—a miniature pageant, the most wonderful collection.[1] As valuable heirlooms they are handed down for generations in a family, and sometimes, when a girl marries, she takes her own set to pass on to her little girl when she gets one. They are never broken or damaged, it would appear, for the Japanese show few signs of that wilful love of smashing things with which all the rest of the world seems cursed. Even flimsy, jerry-built toys, made for the foreign market, if possessed by a Japanese child are taken care of and guarded heedfully.
Of course all little girls do not own such grand and impressive dolls as those I have described; these would be only for higher-class maidens, who, by means of the puppets, are taught the involved and elaborate ceremonial of the Court. No disrespect is permitted towards the doll dignitaries; they are as if endowed with life. A little girl who did not behave as she ought in the Imperial presence would be in danger of being turned into a lizard, or perhaps a horrid writhing snake! Court-table manners are also taught them, with those dainty, almost
- ↑ It should be added that, while children of the nobility and samurai class were allowed these wonderful collections of dolls, which have been handed down to the present day, according to the sumptuary laws established in the year A.D. 681, by the Emperor Temmu, the number and value of even the dolls a little girl might receive on her birthday were strictly regulated. For instance, a farmer assessed at 10 koku of rice (which would imply an income of £9 or £10 a year) could give his daughter only “one paper doll or one ‘mud doll’ a year,” and a boy only one toy spear.
