Jinrikisha Days in Japan
in a row on a shelf like an altar or dais, and food and gifts are placed before them. The tiny lacquer tables, with their rice-bowls, teapots, cups, plates, and trays, are miniature and exquisite likenesses of the family furnishings. Each doll has at least its own table and dishes, and often a full set of tableware, with which to entertain other dolls, and amazing prices have been paid for sets of gold and carved red lacquer dishes, or these Lilliputian sets in wonderful metal-work. After the festival is over, the host of dolls and their belongings are put away until the next March , and when the beautiful images emerge from the storehouses after their long hiding they are as enchanting as if new. Nothing better illustrates inherent Japanese ideas of life and enjoyment, and gentleness of manners, than this bringing out of all the dolls for one long fete week in the year, and the handing them down from generation to generation.
On the fifth day of the fifth month comes the boys’ holiday. The outward sign is a tall pole surmounted with a ball of open basket-work, from which hang the most natural-looking fish made of cloth or paper. Such a pole is set before every house in which a boy has been born during the year, or where there are young boys, and some patriarchal households display a group of poles and a school of carp flying in the air. These nobori, as the paper carp are called, are of course symbolic, the carp being one of the strongest fish, stemming currents, mounting water-falls, and attaining a great age. Many of these nobori are four or five feet in length, and a hoop holding the mouth open lets them fill and float with as life-like a motion as if they were flapping their fins in their own element. In-doors, images and toys are set out in state array—miniature warriors and wrestlers, spears, banners, and pennants, and all the decorative paraphernalia that once enriched a warrior’s train. In all classes children's parties and picnics prevail. The schools are
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