THE FEAST OF DOLLS.
The equinoctial day is the middle of a week known as higan, or yonder shore, which is so called because prayers are said during the week for the souls of those on shore, that is, in Nirvana. During the week dumplings and rice-cakes coated with bean jam or sweetened bean-powder are offered to the dead and also sent as presents to friends and relatives. The family tombs are visited; and old-fashioned people worship in succession at the six great temples dedicated to Amitabha in the environs of the city, which entails a journey of some fifteen miles. Many old men and women visit different shrines on the equinoctial day as they have been told that if they pass through seven stone torii or shrine-gates on that day, they will not suffer pain when the time comes for them to quit this world.
In the latter part of this month the plum-trees are in full bloom. Though camellias are in flower earlier in the year, the plum-blossoms are the first of all the flowers to attract crowds of admirers. As plum-trees blossom sometimes while it still snows, the plum-tree blooming under a weight of snow is emblematic of faithfulness in adversity. The plum-blossom is not so popular as the cherry-blossom; and yet it is the subject of more odes and poems than the other. It possesses the grace and refinement which is lacking in the luxuriant clusters of cherry-blossoms. Its quiet hue, the delicacy of its fragrance, and the sense of loneliness it seems to impart appeal to the literary and poetical-minded, who go to a plum-garden with gourds of sake and drink under the branches to which they hang slips of paper with odes written on them in praise of the blossom. It is also associated in our poetry with the Japan bush-warbler, the most prized of our singing-birds, whose clear abrupt notes certainly sound pleasant on cold, crisp mornings of early spring. Though there are many plum-gardens in Tokyo, the most noted is that on the east side of the River Sumida, where stands an aged tree, known as the Plum-tree of the Couchant Dragon from the fancied resemblance of its gnarled trunk to the sleeping form of that fabulous animal.
CHERRY-FLOWERS AT MUKOJIMA.
At the end of March bloom the early flowers of the cherry called the higan-cherry; but it is in the first half of the following month that the real cherry season is in full swing. The birthday of Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, is celebrated on the eighth of April, when an infusion of the hydrangea thunbergii is poured over a small statue of the Buddha and the liquid is sold in small green-bamboo tubes to the votaries. It is said to be an effective charm against the breeding of maggots in summer. This ceremony of the washing of the Buddha, as it is called, is soon forgotten in the universal merriment of the cherry-flower season. The lovers of the plum-blossom may dwell upon the superior grace and delicacy of their favourite, but the darling of the nation is the cherry-flower; the former has been lauded by many a poet, but the latter is considered to be peculiarly Japanese, for no other land can boast the magnificent clusters without a leaf to break their continuity, which look in the distance like a bank of pale clouds, and when they fall, the scattering petals come down as lightly as flakes of snow. When we speak simply of the flower, or of the flower-time, flower-view, or flower-season, we allude invariably to the cherry-flower. The high esteem in which the cherry-blossom has always been held in Japan is exemplified in the saying, “Among men the samurai, among flowers the cherry,” which was, in the days of military ascendancy, the highest praise that could be bestowed. Again, how closely the flower is identified with the country, may be seen from the famous ode of Motoori, which runs; “Should a stranger ask what is the spirit of Japan, to him I would show the wild-cherry blossoms glinting in the morning sun.” That spirit is delicate and tarnished by dishonour as readily as the flower is scattered by the wind. The cherry-flowers bloom but for a few days; and that fact gives the motive to a celebrated haiku, or verse of seventeen syllables, which may be lamely translated:—
Ah, this world of ours!
But three days are gone; and where
Are the cherry-flowers?