JAPAN
more fully of kites, for while they hold among Japanese pastimes a rank so prominent as to call for special description, the season for flying them varies in different localities, and it is consequently impossible to assign to them a set place in any calendar of sports. Little lads in every town and village make New Year's day the great epoch for this business, but adult kite-flyers choose other times. In Nagasaki, for example, which enjoys a high reputation for skill in such matters, the third month of the old almanack—that is to say, the balmy time of April or early May—is the season for the shi-en-kai (paper-flying assembly), and on three days in that month—the 10th, 15th, and 20th—all the world and his wife or light-o'-love flock out to one of three spots traditionally appropriated for the game. The kites vary in size from one to thirty-six square feet, but are uniformly rectangular in shape, their ribs made of seasoned bamboo slightly convex to the wind, their paper coverings joined and spread so deftly that perfect equipoise is obtained, and their connection with the flying cord effected by a skein of filaments converging from innumerable points of their surface. The string, through a length of ten to a hundred yards, is covered with powdered glass, for the object of each kite company is to cut down all competitors. Its cord once severed, a kite becomes the property of any one save its original owner, and that inviolable law leads to the organisation of bands of kite-
42
