where now the German military cap is seen. They made ropes of the twisted, long, tough-fibred leaves, and used them to skip and dance with; and wove them into flags, to beat the ground with, to scare away goblins and demons and all prowling evil spirits from their festival.
The fish is also the boys’ emblem, and what glorious fish they are!—great painted cloth or waxed paper things, streaming out from the tops of high bamboo poles. I shall never forget Nagasaki, with its waving forest of brilliant fish flags plunging and bellying in the breeze, and the boys marching like soldiers, with all their martial spirit aroused, and all their play-soldier games and decorations brought out. I love boys anywhere,—unless they are too good, and this they certainly are not in Japan,—scamps and rascals all, bright-eyed and impudent, yet polite, eager, impetuous, warlike, and surely the carp which can fight its way upstream is a fit symbol for them.
There are several festivals connected with Rice,—at its planting, at various stages of its growth, and at the time of its harvest,—and these are celebrated every year by the peasant and farmer people all over Japan. Never before the year 1910 has any one of these occasions been observed outside Japan, but at the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush, on the 28th August of that year, the festival of the Rice Harvest was celebrated,
