Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/152

 of people attend. On the first day of this matsuri the railway is crowded with passengers. Bonfires and strings of lanterns mark the Omori station by night, and by day the neighboring matsuri is announced by tall bamboo poles, from which spring whorls of reeds covered with huge paper flowers. These giant flower-stalks are the conventional sign for festivities, and when a row of them is planted by the road-side, or paraded up and down with an accompaniment of gongs, the holiday spirit responds at once. The quiet country road is blockaded with hundreds of jinrikishas going to and returning from Ikegami’s terraced gate-ways. Men, women, and children, priests, beggars, and peddlers pack the highway. The crowd is amazing—as though these thousands of people had been suddenly conjured from the ground, or grown from some magician’s powder—for nothing could be quieter than Omori lanes on all the other days of the year.

Along the foot-paths of the fields women in tightly-wrapped kimonos with big umbrellas over their beautifully-dressed heads; young girls with the scarlet petticoats and gay hair-pins indicative of maidenhood; little girls and boys with smaller brothers and sisters strapped on their backs, trudge along in single files, high above the stubble patches, to the great matsuri. In farm-house yards persimmon-trees hang full of mellow, golden fruit, and the road is literally lined with these apples of the Hesperides. Peddlers sit on their heels behind their heaped persimmons and busily tie straw to the short stems of the fruit, that the buyer may carry his purchase like a bunch of giant golden grapes. Fries, stews, bakes, and grills scent the air with savors, and all sorts of little balls and cubes, pats and cakes, lumps and rolls of eatables are set out along the country road. A queer sort of sea-weed scales, stained bright red, is the chewing-gum of the East, and finds a ready market. 136