Everyday Life in Edo - Everyday Life in Traditional Japan - page 163

ited in Japan with great perseverance in swimming upstream. Boys celebrated the day by
fighting with wooden swords to show their budding manliness and by slapping the ground
with plaited iris leaves in noisy mock battle.
The seventh of the seventh month was the festival of the Weaver-maiden and the
Cowherd, represented by two stars, who were supposed on this one day to be able to meet,
when he would cross the river in the sky, the Milky Way. On this day bamboo poles with
the leaves on, and decorated with colored paper streamers, cards with poems about the two
stars, papier-mâché models of notebooks, brushes, and other writing equipment, were set
up outside the house. On this day, too, pupils wrote poems at school, and it was in a sense
a festival of literacy.
There were many other occasions that a child and his parents could look forward to,
such as the day that the god of the local shrine went out in his highly decorated shrine,
whichwascarriedbyacrowdofyoungmenconnectedwiththeshrine.Therewouldbemu-
sic from drums, gongs, and pipes, and great jollity. The bon festivals took place in town as
wellasinthecountry,andwerepartlyseriousoccasions,withprayersatthelocalBuddhist
temple, but also had dancing and feasting. Children also had a wide range of toys and
games for their day-to-day diversion; they had tops and kites ( 88 ) , as well as dolls, balls,
yo-yos, and stilts, and they played hide-and-seek, blind man's buff, hop-scotch, hunt-the-
slipper, and touch; paper-folding ( origami ) encouraged the neat, quick fingers natural to
the Japanese as a quiet indoor pastime, while in winter snowballing was very popular.
Japanesechildrenrarelyhadanimalsaspets.Dogs,inspiteofthespecialtreatmentthey
had under the “dog” Shogun (see p. 33 ) , were seldom seen in the home, except for some
Pekinese dogs, imported by the Dutch. Japanese dogs, typified by the fighting breed from
Tosa in Shikoku, were strong animals with close connections to the Eskimo dogs of the
North. They were good as watchdogs, but also formed wild packs that roamed the coun-
tryside. Cats, on the other hand, were often to be found in homes, performing their world-
wide function of vermin-catchers, but never, of course, given a saucer of milk. White cats
with one eye yellow and one green were highly prized as lucky mascots for shops, as their
eyes symbolized gold and silver. Japan had wild monkeys and some of these were tamed
and trained to dance for public exhibition. In the home, crickets were caught and put in
cages,wheretheirchirpinginsummerhelpedtomaketheJapanesefeelcool,likethewind-
bells hung on the balconies. Fireflies were also caught in the summer and kept in cages.
Ponds were sometimes stocked with carp and goldfish. Generally, animals were cared for
onlyiftheyperformedausefulfunction,fortheattitude tothemwasanunsentimental one.
However,Buddhistlawforbadethetakingofanylife,andtosetfreecagedanimalsbrought
recompense in the next world. There were street-sellers who sold caged birds, fish in jars,
andtortoisestothefaithfulsothattheycouldbereleased totheairorintoponds;therewas