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Transcriber's note:

      A few typographical and punctuation errors have been
      corrected. A complete list follows the text.

      Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been
      retained as in the original.

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      _underscores_.

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[Illustration: The Lion of Korea.]




CHILD-LIFE IN JAPAN

AND

JAPANESE CHILD STORIES


BY


MRS. M. CHAPLIN AYRTON


EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY

WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS, L.H.D.

Author of "The Mikado's Empire" and "Japanese Fairy World"


_WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS, INCLUDING SEVEN FULL-PAGE PICTURES DRAWN AND
ENGRAVED BY JAPANESE ARTISTS_


 BOSTON, U.S.A.
 D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
 1909


 COPYRIGHT, 1901,
 BY D. C. HEATH & CO.




PREFACE.


Over a quarter of a century ago, while engaged in introducing the
American public school system into Japan, I became acquainted in Tokio
with Mrs. Matilda Chaplin Ayrton, the author of "Child-Life in Japan."
This highly accomplished lady was a graduate of Edinburgh University,
and had obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Letters and Bachelor of
Sciences, besides studying medicine in Paris. She had married Professor
William Edward Ayrton, the electric engineer and inventor, then
connected with the Imperial College of Engineering of Japan, and since
president of the Institute of Electric Engineers in London. She took a
keen interest in the Japanese people and never wearied of studying them
and their beautiful country. With my sister, she made excursions to some
of the many famous places in the wonderful city of Tokio. When her own
little daughter, born among the camellias and chrysanthemums, grew up
under her Japanese nurse, Mrs. Ayrton became more and more interested in
the home life of the Japanese and in the pictures and stories which
delighted the children of the Mikado's Empire. After her return to
England, in 1879, she wrote this book.

In the original work, the money and distances, the comparisons and
illustrations, were naturally English, and not American. For this
reason, I have ventured to alter the text slightly here and there, that
the American child reader may more clearly catch the drift of the
thought, have given to each Japanese word the standard spelling now
preferred by scholars and omitted statements of fact which were once,
but are no longer, true. I have also translated or omitted hard Japanese
words, shortened long sentences, rearranged the illustrations, and added
notes which will make the subject clearer. Although railways,
telegraphs, and steamships, clothes and architecture, schools and
customs, patterned more or less closely after those in fashion in
America and Europe, have altered many things in Japan and caused others
to disappear, yet the children's world of toys and games and stories
does not change very fast. In the main, it may be said, we have here a
true picture of the old Japan which we all delighted in seeing, when, in
those sunny days, we lived in sight of Yedo Bay and Fuji Yama, with
Japanese boys and girls all around us.

The best portions and all the pictures of Mrs. Ayrton's big and costly
book have been retained and reproduced, including her own preface or
introduction, and the book is again set forth with a hearty "ohio" (good
morning) of salutation and sincere "omedeto" (congratulations) that the
nations of the world are rapidly becoming one family. May every reader
of "Child-Life in Japan" see, sometime during the twentieth century, the
country and the people of whom Mrs. Ayrton has written with such lively
spirit and such warm appreciation.

    WM. ELLIOT GRIFFIS.

ITHACA, N.Y.




CONTENTS


                                         Page

 Preface by William Elliot Griffis          v

 Introduction by the Author                xi

 Seven Scenes of Child-Life in Japan        1

 First Month                               16

 The Chrysanthemum Show                    30

 Fishsave                                  34

 The Filial Girl                           37

 The Parsley Queen                         38

 The Two Daughters                         40

 Second Sight                              44

 Games                                     46

 The Games and Sports of Japanese
     Children, by William Elliot Griffis   50




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


 The Lion of Korea                _Frontispiece_

                                            PAGE
 A Ride on a Bamboo Rail                       1

 A Game of Snowball                            3

 Boys' Concert--Flute, Drum, and Song          5

 Lion Play                                     6

 Ironclad Top Game                             7

 Playing with Doggy                            9

 Heron-Legs, or Stilts                        11

 The Young Wrestlers                          13

 Playing with the Turtle                      15

 Presenting the Tide-Jewels to Hachiman       18

 "Bronze fishes sitting on their throats"     19

 The Treasure-Ship                            23

 Girls' Ball and Counting Game                26

 Firemen's Gymnastics                         28

 Street Tumblers                              29

 Eating Stand for the Children                31

 Fishsave riding the Dolphin                  35

 Bowing before her Mother's Mirror            37

 Imitating the Procession                     39

 The Two White Birds                          41

 Eye-Hiding, or Blindman's Buff               47

 Stilts and Clog-Throwing                     48

 Playing at Batter-Cakes                      49

 Hoisting the Rice-Beer Keg                   51

 Getting ready to raise the Big Humming Kite  60

 Daruma, the Snow-Image                       62




INTRODUCTION


In almost every home are Japanese fans, in our shops Japanese dolls and
balls and other knick-knacks, on our writing-tables bronze crabs or
lacquered pen-tray with outlined on it the extinct volcano [Fuji San][1]
that is the most striking mountain seen from the capital of Japan. At
many places of amusement Japanese houses of real size have been
exhibited, and the jargon of fashion for "Japanese Art" even reaches our
children's ears.

[1] _Fuji San_, or Fuji no Yama, the highest mountain in the Japanese
archipelago, is in the province of Suruga, sixty miles west of Tokio.
Its crest is covered with snow most of the year. Twenty thousand
pilgrims visit it annually. Its name may mean Not Two (such), or
Peerless.

Yet all these things seem dull and lifeless when thus severed from the
quaint cheeriness of their true home. To those familiar with Japan, that
bamboo fan-handle recalls its graceful grassy tree, the thousand and one
daily purposes for which bamboo wood serves. We see the open shop where
squat the brown-faced artisans cleverly dividing into those slender
divisions the fan-handle, the wood-block engraver's where some dozen
men sit patiently chipping at their cherry-wood blocks, and the
printer's where the coloring arrangements seem so simple to those used
to western machinery, but where the colors are so rich and true. We see
the picture stuck on the fan frame with starch paste, and drying in the
brilliant summer sunlight. The designs recall vividly the life around,
whether that life be the stage, the home, insects, birds, or flowers