Page:Child-life in Japan and Japanese child stories (Ayrton, Matilida Chaplin. , 1901).djvu/78

60 on the back to the full-grown and the over-grown boy, take more delight. I have never observed, however, as foreign books so often tell us, old men flying kites and boys merely looking on. The Japanese kites are made of tough paper pasted on a frame of bamboo sticks, and are usually of a rectangular shape. Some of them, however, are made to represent children or men, several kinds of birds and animals, fans, etc. On the rectangu-

lar kites are pictures of ancient heroes or beautiful women, dragons, horses, monsters of various kinds, the symbol of the sun, or huge Chinese characters. Among the faces most frequently seen on these kites are those of the national heroes or heroines. Some of the kites are six feet square. Many of them have a thin tense ribbon of whalebone at the top of the kite which vibrates in the wind, making a loud humming noise. The