come to perfection at the allotted hour, and all over the land the pretty, tender-blossomed miniature trees or larger branches are bought, to be sent or carried home as a token of the love and goodwill of the season. I have many fond associations with the thorny-leaved Holly, scarlet-berried; with the bronze branches of Mistletoe, with their milk-white fruit; but I like these fragile Plum blossoms almost better, with their sentiment of renewal of life out of the death of the Old Year; for that is what, in its essence, the New Year means in Japan—the lapse of winter, the first sighing breath (almost the agony of birth) of the spring.
The accompanying picture shows girls casting for gold-fish, which are caught only to be put back again uninjured—the game being to see who can get the most. It is a favourite sport at Atami at the season of the New Year.
Seven days after the festivities of the New Year are ended—which, by the old way of reckoning, had a meaning that is now almost lost—occurs the festival of the ‘Seven Herbs,’ the Nana Kusa, also called the Setsubun, ‘The Eve of the First Day of Spring.’
Red beans are an invariable accompaniment of all ceremonial feasting in Japan, and, cooked in many delicious ways, they make a dish at which the most carnivorous-minded man need not sneer. At the Koto Hajime also a stew of them is made, mixed with potatoes, sliced fish, mushrooms,
