. These
sand-pictures are often executed by very clever artists; but I have seen
little children drawing exquisite pictures in coloured sands. Japanese
children seem to have an instinctive knowledge of drawing and a facility
in the handling of a paint-brush that is simply extraordinary. They will
begin quite as babies to practise the art of painting and drawing, and
more especially the art of painting sand-pictures. You will see groups
of little children sitting in the playground of some ancient temple,
each child with three bags of coloured sand and one of white, competing
with one another as to who shall draw the quaintest and most rapid
picture. The white sand they will first proceed to spread upon the
ground in the form of a square, cleaning the edges until it resembles a
sheet of white paper. Then, with a handful of black sand held in the
chubby fingers, they will draw with the utmost rapidity the outline of
some grotesque figure of a man or an animal, formed out of their own
baby imaginations. Then come the coloured sands, filling in the spaces
with red, yellow, or blue, according to the taste and fancy of the
particular child artist. But the most extraordinary and most fascinating
thing of all is to watch the performance of a master in sand-pictures.
So dexterous and masterly is he that he will dip his hand first into a
bag of blue sand, and then into one of yellow, allowing the separate
streams to trickle out unmixed; and then with a slight tremble of the
hand these streams will be quickly converted into one thin stream of
bright green, relapsing again into the streams of blue and yellow at a
moment's notice. A Japanese mother will take infinite pains to cultivate
the artistic propensities of her child, and almost the first lesson she
teaches it is to appreciate the beauties of nature. She will never miss
the opportunity of teaching the infant to enjoy the cherry-blossom on a
sunny day in Uyeno Park. Hundreds of such little parties are to be seen
under the trees enjoying the blossom, while the mother, seated in the
middle of the group, points out the many beauties of the scene. She will
tell them dainty fairy stories--to the boys, brave deeds of valour, to
strengthen their courage; to the girls, tales of unselfish and
honourable wives and mothers. Every story has a moral attached to it,
and is intended to educate and improve the children in one direction or
another. There is one fairy story which is a universal fa