I left the room, after watching them for a few minutes, but an hour later, upon entering it again, found them still employed in the same amusement.
It seems that their nurse had been in the habit of teaching them many Japanese arts to keep them still while under his charge. Their nurse was a man, strange to say, as very few female servants are employed in either China or Japan, and now they in their turn were teaching these to us. I confess the graceful, pretty things they were making had quite a fascination for me, and I even left off what I had been doing, and became a pupil with the youngsters. I took up the article which they were just beginning to learn, and, following my little teacher’s directions, I made what I have styled “The Fan from Nagasaki,” because my little instructress was born and lived in that city, and learned her art from a native Jap, and not because the fan itself, if it can strictly be called a fan, came from that region.
The children called it by a delightfully odd Japanese name, which you would find it hard to pronounce even if I should invent a way of spelling it.
Edith used Japanese or rice paper for those she made; but we found a stout quality of brown wrapping-paper, not too stiff, answers nearly as well.
If brown paper is used, a rectangular piece about two feet long, by one and a half feet wide, is a good-shaped piece to use.
Mark off each of the edges which measure eighteen inches into six equal parts, each division being of course three inches long (see Fig. 1). Now double the paper on the line at x, and you have a shape like Fig. 2. Fold the uppermost half under at the line a a, and again outward at the line b b; then fold the under half in precisely the same manner, and your paper is like Fig. 3.
Upon examining the edge a a a, two openings between the folds will be seen; whereas at the edge b b b, three openings will be found. The hand has next to be placed in the middle of these three openings, and the paper spread out toward the right and toward the left; that middle fold lying flat or unfolded for the time being. Another figure is now made like Fig. 4. Now commencing at one end of this long strip, crinkle it the whole length as you would a lamplighter top, making the folds even, about a quarter or half an inch wide. Be careful not to make these folds wider than this, as the fan does not work as well when they are wide. Yon have now a figure like that seen in Fig. 5; and if your folds have been carefully and firmly creased, your paper is prepared to make all sorts of strange shapes. I think Edith told me her nurse could make sixty-five different forms from a similarly folded bit, and most of these she was able to reproduce; but as it is some time since the children left us to visit other friends, and I have not given the subject a second thought till now, I find I have forgotten how many of the more intricate ones were formed. Perhaps with the directions for these my readers will catch the knack, as we Yankees call it, and can improvise some forms unlike any of these, for themselves. Whatever you succeed in making, you may be quite certain that the Nagasakian nurse, away off on the other side of the earth, is ahead of you, and has made the same form before; for his sixty-five must include about everything one could possibly fashion from its folds.
In Fig. 6, the lower edge of Fig. 5 is held between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, while the top is spread out like a fan. For Fig. 7, take Fig. 6, insert the fingers at a, and pass them round to b, raising the paper outward. Fig. 8 is a continuation of 6 and 7, as the upper layer of the overhanging edge in Fig. 7 is raised by passing the finger under it at c, and bringing it out at d.
Fig. 9 is a reverse of Fig. 8. Catch the paper by the part now uppermost, pinch that part well together, and loosen the part which was confined in Fig. 8.