Page:Child-life in Japan and Japanese child stories (Ayrton, Matilida Chaplin. , 1901).djvu/22

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Child-Life in Japan.

toy and disappear into its sleeve, like mice running into their holes with bits of cheese.

In the next large picture are two boys who are fond of music. One has a flute, which is made of bamboo wood. These flutes are easy to make, as bamboo wood grows hollow, with cross divisions at intervals. If you cut a piece with a division forming one end you need only make the outside holes in order to finish your flute.

The child sitting down has a drum. His drum and the paper lanterns hanging up have painted on them an ornament which is also the crest of the house of "Arima."[1] If these boys belong to this family they wear the same crest embroidered on the centre of the backs of their coats.

Korean Lion is the title of the picture which forms the frontispiece; it represents a game that children in Japan are very fond of playing. They are probably trying to act as well as the maskers did whom they saw on New

  1. Arima was one of the daimios or landed noblemen, nearly three hundred in number, out of whom has been formed the new nobility of Japan, a certain number of which are in the Upper House of the Imperial Diet.