Festival Day In A Japanese Kindergarten

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

Festival Day In A Japanese Kindergarten

(By Enid B. V. Saunders.)

QpHE first thing visitors must do before entering a Japanese school is to take off their shoes and put on a pair of heel-less slippers from the heap in the outside porch. The children (some in velvet frocks and sailor suits, others in bright kimonos) bow in greeting and begs the “honourable guests” to be seated. First, the girls sing a welcome song and then the boys. After this the head teacher makes a long speech expressing their pleasure at our visit. The schoolroom is wide and airy, the walls being

hung with prints of birds and flowers. The children are seated at low tables and chairs, similar to the ones used in our Western kindergartens.

Because it is a festival day each child is given a dish of sweets —pink and white, like popcorn and mixed with sugar-coated peanuts. On top of each dish reposes a chrysanthemum made from icing, the petals being tinted scarlet or yellow and set amid most realistic green leaves. We are also proffered scalding green tea in little orange bowls, placed on oval-shaped saucers of polished wood.

Refreshments concluded, the children proceed to entertain us with action-songs and recitations, all in Japanese. One small boy stands on the platform with his arms extended in a circle above his head, representing the moon. The rest of his friends crouch on the floor below in imitation of bears hunting in a moonlight forest. Then we are shown a railway trip—chuffing engine, screaming whistle, revolving wheels, and even a glimpse of the passengers reading their newspapers. The girls portray cherry blossoms in springtime, a country folk'danoe, a winter scene of falling snowflakes and the Nipponese equivalent to our “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

At a given signal all the chairs are put back against the walls in readiness for a display of marching. The programme ends with a sea chanty, having appropriate actions to show the weighing of the anchor, the hoisting of the sails, and the vessel skimming bird-like over the water.

When lunch-time arrives one teacher supervises the washing of hands, another wipes the table-tops clean, and a third distributes a pile of trays. The pupils then draw up their own chairs and unpack the contents of their lunch-baskets on to the tray in front of them—a pair of chopsticks, a tin of rice, an orange or an apple. Most of the rice is coloured pink or saffron because of the festival; sometimes it is mixed with pieces of fish or bound into round cakes with seaweed.

Just before making our farewell bows we are presented with a box of sweetmeats, a miniature basket of marzipan “vegetables,” and a set of paper dolls made by the youngest scholar, aged three.