Ways of the Japs.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XII, 17 September 1904, Page 56

Ways of the Japs.

In Japan there are a lot of babies. Tn the daytime the streets, lined with the paper-sided houses, are full of them. The street is their only playground. There are so many in the streets that if you want to ride on a horse through them you have to send a fast-running “Jap” ahead to clear the way. A funny thing about a little “Jap” is : that -when he is pushed over he does not cry. He falls down hard enough, you think, to make a hole in the street, and you listen io hear a “boohoo.” For a moment you think there is to be one, but there isn’t. The youngster is still a moment to collect himself, and then he jumps up on his awkward little wooden shoes and runs off to play. Oddly, although the porches do not have rails around them, the babies never tumble from them. A birthday in Japan does not mean a real birthday. Everybody has the same birthday. IL is New Year’s Day. and the boys and girls each have another birthday besides. The girls’ is the third day of the third month, which would be March 3, and the boys, the fifth day of the fifth

month, which, of course, would be May 5. The moment a blinking, almond-eyed ‘■Jap” baby is born, he, or she, is a year old. When New Year’s Day comes he is two years old. Even if he was born as the bell in the temple was ringing the last stroke before midnight of New Year’s Eve, he would be two years old when the first stroke of New Year’s Day rang out on the air. Everybody has a good time on this great birthday. The fun is supposed to last two weeks.

The girls on their birthday get out their dolls. Y’ou have seen Japanese dolls with pink cheeks, queer flat eyes ami a little circle of bristly, black hair glued on the back of their heads. Well, they have big and little’ dolls like that. Some of the dolls look so much like real babies that you have to look twice to see whether they are real or make-believe. The girls carry tl.eir dolls fastened on their backs, just as their mothers once carried them. Little girls and boys the world over, when they can have half a chance, like to do just as “grown-ups” do.

On the boys’ birthday the air is full of strange fish, which look as if they were trying to swim against, the wind. They are on top of poles, and every boy is holding one of these up. The fish are of paper. The wind blows through them, making them wriggle back and forth, as if they were actually swimming. The Japanese mother delights to shave the head of the little “Jap,” or at least she acts as if she did. She begins to shave his bead as soon as there is enough hair there to shave off. And then what a funny way she shaves him! Perhaps she will go all over his head except one spot, at the back of the neck. Here she will leave a little tuft of hair, like a small Uncle Sam’s chin whisker. A little later she does with his hail - what is done with some dogs, and what gardeners do with some shrubs on the lawn; she tries to cut it in queer shapes, in order to see which is the most becoming. Sometimes she shaves the top and leaves the hair" growing around the edge in a ring, like a little monk. Sometimes she shaves the rim and leaves a circle on the knob of his head at the back, just as you see hair on the small Japanese dolls. And again, sometimes she will leave only a scalplock and two lovelocks. In these different ways, just as an American mother twists the hair of her little girl or boy into curls, she fusses with his hair until he goes to school, which he does when he is five or six years old. The little girls, just as soon as they are able to do so, carry their baby brothers and sisters about on their backs. It looks funny enough to see a little girl tarrying a baby almost, as large as liM’sclf on her back and playing hopscotch at the same time. You wonder how the baby stays on, if he is not heavy for the little girl to carry, and how she can bounce about so with that plump little shaver on her back. And more than all, you wonder why he does not make a fuss about it, for he seems to pay no attention, to what his nurse is doing. He seems to be staring up at the sun and in danger of becoming blind, hut you look more closelv and you see

that not only are his eyes covered by his thick eyelids, but he is actually asleep. His head rolls around, but he does not wake up as his nurse takes a hop. It is surprising how many games like ours the “Japs” have. Besides hopscotch there are battledore and shuttlecock, archery, bouncing balls, tops, kites, prisoner’s base, puss-in-corner, peasepudding hot, fencing, and many forfeit games. One game is quite like “Simon says ‘thumbs up.’ ” It is called hana liana, which in English means nose, nose. The leader puts his first finger on his nose and savs, “Nose, nose, nose, eye,”

at the same time clapping his finger on his chin. The others who are looking at him hard probably will find their fingers on their chins, too, unless they have remembered to do what the leader said instead of what he did. The boys have kite battles. The strings are gummed with powdered glass. Two boys will try to cut the strings of each other’s kite with powdered glass. Of course, the kite attached to the string which is first cut flies away, to the owner’s sorrow and the joy of his opponent. That is a much better way of fighting than some boys indulge in.

Then there is thumb wrestling. Two boys sit down opposite each other and take hold of hands with their thumbs in the air. Then they press their thumbs together hard, each trying to push the other down. They also build snow forts and have snow battles in the winter time. Every boy and girl who has seen the circus has seen the Japanese jugglers. If you could go to Japan you would know why Japanese jugglers are so elever, for the Japanese boys and girls can do very clever juggling with bouncing balls and tops. They throw them up

in the air, and while they are going up they dance, clap their hands, pass a fan over and under the ball, catch it on the backs of their hands, and guide it around the room or along the road at will. With tops they do wonderful trick'. They send the top up one arm. around the shoulder, and down the other one into the hand. From the hand they make it jump to the eJge of a sword, where it goes on spinning. They can even throw it into the air in such a way that it will come back to them again like a boomerang.