darkness he cannot see the ancient Plum tree’s shape beside the door,[1] so with infinite art and patience the prescribed flowers are forced for the earlier dates, and the fragrance of the old loved blossoms converts the new time into the familiar season.
The festival of the New Year in Japan really begins before the end of the old year. According to the new calendar, this celebration falls on December 13th, as the New Year is now celebrated, like that of the Western nations, on the first of January. Koto Hajime means ‘The Beginning of Things,’ but it ought to mean ‘getting ready for the beginning of things,’ unless the New Year is not the ‘beginning,’ but the thing accomplished, finished. It is like American College ‘Commencements,’—it is the end of school, but the beginning of all that for which education has been fitting the student. If there is a pother over the preparation for the closing of the schools in America and England, there is fuss enough over the preparation for the New Year in Japan. Such a pounding, all in time, as there is of rice for cakes—for the Oriental does his whipping of eggs for his omelette, his mashing of vegetables, and his beating of batter for pudding in a rhythmic cadence, as regular as that of castanettes or negro ‘bones’—a kind of ‘devil’s tattoo.’ It is almost as stimulating to the mind as the
- ↑ An idea from a well-known tanka.
