West, their utter naturalness
and absolute freedom from seeking after effects present in them a
simplicity of character which helps to make them the most delightful of
their kind. A little boy flying a kite is like no other boy you have
ever seen in England. There is a curious formality and staidness
about him and his companions which never degenerates into shyness.

[Illustration: SUGAR-WATER STALL]

Once I drifted into a country village in search of subjects for
pictures, and I found to my astonishment that every living soul there
was flying a kite, from old men down to babies. It was evidently a fete
day, dedicated to kites; all business seemed abandoned, and every one
either stood or ran about, gazing up in the air at the respective toys.
There were kites of every variety--red kites, yellow kites, kites in the
shape of fish, teams of fighting kites, and sometimes whole battalions
of them at war with kites of a different colour, attempting to chafe
each other's strings. It rather surprised me at first to see staid old
men keenly interested in so childish an amusement; but in a very short
time I too found myself running about with the rest, grasping a string
and watching with the greatest joy imaginable the career of a floating
thing gorgeously painted, softly rising higher and higher in the air,
until it mingled among the canopy of other kites above my head, becoming
entangled for a moment, then leaving them and soaring up above the
common herd, and side by side with a monstrous butterfly kite; then came
the chase, the fight, and the downfall of one or the other. They were
all children there, every one of them, from the old men downwards; all
care and worry was for the time forgotten in the simple joy of flying
kites; and I too, in sympathy with the gaiety about me, felt bubbling
over with pure joy. To see these lovely flower-like child faces
mingling with the yellow wrinkled visages of very old men, all equally
happy in a game in which age played no part, was an experience never to
be forgotten. None was too old or too young, and you would see mites
strapped to the backs of their mothers, holding a bit of soiled knotted
string in their baby fingers, and gazing with their black slit eyes at
some tiny bit of a crumpled kite floating only a few inches away.

[Illustration: ADVANCE JAPAN]

Another game in which both the youth and the age of Japan play equal
parts is the game of painting sand-pictures on the roadside