A Japanese miscellany - University of Oregon

Songs of Japanese Children \9}
colored holiday-costume: only the most radi-
ant of moths or butterflies might serve for a
comparison. Very skilful are the Tokyo artists
in portraying the grace and the daintiness of
them; and every year these artists delight us
with new colored prints of bevies of ball-players
— (showing the fashions of the season) , — or
pictures of some fairy-damsel with upturned
smiling face and shining eyes, and flower-lips
half-parted, as she watches, battledoor in hand,
the feathery missile in its course. Yet the real-
ity may often be much more lovely than the
picture. And, oh! what wonderful battledoors
are sometimes to be seen! — cushioned at the
back with silk mosaic-work, making the dream
of a landscape, a garden, a princess of ancient
days!
Yet the charm is not visual only ; —
these fair-
ies, in their play, sing little songs of strange
rhythm and melody, very sweet to hear, and (for
the Western listener) impossible to remember.
Many of these queer little songs are so con-
structed that the first syllable of each successive
line or phrase corresponds with the first syllable
of a numeral noting the ordinal place of the
13