Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/84

 equipages, and paraphernalia. Incredible care and sometimes great expense are lavished on the preparation of these toys. Every detail is studiously exact, whether of costume, of armour, of arms, of head-dress and foot-gear, of camp or palace furniture, of utensils for cooking and for feasting, of arrangements for wedding ceremonies and state progresses. Sometimes the figures and their accessories number as many as from five hundred to a thousand articles, and the work of setting them out is a delight of days' duration, no less than a liberal education in the customs and etiquette of refined life. In every house offerings are made of white saké and herb-cake (kusa-mochi), that is to say, cake made of rice-flour mixed with leaves of the artemisia (yomogi), or of "mother-and-child " shrub (haha-ko-gusa). Of course costly collections of o-hina-sama, or "honourable effigies," as the little maidens call them, are preserved from generation to generation, descending from mother to daughter. But the demand for new ones gives employment to a considerable body of artists, and during the week that precedes the fête day, a busy market is held in such quarters of the capital cities as from time immemorial have been counted the chief emporia of these elaborate toys,—for example, Nakabashi, Owari-cho, and Jikkendama in Tōkyō; Shijo and Gojo in Kyōtō, and Mido-maye and Junkei-cho in Ōsaka. So soon as the fête is over, the o-hina-sama are packed away in silk and wadding, not to