Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/92

 covering only a few inches deep over wide areas where shell-fish congregate. The days when nature behaves in that manner are marked with a red letter in the citizen's calendar. Engagements that must wait weeks or even months for fulfilment, engagements to gather shells in company, are formed between persons of all ages,—green lads and lasses, men and women in middle life, and old folks to whom the spring airs no longer bring more than a fitful suggestion of "light fancies." These pleasure-seekers launch themselves in the favourite vehicle of Tōkyō picnics, the yane-bune,—a kind of gondola,—and float seaward with the ebbing tide, singing snatches of song the while, to the accompaniment of tinkling samisen, or of that graceful game ken, so well devised to display the charms of a pretty hand and arm. Such outings differ in one important respect from the more orthodox picnics of Tōkyō folks,—the visits to plum-blooms, cherry-blossoms, peony beds, chrysanthemum puppets, iris ponds, and river-openings. They differ in the fact that there is no display of fine apparel. Bright and skilfully blended colours there are, indeed; but the embroidered girdle, the elaborately woven robe of silk crepe, the dainty armlet, and the costly hair-pin are absent. Camlets and cottons constitute the proper costume of the day, and a pretty air of business resolution replaces the leisurely archness generally characteristic of the