Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/96

 combine picturesqueness with accuracy in any representation of the military uniforms and accoutrements of modern times, alcoves that used once to be crowded with gallant puppets in gorgeous panoply now make no contribution to the gaiety of the tango. Tradition tells nothing certain about the origin of this celebration. Some of its details—as, for example, the fact that the rice-cakes peculiar to the time are wrapped in bamboo leaves, and the bean-confections in oak leaves, or that, at the hour of the hare, all lights are extinguished for a brief interval in temples and houses—have their own special legends to explain them, but the festival as a whole is a mystery. There are many minutiæ, but they scarcely merit description in detail. Neither does the series of flower-fêtes that mark the various seasons, the picnics to the wistaria, the azalea, the iris, the lotus, the peonies, the chrysanthemums, the orchids, and the autumnal tints. The ideal of the Japanese is to have a festival of flower or foliage for every month, but their manner of enjoying themselves on these occasions is uniformly simple. They do not carry with them stores of provisions and hampers of wine, but are content with the fare that the local tea-house offers, and to have indited a felicitous couplet and suspended it from the branch of some notable tree, or from the stem of some luxuriantly blooming plant, is to have attained the summit of enjoyment. Were it possible to banish the