First Month

Yoshi-san said he had dreamt he had a beautiful portmanteau full of nice foreign things, such as comforters, note-books, pencils, india-rubber, condensed milk, lama, wide-awakes, boots, and brass jewelry. Just as he opened it, everything vanished and he found only a torn fan, an odd chop-stick, a horse's cast straw shoe, and a live crow.

When at home, the children, for the first few days of the New Year, dressed in their best crepe, made up in three silken-wadded layers. Their crest was embroidered on the centre of the back and on the sleeves of the quaintly flowered long upper skirt. Beneath its wadded hem peeped the scarlet rolls of the hems of their under-dresses, and then the white-stockinged feet, with, passing between the toes, the scarlet thong of the black-lacquered clog. The little girl's sash was of many-flowered brocade, with scarlet broidered pouch hanging at her right side. A scarlet over-sash kept the large sash-knot in its place. Her hair was gay with knot of scarlet crinkled crepe, lacquered comb, and hairpin of tiny golden battledore. Resting thereon were a shuttlecock of coral, another pin of a tiny red lobster and a green pine sprig made of silk. In her belt was coquettishly stuck the butterfly-broidered case that held her quire of paper pocket-handkerchiefs. The brother's dress was of a simpler style and soberer coloring. His pouch of purple had a dragon worked on it, and the hair of his partly shaven head was tied into a little gummed tail with white paper-string. They spent most of the day playing with their pretty new battledores, striking with its plain side the airy little shuttlecock whose head is made of a black seed. All the while they sang a rhyme on the numbers up to ten:—

"Hitogo ni futa-go—mi-watashi yo me-go,

Itsu yoni musashi nan no yakushi,

Kokono-ya ja—to yo."

When tired of this fun, they would play with a ball made of paper and wadding evenly wound about with thread or silk of various colors. They sang to the throws a song which seems abrupt because some portions have probably fallen into disuse; it runs thus:—

"See opposite—see Shin-kawa!