Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/70

 innumerable odd notions, queer toys, pretty hair-pins, curios, and indescribable trifles, every night in the year. The Japanese hair-pin, by-the-bye, is a dangerous vanity, the babies often twisting themselves into the range of its point, and the mothers impaling them on it in shaking them up higher on their backs and tightening the bands that hold them. The comic and ingenious toys, embodying the simplest principles of mechanics, and by the aid of a little running water, or the heat of a candle, performing wonderful feats, are such trifles of bamboo, thin pine, paper, or straw, as American children would destroy at a touch. Yet the more truly civilized Japanese little people play with them for weeks; and they toddle home with minute wicker cages of semi, or cicada, on one finger, content to hang them up and listen peaceably to the strident captives’ chirping mi-mi-mi all day long.

The first week of March is gala time for the small girls of Japan, when their Hina Matsuri, or Feast of Dolls, is celebrated. Then do toy shops and doll shops double in number and take on dazzling features, while children in gay holiday clothes animate the streets. Little girls with hair elaborately dressed, tied with gold cords and bright crape, and gowns and girdles of the brightest colors, look like walking dolls themselves. The tiniest toddler is a quaint and comical figure in the same long gown and long sleeves as its mother, the gay-patterned kimono, the bright inner garments showing their edges here and there, and obis shot with gold threads, making them irresistible. Nothing could be gentler or sweeter than these Japanese children, and no place a more charming play-ground for them. In the houses of the rich the Dolls’ Festival is second only to the New Year in its importance. The family don their richest clothing, and keep open house for the week. The choicest pictures and art treasures are displayed, and with these the hina or images that have been preserved from 54