Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/89

 riot for bread or the division of property, but to fall in love with cherry-trees, and write poems in their praise. At the cherry-blossom season especially his inborn passion for flowers and landscapes shows itself in prince, poet, peasant, merchant, and coolie. Tattered beggars gaze entranced at the fairy trees, and princes and ministers of state go to visit the famous groves. Bulletins announce, quite as a matter of course, that Prince Sanjo or Count Ito has gone to Nara or Kioto, a three days' journey, to see the blossoming trees; which is as if Bismarck or Gladstone should interrupt his cares of state to undertake a pilgrimage to a distant rose show.

Later in the season the carefully tended trees in the palace grounds put forth their blossoms, and sovereign and courtiers hang poems on their branches, while the spring garden party gathers the whole court circle under the aisles of bloom in the palace grounds of Hama Rikiu. Every citizen who has a garden gives an out-door fête, and flower-bordered cards invite guests to see the native sakura, or the cerisiers of the diplomatic set.

The celebration of the Mukojima, an avenue along the east bank of the Sumidagawa, lined for more than two miles with double rows of cherry-trees, belongs to the lower ten thousand. On Sunday, which is officially a day-of rest, the water is dotted with hundreds of boats, and solemn little policemen keep the holiday-makers moving along the shore. Friends recognize each other in the crowd by some distinctive article of clothing. One procession of jinrikishas will land a group with heads tied up in gayly-figured towels all alike, or bits of figured cotton folded as collars around the necks of their kimonos. Boat-loads of men, partly disguised by their queer head-dresses, are sculled and poled along the banks, shouting and singing, clapping and strumming the samisen, with an entire abandon that is the wonder and envy of the Anglo-Saxon. Every reveller has his 73