On the hundred and ninth day after the birth, occurs the “first-eating,” at which a tray of food is set before the baby. Friends are invited to take part in the ceremony. A lady friend who has a large family of her own is asked to feed the child. She puts into its mouth a little paste of boiled rice and wets its lips with a drop of soup. Though the child generally spits out the paste, the fiction of its eating is maintained, and the ceremony closes with feasting among the invited guests. This “first-eating” is usually deferred for five or ten days as a postponement is supposed to bring luck to the child.
The infant is expected not to be able to walk in less than a twelvemonth; but if it toddles within a year, a bag holding about three pints of uncooked rice is laid on its back, and the child is made to stumble and fall, because to walk before the first birthday augurs, according to one authority, early death and according to another, residence in a distant land. There are many other superstitions connected with infancy. Thus, a child that begins to suck its fingers before the thumb which represents the parents in Japanese palmistry, will not be an encumbrance upon its father when it grows up; if it pushes itself out in sleep beyond the head of its bed, it will rise in the world, while a downward course is in store for the one that slips in under its bed-clothes. The baby which eats fish before it can say toto, the child’s name for fish, will stammer when it talks. In a family in which children have one after another died in infancy, the birth of a healthy infant is ensured by such charms as making a dress for it with thirty-three pieces of cloth collected from as many families, shaving the child’s head till its seventh year, and giving a boy a girl’s name and vice-versa. A sovereign remedy for prickly heat is to hang over the front door by a piece of red thread a small egg-plant before any member of the family eats one that season. Crying at night is stopped by suspending over the child’s bed a picture of a devil beating a prayer-gong. Immunity from measles is secured by putting over the child’s head for a moment the rice-pot still hot after the removal of the rice, while a similar treatment with the bucket for feeding the sacred horse at a shrine is said to be equally efficacious against small-pox. The child’s face is wiped with a wet scrubbing-cloth to cure it of shyness before strangers. For whooping-cough there are several remedies: for instance, a wooden spatula with the child’s name and an invocation against the disease is nailed over the front door; the inked string used by carpenters for marking lines is tied loosely round the neck; a slender piece of nandina wood, just long enough for the child to grasp, is hung by a red thread to its neck; or a pair of small square wooden blocks are obtained from a temple dedicated to Jizo, the protector of children, when the child is suffering from whooping-cough and clapped whenever it coughs, and when it has recovered, the blocks are returned to the temple with another pair bearing the child’s name. If the infant stands up and bending down its head, peeps from between its legs, another child will soon be born in the family; and if it has a single streak on its thigh as a birth-mark, the next to be born will be a boy, but if the streaks are double, the next will be a girl. Mothers are especially warned against leaving their children’s clothes out to dry at night, for the souls of women dying at child-birth fly in the form of birds at dead of night and if they see children’s apparel, they will, from envy, drop their blood upon it and the wearer of the clothing so soiled will surely sicken and die. Infants in arms must, when out at night, be covered with their own loin-cloth to avert the malign influences of the night-demon.
CARRYING CHILDREN.
Japanese babies are at first carried in arms. When they fall asleep in the daytime, they are laid on a bed in a room where they can be watched. They get early used to noise, and slumber on though the watchers may talk aloud to each other. When they are a month or more old, they are carried not only in arms, but on the back as well. In the latter case, the child is tied by a long piece of bleached cotton which is first passed under its arms and over the nurse’s shoulders and after crossing in front, one end is passed under the girl’s arm and over the child’s thighs and tied at the side to the other end. Thus, the piece is carried over the child’s back in parallel lines and crosses on the nurse’s breast. In cold weather, the nurse and her charge are covered with a kind of haori, thickly wadded, before being tied with the cotton. It keeps them both warm, while the child’s breast and stomach are even better protected by the contact of the nurse’s back. Very young babies are tied down straight with their legs close together; but when they are older, they ride astride and their feet dangle on either side. The nurse who is specially engaged for the purpose is twelve or thirteen years old; but in poor families the elder brother or sister takes her place. Little girls are often to be seen in the streets, carrying on their backs sisters and brothers only a year or two younger than themselves, whose feet, as they dangle, almost trail on the ground. At first the girls can hardly walk with such burdens; but they soon get used to them, and they run, romp, and dance with their companions without much concern for their charges, who are often put in very uncomfortable positions. These, however, fare worse when they are on their brothers’ backs; for these urchins, being rougher and more careless than their sisters, fly kites, climb up trees, flourish bamboo poles to catch cicadas, run after dragon-flies, and even snowball one another, utterly regardless of the discomfort they occasion their charges, who, if they cry, are knocked with the back of the head, and seem soon to become habituated to the dangers they run through the recklessness of their carriers. This manner of carrying on the back is only possible with Japanese clothes, for the knot of the obi behind prevents the child from slipping down; and it would be difficult to try this method with European clothes, with men’s because the tying down of the coat would hamper the movement of the arms, and with women’s because of the multiplicity of pins at the neck and the waist. Nurses tie a towel round their heads so as not to let their back-hair fall on the babies’ faces. When the children are older and able to walk, they are carried without being tied down, for they can catch hold by the shoulders or by putting their arms loosely round the nurse’s neck, while they are kept from slipping by the nurse’s passing her hands under them.
Among little toys given to infants is a wooden whistle with either end rounded into a ball. It is given to the child to suck and bite and like the coral, hardens the gums, thereby facilitating the teething. The time for teething varies of course with the individual child and is the source of as much anxiety to the Japanese mother as to that of any other country.
On the fifteenth of November in the second year after the birth, the child is again taken to the shrine of the tutelary deity of the locality. A small offering of money is made; and in return the consecrated sake in a flat unglazed earthenware is given to the child to sip, while the priest purifies its body by waving over it a sacred wand adorned with strips of paper. The ostensible object of the visit is to invoke the God’s blessing upon the child; but it is really made the occasion for dressing up the child in finery, when parents vie with one another in the richness of their children’s apparel. Calls are then made on the friends who made congratulatory presents to the child. The shrine is visited again on the same day of the same month two years later in the case of a boy and four years later if the child is a girl.
As soon as the child is able to toddle along, sandals or plain clogs are tied to its feet when it walks on the ground. It learns first to walk indoors. As there are no go-carts in Japan, it tries to stand up by clinging to pillars and sliding-doors, for it may stumble and flop down on the soft mats without hurting itself; it is when it runs, as children will do, without being able to stop, that the greatest care has to be taken that it does not tumble over the edge of the verandah. In Tokyo perambulators are now pretty common; but in the old days there was no special means of conveyance for children, and they had to be carried in arms or on the back.
There is no fixed time for weaning. After its first birthday, ordinary food is given to the child little by little until in a year’s time it is able to do without its milk. Generally speaking, however, the time for weaning is governed by the arrival of a younger brother or sister; but the youngest is often allowed to take its mother’s milk up to its fifth or sixth year, though of course, as it can’t be common food, it goes to its mother only for diversion.
At three or four years children are sent to kindergarten, that is, if they can gain admission, for these useful institutions are still few even in Tokyo. There they are kept in good humour, everything being done for their amusement. They sing together simple songs, have object lessons, are set to make little things out of paper, and are also allowed to romp about as they please. At six years, the minimum school-age, they enter the primary school, the course at which extends over six years. Here they are taught Japanese, arithmetic, elements of history, geography, and natural history, elementary drawing, singing, and gymnastics, and hand work for boys and needlework for girls. This six years’ course is compulsory for all children; and there is a higher primary school with two years’ course for those boys who cannot afford to receive any higher education. The pupils who have completed the course at the ordinary primary school are qualified to present themselves for the entrance examinations of the higher schools, the middle school for boys and the high school for girls.