THE CHILDREN OF JAPAN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2488, 5 July 1909, Page 8

THE CHILDREN OF JAPAN.

(By Frank G. Carpenter.) I have been asked to write a letter for the children of America about the children of Japan. I want the boys and girls who take this newspaper to seat themselves upon the magic carpet of fairyland, which will take one around the world in the twinkling of an eye. All you have to do is to shut your eyes and wish you were there, and when you open them, lo! your wish has come true. Our magic carpet has carried us across the Pacific and dropped us down in the heart of Japan. We are in the big city of Kyoto, in the central part of the country. There are mountains in sight everywhere, and behind us is a beautiful lake which fills the river running through the city. The houses are so many that they cover as much space as Philadelphia, which has three times as many people. Their walls are such that they can be slid back during the daytime, and we can see all that goes on within. Most of the streets are lined with stores filled with all kinds of curious goods, and the streets, stores and houses are swarming with children. Here they are working, helping their parents; there they are playing, and further on is a crowd going to school. What jolly youngsters they are! We hear their laughter sounding out on the air, and as they see us some bend half double, in Japanese fashion, and' yell out O-hi-O,” their word for good-day. Others who are ruder, cry out Japanese syllables which our interpreter says mean: “You furry-headed foreigners; you have eyes like a oatl” . . . We find that we are as great curiosities to the Japanese children as they are to us. Their skins are yellow, and their eyes are a trifle aslant, and so fastened at the corners that they do not come as wide open as ours do. They think that their eyes are the moan beautiful, and that cream-colored skins are quite as line as white ones. Aside from this, Japanese boys and girls are just like Americans. Their little black eyes can see as far as ours can; and if you scratch their yellow skins they will bleed, in the same way. You had better be careful not to do so, however. They are as proud as you, and they wall fight at the drop of a hat. They are not as tall as we children of the same age, but they are fully as strong. Get one of the little fellows to double up his arm, and put your hand on his ‘ biceps. Every muscle stands up like a baseoall, and every ounce of his flesh is hard with the athletics which every schoolboy has to take daily. As to his fighting, you have heard how the Japanese whipped the Russians, who are almost twice as heavy as they are and three times as many in number, and how, about fifteen years ago, they conquered the Chinese, who have ten times as many people in their great nation over the way. Just now the children of Japan are all playing soldiers. The nation is still excited over its victory, and the boys go about with guns and Hags, marching in step while their trumpeters blow. Their guns are sticks of bamboo and their swords are of wood. They march right well, however, and they have sham fights jetween the different companies of boys in a town. Even babies are now dressed in military costumes by some of the Japanese mother's and many a four-year-old Japanese baby goes about in the dress of an officer of the navy. Some children who wear kimonos have soldier hats, and not a few are dressed in khaki. The toy shops are full of lead Soldiers and miniature guns and drums. The older boys are real soldiers, for every school has its military drill under officers of the army. Boys of twelve and fourteen have to march with guns, and as they grow older they go out in the field to camp and take part in sham battles. In every Japanese school there is a drill hall where the guns are stacked up against the walls when not in use. Every school has a gymnasium and the boys and girls go through all sorts of exercises to make them strong and enable them to fight and . work for their Emperor when a war comes. Just now the boys think the Japanese people could whip any other nation, and that the United States would have a poor show in a fight with their country. We are friendly to them, but we must keep our eyes open, for no one can tell but that we may have to fight them by and by. They have far more soldiers in their army than we have and their navy is one of the best in the world. On the third of March every year occurs a great gij'ls’ holiday, known as the dolls. On this day the boys have to stand in the background. Their parents pay little attention to them and they make the giris, for the time, the chief members of the family. It is the one day in the year when they are more important than the boys. At this time every girl gets a - new doll, and all the dolls of the family, including those of mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, are brought out to be admired and played with. The doils used at this time are not like ordinary dolls and they are played with only once a year, and then laid away for twelve months, when the next doll festival comes. These dolls represent some favorite prince or princess, some hero or heroine and sometimes the Emperor or Empress. There is a little throne of steps made for them in the back of the parlor or in the most honored place in the house, and they are placed upon this in rows. The children then sit down in front of them and talk to them. They put food and drink before them in tiny dishes and listen to stories about them. They give them doll toys which are as fine as they can afford. In rich families the toy dishes are sometimes of silver with little toy silver chop sticks for the toy Emperor and Empress to eat with. They serve toy wine, made especially for this feast, in toy cups. Some, families have collection of dolls, which have been saved by the children for generations, and which go back for a hundred years or more. Then the stores are filled with dolls for this feast, and the little yellow-skinned girls trot around in bright kimonos on their wooden clogs, admiring them and picking out the ones which are to be bought for this festival. The ordinary Japanese doll used by the girls is not like the American article. It is a miniature Japanese child or woman with blackest of black eyes, with queerly dressed Japanese hair, wearing a kimono and wooden shoes. Such dolls are of all sizes, from as big as your finger to your little baby sister, and the children in playing with them often carry them almut on their backs, tying them on with strings, just as the real Japanese babies are tied. In the stores there are all sorts of doll furniture, and one can get a fullhousekeeping outfit for a very few cents. Among the queerest playthings in the way of pets are what might be called the “Teddy Bears of Japan.” I call them puppy-cats. They are in reality a sort of a cross between a dog and cat, made of papier mache and 1 painted in gorgeous colors. The Japanese call them “ino haurico,” and it is not beneath the dignity of the boys to play with them. They are as popular here as the “Teddy Bears” with us, and they would, I doubt not, be great favorites with our children if introduced at home. The boys of Japan have their special day also. This is May 5, and it is known as the feast of flags or as the festival of the god of war. On that day every house has a pole of bamboo from which to float gaudy fish made of tough paper. The wind blows into the mouths of the fish and inflates them, and they swim about through the air. Sometimes there will bh a half dozen of these fish on one pole. There will be a big one at the top and smaller ones below, until the one at the bottom may be the size of a minnow. Each fish represents a son of the family and not a few have six or mpre. Some of these- fish may be fifty feet long, and they lock like great whales as they swim ja "the air. They represent the carp, i

which is noted for its strength aud daring. Every one wants his son to become a strong man, and his fish means strength. The Japanese boys are great kite-flyers. I have counted 1 a hundred kites in the air at* one time over a Japanese village. The kites are of all sizes, but they are ' usually square or oblong instead of the shapes known in America. 'they are often made like birds with wings, and sometimes like fish. A favorite amusement is fighting kites. In this sport the strings ptc first soaked in glue and then dusted with powdered glass. This is done for a long distance from the kite, and it makes that part of the string a sort of flexible file. When two boys fight their kites they try to make the strings cross as the kites are firing and by sawing cut the string in two. The kite which breaks away first then becomes the property ot the owner of the one which is still flying. The favorite time for kite-flying is in the winter, and it is at its height about New Year’s. There are kite stores in the Japanese cities, whose sign is a cuttlefish perched on the top of a high pole The words for kite and cuttlefish sound the same in Japanese, and for this reason the signs. . The'toys of Japan are an. evidence ot the love which these people have for their children. Every family spends money in amusing its little ones and a great industry is carried on in toy-making. There are toy stores everywhere. Every village, that is large enough to hold a shop has one or more. They are to be found in the poorest parts of the cities, especially near the temples, where the streets are lined with them. Some of the favorite tovs are made of dough, and there are peddling cooks who go around selling them. There are men who _carry toy stoves through the streets and rent them* out to the children at so much per hour. They furnish cakes and oilier things for the little ones to cook, so that for two or three cents a party of girls can have a stove for an hour and cook a whole meal for themselves. Some of the toys are made ot lacquer and many of paper. One can buy a 'e*rj nice gun for 2dol, and a tin swoid foi TJ cents. , , Many of the toys and games are used in teaching the children. There are playing cards with classical poetry on them, used much like our game of authors. Another pack of cards teaches the old Japanese proverb*, and another the names and forms of animals. The Japanese aie experts in top spinning. They have whistling tops and and can keep a half dozen of them going at one time. They play battledore and shuttlecock, especially at New Year’s, and at that time the stores are filled with bats and halls. Manv tovs are used in the kindergartens, am there are games which teach history and geography and also cleanliness, unselfishness and morality. The Japanese have fairy talcs ot all kinds. But suppose we call upon some ot our little Japanese friends. Their house is situated in a beautiful garden. Its roof is covered with black tiles and it has double walls of wood. The outer walls of each side are shoved back during the daytime into little cupboards at the tor uers, and the fine inner walls of sash filled with paper panes may then be seen. There is a space between the two walls, and in this we sit while awaiting our friends. They soon appear. I hey get down on the floor in bowing to' us, and then ask us in. \\ e take off our shoes and leave them outside. This is the cus tom of all Japanese. The houses are exceedingly clean, and the floors are covered with thick mats of woven white straw which would be hurt by the nails in our shoes. The mats are so soft that our feet sink into them, and we feel like lying down and rolling over and over. In the meantime our little Japanese friends have laid cushions on the mats and beg us to sit. These people do not use chairs or sofas. They have tables for eating which are not more than a foot high, and they sit and sleep on the door. The mats are soft and when they have taken out and spread on them some wellpadded comforters they have a very soft bed. In the daytime these comforters are rolled up in a bundle and put away in a cupboard or hole in the wall which by a sliding 1 door is so covered that you would not suppose it was there. By this means the bedroom is turned into a parlor, and when a table is brought in it is a dining-room as well. As we sit on the mats our little friends tell us about their homes, explaining some customs which are different from ours. They say that the mats are cleaner than our carpets and that they are very convenient in describing a house, as they are always of the same size. They show us that each mat is three feet wide and six feet long and say that the size of a house or room is known by the number of mats it takes to cover the floor. The room we are in lias eight mats. Larger rooms have twenty or thirty mats, and when a carpenter starts to build a house he asks the owner how many mats he wants, and thus fixes the size and price. All land in Japan is measured by the unit of the mat, a tsubo, being six feet square or two mats in size. Land here is measured by tsubos, not acres. It takes more than a thousand tsubos to make one acre of land. By arid by we go out to look at the bathroom. The Japanese children are very cleanly and they take a redhot bath every day. The bath tub is about as high as our shoulders. It has a stove pipe running through it with a Iward resting against the pipe to protect one's body from it when he gets in. The pipe is filled with charcoal and lighted. It soon heats the water’ to boiling, and when it begins to steam the Japanese jump in. Even little babies are put into this hot water. It turns their skins red, and when they come out they are the color of beets. We try such bathing ourselves. It is .so hot that we jump quickly out and cannot be induced to attempt it again. The Japanese have many public bathhouses. .There are hundreds in Kyoto, where one can get a good hot plunge for three or four cents. You would think that houses so thin and open ;is this one, where we are visit ing, would nets! steam or hot water, or at any rate great coal or wood fires to make them comfortable during the winter. Nothing of the kind is known to the children of Japan. If we should go up in a flying machine and look down upon the roofs of Kyoto we could not count a hundred chimneys on its tens of thousands of houses. These people have no fireplaces, no grates and no means of heat- ■ ing like ours. The cooking is done with charcoal in little clay ovens, and if one i would give a big dinner he must have many such stoves. For warmth a small, ] brass-lined box filled with ashes with a little burning charcoal within it is most : common. This warms only one’s hands, ' and he keeps his feet from freezing by sitting upon them. Sometimes a wood fire is made in a box of this kind. This, , however, is only in the poorer houses; | and the smoke goes out where it can. | We take a meal with our friends. Each j of us has his own little table. The meal j is served in individual dishes and the girls bend low and bow before they offer | them to us. The meal begins with sweet cake and candy. Then there is a bowl of j soup in a dish of wood covered with lacper, a varnish so bright that one can see his face in it. There is fish, raw and ' aooked, and fried eels, which taste de- I licious. The raw fish is not bad. It is c served upon ice, cut into little slices so c ive can eat it with chop sticks. After all, r. ivhy should not one eat raw fish as well 1 is raw oysters? a And then there are salads and pickles, a ipples and pears and great red persim- t nons ‘ as big as tomatoes. The rice is c wrought in at the close of the meal in a a vooefen bucket bound with brass rims, p (Ve are told again and again to help our- w ielv«s t* the rice, for one is supposed to si

complete his dinner with it, as, with rice in plenty, no one can go hungry. We find some difficulty in conveying the rice to our mouths with the chop sticks and finally raise the bowl to our lips and shovel it in. As it grows cold we pour a little hot tea over it, laughing with the Japanese children as they do the same. But there are so many strange things among the little ones we see all about us that it would take a long time to mention them all. The children wear shoes of wood or of straw, and their stockings are foot mittens with a finger for the big toe. ’These mittens stop above the ankle, and the rest of the leg goes bare except for the gown or kimono, which falls from the shoulders. ',Tho kimono has very long sleeves. These, in the case of the women, hang down, forming quite largo bags at the wrist, which serve as pockets. The boys have smaller sleeves. The girls have great belts called obis, which are tied at the back, and which hold their kimonos together. For the same purpose the boys have sashes which are scarcely larger than ropes. The girls wear bright red underclothing, although their kimonos are usually of more modest hues. All the school children of Japan have their own dress. The boys wear a divided skirt, which reaches from the waist almost to the ankles, and the girls have fuller skirts not divided. Both boys an I girls wear kimonos, which are tucked inside their skirts and which - cover the upper parts of their bodies. From this one would think it almost impossible to tell the boys from the girls. It is not so. The skirts of the girls are either red or of the color of a blue damson plum, while those of the boys are steel gray. The girls go bareheaded, and their hair is twisted up on the top of their heads. The boys wear caps or hats, and • their hair is cut short and it stands out like a shoe brush in bristles over the scalp. In the schools of Japan the boys and girls do not sit together, although they have the same studies. They now use desks and chairs, but they used to study sitting on the floor. In other respects their schools are not very unlike our schools at home.