The Japanese New Year's Festival, Games and Pastimes

by Helen Cowen Gunsaulus

Somewhat similar to uta garuta is the game of kai awase (“shell matching”). Three hundred and sixty bivalve shells are used for this game. The two sides are separated and on the upper half is painted a portrait of a poet, on the mated shell are the lines of one of his poems. Other sets have only the poems inscribed within them, the two first lines being on one half shell, the remaining lines on the other. The shells are divided among the players, and as the pictures or first lines are laid upon the mats, the holder of the corresponding poem places his shell near it. Some of the old kai awase sets were of great beauty and were stored in circular lacquer cases of fine workmanship. This game and the uta garuta naturally were played only by the cultured classes and were vehicles for the learning of the classics.

In addition to the kites and battledores, stilts and hand balls, there are represented in this selection of surimono other toys for children such as hobby horses, dolls of paper, swinging bats for ball playing, archery outfits and the amusements afforded by caged singing insects and trained mice and monkeys. The older people likewise have delightful pastimes. As the season advances they spend much time in enjoying nature, the viewing of blossoming trees and plants, the listening to singing insects in the evening, and the gathering of shells and shell fish at ebb-tide are all occasions of organized parties in which men as well as women take keen pleasure. A series of five surimono by Kuniyoshi realistically portrays the joys of an ebb-tide party.

Most of the musical instruments, which both men and women enjoy playing, are importations from China, particularly the lyre (koto), the violin (kokyū) and the reed organ (shō). The samisen, a three-stringed guitar, is the popular accompaniment of the singing girl or geisha; the koto is played by the more aristocratic women. Drums of double conical form (tsuzumi) are to be seen in the hands of both men and women. Flutes have long been popular with men of all classes, the wandering minstrel, the court musician and even the courtier himself who delighted to match the softness of his flute tone with the gentle light of the moon, or with the voice of the harbinger of spring as evidenced by the poem on Fig. 7 which reads: “Like the nightingale’s voice above the clouds, hazed over by the mist, the flute contains sweetness.”

Even more aesthetic than the enjoyment of music are the arts of the ceremonial tea (cha no yu, “hot-water-tea”) and that of flower arrangement (ikebana), both of which up to a short time ago were thought to be necessary acquirements for the cultivated classes. To each of these sciences many schools were devoted. Only the barest sketch can here be given of these subjects to which volumes have been devoted. The tea ceremony to-day is rigorously outlined by complicated rules as to utensils, order of procedure and even as to the subjects of conversation indulged in while in the tea room.

Tea drinking was introduced from China in the ninth century and at first was practised by the Buddhist priests for medicinal purposes and especially as a means of keeping awake during meditations. In the fifteenth century meetings for tea drinking were held in groves and gardens. In an adjoining tea house pictures were shown on these occasions which were mainly Buddhistic in subject, and most of them of Chinese origin. Under the great tea-master Rikyū (sixteenth century) the rules of cha no yu were rewritten. From this time on the ceremony was performed in a small house with a low door through which the few guests would have to prostrate themselves for entrance. The most characteristic traits of these gatherings were a close sympathy with nature and a love of simplicity almost amounting to ruggedness as expressed in the tea bowls often partially glazed. Restraint was likewise displayed in the decorations of the room, a simple bamboo flower holder was preferred to the bronze vase, and a hanging picture (kakemono) was chosen which would make an equally quiet appeal, such as a branch in the wind or an example of fine caligraphy. The occasion became a time in which to worship purity and refinement.

FIG. 7. NOBLEMAN PLAYING THE FLUTE.
BY GAKUTEI.

FIG. 8. YOUNG MAN ARRANGING FLOWERS.
ARTIST UNKNOWN.

Like the tea ceremony, the art of flower arrangement (ikebana) developed into a philosophy under the patronage of the shōgun Yoshimasa in the fifteenth century. For several centuries it has been studied and cultivated as a refined accomplishment. Miss Averill in “Japanese Flower Arrangement” tells us that many of Japan’s most celebrated generals have been masters of this art, finding that it calmed their minds and made clear their decisions for the field of action. All of the schools of ikebana, with one exception, are founded on the same principles. The underlying idea is to reproduce in the arrangement the effect of growing plants and to preserve for as long a time as possible the life of the plants. Arrangements aim to reflect the season or the occasion. When high winds prevail in March, branches with unusual curves are selected and so placed as to suggest strong breezes. Certain colors are considered unlucky for certain occasions, for example, red suggesting flames is inappropriate for house warmings, when white would be the desirable color in that it suggests water to quench the fire. An uneven number of flowers are considered lucky and also much more suggestive of the processes of nature, where there is seldom found perfect symmetry and actual balance. In the arrangements of the later schools there are always represented three principles known in the different groups by diverse names: “Heaven, Man and Earth;” “Earth, Air and Water;” or “Father, Mother and Child.” The three main sprays of an arrangement represent in their directions of growth these three principles, and are designated: “standing, growing, running.” Subsidiary branches in the selection are called attributes. As may be seen in Fig. 8, an arrangement is first composed in the hands, care being taken that all branches be kept close together at the base so as to form “the parent stalk”. The young man in the picture holds in his mouth a support for bracing the flowers in the bronze vase, on the floor are scissors. A woman is approaching with a waterpot. Such a refined pastime as ikebana is primarily intended to entertain visitors who may contemplate the finished arrangement as it is set up in the raised portion (tokonoma) of the main room.