The Japanese children in their plays imitated their elders, just as children everywhere do. Playing the doctor was one of the great imitative plays of the younger children, and there were dinners and tea-parties and weddings and funerals. One of the great amusements of the Japanese was wrestling-matches and the children imitated these with much precision, as they would stamp their feet, eat their salt, rinse their mouths, slap their knees, and then clinch and tug till one or the other was victor. "Another game which was very popular was called the 'Genji and Heiké.' These are the names of the celebrated rival clans, or families, Minamoto and Taira. The boys of a town, district, or school ranged themselves into two parties, each with flags. Those of the Heiké were red, those of the Genji white. Sometimes every boy had a flag, and the object of the contest, which was begun at the tap of a drum, was to seize the flags of the enemy. The party securing the greatest number of flags won the victory. In other cases, the flags were fastened on the back of each contestant, who was armed with a bamboo for a sword, and who had fastened, on a pad over his head, a flat, round piece of earthenware, so that a party of them looked not unlike the faculty of a college. Often these parties of boys numbered several hundred, and were marshalled in squadrons, as in a battle. At the given signal, the battle commenced, the object being to break the earthen dish on the head of the enemy. The contest was usually very exciting. Whoever had his earthen disk demolished had to retire from the field. The party having the greatest number of broken disks, representative of cloven skulls, was declared the loser. This game has been forbidden by the Government as being too severe and cruel. Boys were often injured in it."[126]
Lore.
"Japanese papas, who find, as other fathers do, how much it costs to raise a large family, will not let an infant, or even a young child, look in a mirror (and thus see a child exactly like itself, making apparent twins); for if he does, the anxious parent supposes the child, when grown up and married, will have twins.
"Children are told that if they tell a lie, an oni, or an imp, called the tengu, will pull out their tongues.
"If a boy rests a gun on top of his head, he will grow no taller. Children must not carry any kind of basket on their heads, nor must they ever measure their own height.
"Children are told if they strike anything with their chopsticks while at their meals, they will be struck dumb.
"When a maimed or deformed child is born, people say that its parents or ancestors committed some great sin.
"In Japan, as with us, each baby is the most remarkable child ever seen, and wondrous are the legends rehearsed concerning each one; but it is a great day in a Japanese home when the baby, of his own accord, walks before his first birthday, and mochi (rice pastry) must be made to celebrate the auspicious event.
"Young girls do not like to pour tea or hot water into a cup of kawaméshi (red rice), lest their wedding-night should be rainy.
"Little boys, tempted to devour too much candy, are frightened, not with prophecies of pain or threats of nauseous medicines, but by the fear of a hideous worm that will surely be produced by indulgence in sweets."[127]