Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/82

 arched with evergreens and flowers; pine and bamboo, bound with braided straw ropes, are set before the house; tassels of rice straw are festooned across the eaves, and lanterns hang in rows. The emblematic rice-cake, prawn, orange, and fern-leaf are fastened above the lintel, the handsomest screen is brought forward, and more emblems and a large bowl for cards are set out at the entrance. This is the season when all debts are paid, while general visiting and feasting occupy three days. Everybody says to everybody else, Shinen ome deto, “I wish you a happy New-year;” or, Man zai raku, “Good-luck for ten thousand years.” Everybody sends his friend a present—a basket of fruit, or a dumpling of red beans or rice dough, wrapped in ceremonial paper. The streets of Tokio, crowded with merrymakers and lighted at night by thousands of lanterns and torches, hold out-of-door fairs without number, and from palace to hovel run sounds of rejoicing; yet this joyous homage to the spirit of life is paid in mid-winter, when snow-flakes may shroud the blooming camellia-trees, though the clear, bright Indian-summer weather often lasts until after the new year. Winter, a long calamity elsewhere in the same latitude, is only the disagreeable incident of a few weeks in Central Japan. A fortnight, a month, of melting snows, cold rains, and dull skies, and lo! the branches of the withered, old black plum-trees are starred with fragrant white flowers. For a few days a hazy calm hushes the air, sounds are veiled, light is softened, and spring has really come, no matter how many sullen relapses it may suffer before the glorious April cloud-burst of cherry blossoms decks the empire in wreaths of white and pink, and fills the people with joy. And this linked sweetness long drawn out, this gentle season of delight, lasts from the bursting of the plum blossoms in February to the end of the nyubai, or rainy season of June. 66