Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/176

 girl. Now the eta children attend the Government schools on the same terms as their betters. But this liberality was of slow growth, and in one province, where the stiff-necked parents withdrew their children because of the presence of these pariahs, the governor entered himself as a pupil, sitting side by side with the little outcasts in the same classes, after which august demonstration of theoretical equality caste distinctions were allowed to fade.

Nikko becomes a great curio mart each summer, the curios having, naturally, a religious cast; and bells, drums, gongs, incense-burners, images, banners, brocade draperies, and priestly fans make a part of every peddler’s pack, each thing, of course, being certified to have come from the sacred treasuries near by. The souvenirs, which the most hardened tourist cannot resist buying, are the Nikko specialties of trays, cups, boxes, and teapots of carved and lacquered wood, and of curious roots, decorated with chrysanthemums or incised sketches of the Sacred Bridge. The Japanese eye sees possibilities in the most unpromising knot, and the Japanese hand hollows it into a casket, or fits it with the spout and handle that turn it into a teapot. All the village street is lined with these wooden-ware shops, alternating with photograph and curio marts.

Visitors to Nikko always buy its yuoki, a candle made of chestnuts and barley-sugar, which comes in slabs an inch square and six inches long, wrapped in a dried bamboo sheath, and put in the dainty little wooden boxes which make Japanese purchases so attractive. It is like a dark-brown fig-paste, and has a flavor of marrons glaces and of maple-sugar. Flocks of children, with babies on their backs, hover about the yuoki shop in upper Nikko, and if the tourist bestows a box on them, their comical bobs and courtesies, their funny way of touching the forehead with the gift during all the bowing, and 160