CORMORANT-FISHING.
Fishing has many votaries. Boats put off from Shinagawa for fishing in the Bay of Tokyo, especially in summer and autumn; the fish are caught either with nets or with rod and line. Anglers may be seen at all seasons on the banks of the little rivers and canals which traverse the city; but their catch is quite insignificant. The most interesting method of catching fish is, perhaps, cormorant-fishing in the Tamagawa, a river which runs a few miles west of Tokyo, where cormorants are, as in the River Nagara in Gifu Prefecture, which is celebrated for this form of fishing, employed to catch the plecoglossus altivelis, which abounds in the river. The bird has a tight ring around its crop, and when it has dived into the water and swallowed enough fish, the ring is pulled up and the bird is made to disgorge them. Another curious sight is the angling for the sillago. This fish is keen-sighted and very active, and takes fright and darts away as soon as it sees a boat rocking on the water. As, however, it is to be found in comparatively shallow water, a gigantic stool is set on a shoal, and the angler sits on it and patiently waits for the fish to take the bait. A boat remains not far off for emergencies, as when the angler, in his eagerness, loses his balance and goes bodily after the sillago. On a calm day, several of these stools are to be seen off the beach at Shinagawa.
ANGLING-STOOLS.
Of the outdoor games which have been introduced in recent years from abroad, the oldest is, perhaps, lawn-tennis, which is still extensively played, although it must now yield in popularity to baseball. A Japanese baseball team crossed the ocean some time ago to play on the Pacific Coast of the United States, though not with very brilliant results, while similar teams have come from Hawaii and the Pacific States to challenge the Japanese college teams. Boat-racing is also very popular; and races are held annually on the River Sumida by the Imperial University of Tokyo and other educational institutions in April when the cherry trees are in bloom on the river-bank. Football is played to some extent, and hockey has been tried with little success, while cricket is seldom played.
Of the European indoor games, the one which has found most favour in Japan is undoubtedly billiards, at which many Japanese have attained considerable skill. Ping-pong enjoyed a temporary vogue, but has now become as obsolete as diabolo, the craze for which reached Japan not long after it arose in Europe.
SUGOROKU.
We may now pass on to the principal games which are played in Japan. Sugoroku is a game played on a board by two persons. It is similar to backgammon, with the difference that the grand object of sugoroku is to get all one’s men into the enemy’s territory. There are twelve men on each side and twenty-four points to move to, and two dice are thrown alternately as in backgammon. It is a very ancient game which is hardly ever played nowadays; and what is now known as sugoroku was originally called the dochu sugoroku or travelling sugoroku. The earliest of its kind is a large sheet on which the views of the fifty-three postal stations on the highway from Yedo to Kyoto are given in order in as many squares. The starting-point is Yedo in one corner of the sheet, from which the squares are ranged along the edges until one of them touches the Yedo square, and then they are continued along the inner edges of the first squares, and still another set is formed along the edges of these second squares, until Kyoto is reached in the centre of the sheet. Each player has a slip of paper with his name or mark inscribed on it; it is put with the others in the Yedo square. He throws a die in turn and moves forward according to the number turned up; and the one who reaches Kyoto first is the winner. As there are fifty-three squares, the minimum number of throws of the die is nine; but the game may become complicated if, as is usually the case, the die must in the last throw turn up the exact number required for reaching the goal. Thus, if five is turned up when only two is needed to reach Kyoto, the player is made to go back three squares from the goal and await his turn for the next throw. Again, when a player comes to a certain square, he may be made to forfeit a turn or go back a number of squares. When these rules are introduced, the game is very much prolonged. Hence, later forms of sugoroku have a smaller number of squares; indeed, if, further, the place to move to is named in every square for every number turned up, a very few squares will suffice; and some sugoroku have no more than a dozen squares and yet an exciting game may be played on them.
