama, which has for its paraphernalia three, five, or seven tiny rectangular bags filled with small beans, and which demands only a fraction of the exertion required by te-mari proper. To tell how these miniature bags are manipulated would call for two or three pages of text and two or three score of illustrations. But if any lady has a beautiful hand and arm, a supple wrist, a quick eye, and muscles capable of nice adjustment, the Japanese accomplishment of o-te-dama deserves her serious attention.

To this context, also, belongs sugo-roku, or the "ranging of sixes," which, though it includes the demoralising element of dice, is, of all indoor pastimes, the most generally affected in Japan. The "race game," familiar in Europe and America, is so closely akin to Japanese sugo-roku that it is difficult to doubt their common parentage. There is a broad sheet divided into lettered or pictorial sections, from one to another