Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/220

 assumed that the latter was an alternative name. But "hina-ye" signifies "a maker of hina;" that is to say, of the puppets set up at the Girls' Fête on the fifth day of the fifth month. These little figures did not call for much exercise of glyptic skill. Their costumes and all the accessories of the various characters they represented were of the most accurate and elaborate nature. Processions of feudal chiefs with every miniature squire and man-at-arms caparisoned exactly as he would be in life, and with all the paraphernalia of travel reproduced microscopically; wedding ceremonials, from the feast with its refined conventionalism when the loving-cup was exchanged, to the bride's first return to the abode of her parents; scenes from the history of filial piety or from the pages of mythology, folk-lore, or fable; in short, an endless repertoire of subjects offered itself for the choice of the maker of hina, and since these little figures with their accompaniments are exact reproductions of Japanese costume, customs, weapons, armour, household utensils, and what not, they are greatly and deservedly prized by foreign collectors. But they cannot be called works of art: they are simply the most elaborate and naturalistic dolls ever made in any country. Generally the figures were of wood, but in the choicest specimens ivory was used for the faces, hands, and feet. Sums corresponding to many hundreds of sovereigns were occasionally expended upon these hina by great and wealthy families, in order that some pet daughter might celebrate her fête with sufficiently triumphal delight; for it must be observed that the little ladies, wearing gala frocks, visited each other's displays of hina during many days, and that the "grown-ups" of the district