Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/343

Rh the figures, and butterflies, flowers, gourds, or what not are shaped from the sweet paste. The children, after having satisfied their tastes for artistic design, eat the finished work, the reed handle preventing their fingers from becoming sticky. There is another of the child amusers that can be seen in the streets of Tōkyō or any other Japanese city. This artisan molds fruits, flowers, and



vegetables from colored rice-flour dough, and does his work so deftly that it is really difficult to distinguish the artificial from the real fruit.

This universal love and regard for children is also displayed at every temple festival, where numerous booths, gay with toys, flags, and games, form always a prominent feature.

And what of the life of and influences surrounding these little folks? Well, the first event of importance after they have been ushered into this world occurs when they are one hundred days old. This is a feast day for the family, in which the baby plays the chief role. Toys, money, gowns, and sweets are lavished upon him by admiring friends and relatives. Among the poorer classes the baby is then considered old enough to be strapped on the back