o Raise the big Humming Kite with the Sun
Emblem.]

About the time of old style New Year's Day, when the winds of February
and March are favorable to the sport, kites are flown, and there are few
games in which Japanese boys, from the infant on the back to the
full-grown and the over-grown boy, take more delight. I have never
observed, however, as foreign books so often tell us, old men flying
kites and boys merely looking on. The Japanese kites are made of tough
paper pasted on a frame of bamboo sticks, and are usually of a
rectangular shape. Some of them, however, are made to represent children
or men, several kinds of birds and animals, fans, etc. On the
rectangular kites are pictures of ancient heroes or beautiful women,
dragons, horses, monsters of various kinds, the symbol of the sun, or
huge Chinese characters. Among the faces most frequently seen on these
kites are those of the national heroes or heroines. Some of the kites
are six feet square. Many of them have a thin tense ribbon of whalebone
at the top of the kite which vibrates in the wind, making a loud humming
noise. The boys frequently name their kites Genji or Heiki, and each
contestant endeavors to destroy that of his rival. For this purpose the
string for ten or twenty feet near the kite end is first covered with
glue, and then dipped into pounded glass, by which the string becomes
covered with tiny blades, each able to cut quickly and deeply. By
getting the kite in proper position and suddenly sawing the string of
his antagonist, the severed kite falls, to be reclaimed by the victor.

The Japanese tops are of several kinds, some are made of univalve
shells, filled with wax. Those intended for contests are made of hard
wood, and are iron-clad by having a heavy iron ring round as a sort of
tire. The boys wind and throw them in a manner somewhat different from
ours. The object of the player is to damage his adversary's top, or to
make it cease spinning. The whipping top is also known and used. Besides
the athletic sports of leaping, running, wrestling, slinging, the
Japanese boys play at blindman's buff, hiding-whoop, and with stilts,
pop-guns, and blow-guns. On stilts they play various games and run
races.

In the northern and western coast provinces, where the snow falls to the
depth of many feet and remains long on the ground, it forms the material
of the children's playthings, and the theatre of many of their sports.
Besides sliding on the ice, co