Umé San in Japan

by Etta Blaisdell McDonald; Julia Dalrymple

Baby Yuki was already feeding the goldfish and did not care whether her mother stayed at Asakusa Temple or not.

So the two rode away through the city streets toward the district of Dango-Zaka. Sometimes they mounted a hill from which they could look over the city and see the flags fluttering in the breeze; sometimes they crossed a canal crowded with heavily-laden scows; sometimes they passed through business streets where people sat in their houses or shops with the front walls all open to the sidewalk. The people sat and worked, or ate their lunch, or sold their wares, as if they were all a part of one great family with the people in the streets and had no secrets from them.

Wells and water-tanks stood at convenient distances along the streets, and from their jinrikishas Umé and her mother saw crowds of women washing rice and chatting with one another as they worked.

At the chrysanthemum gardens there were many little gates, at each one of which Umé paid four sen before they could enter and look at the flowers in living pictures.

The gardeners in Japan make all sorts of wonderful stories and pictures with the chrysanthemums.

Here you will see a ship filled with gods and goddesses. There you will be astonished at the sight of a sail set to carry a junk over a chrysanthemum sea. Somewhere else you will come upon an open umbrella, a flag, a demon or a dragon; there is no end to the quaint fancies!

It is hard to understand how these pictures can be made until one learns that the gardeners have been at the business for several generations. They say that, to have a thing well done, your children and grandchildren must do it after you.

To make the chrysanthemum pictures, they tie the branches of the plants, and even the tiny flowers, to slender bamboo sticks; there is also a delicate frame of copper wire through which the flowers are sometimes drawn, and sometimes the gardeners use light bamboo figures of boats and dragons and gods.

The faces of the people in the flower pictures are paper or plaster masks. It would really be too much to ask the gardeners to make chrysanthemum expressions. Nowhere outside of Japan will you find such curious pictures!

It was very late when Umé and her mother reached home again. Now the houses on both sides of the streets were hung with festoons of flags and lanterns on each of which was the round red sun of Japan.