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56 the stem. The noise is most irritating to others, though many geisha and tea-house waitresses appear to take delight therein.

But this winter-cherry blowing is not the geisha’s only occupation when she is neither playing nor talking. Among the amusements at these convivial parties, the principal are the games of ken, or the fist, which are not, however, confined to geisha. These games, which are played by two persons, are of Chinese origin, and were invented to stimulate drinking at parties, for the defeated person was always made to drain a cup of wine. There are two main divisions of ken games, the ken proper, in which both parties guess the number of fingers put out, and the san-sukumi, in which there are three positions of the hand, each of which defeats one, and is defeated by the other, of the remainder. In the ken proper, the players simultaneously hold out a certain number of fingers on the right hand and at the same time call out the total number put out by both. The one that guesses aright is the winner, and the game is closed by either player first winning five times. This game, which was introduced by Chinese in Nagasaki in 1642, is now seldom played; but early in this century it was in such vogue that regular ken matches were held at a miniature wrestling-arena, before which the umpire for the occasion sat all day watching the games with far greater attention than he had ever bestowed on his own proper calling. There are modifications of the game, one of which is played by blind-men, another by the dumb, and a third is practised at the present day in which either player has three bits of a chopstick and guesses the total sum of the bits held in a closed hand by the other, added to his own.

Of the second kind of ken, there are four forms in practice, namely, the worm, the stone, the fox, and the tiger. The worm is played mostly by children. Either party hides his right hand under the sleeve and, after a signal, brings it out simultaneously with the other player. The hand is