The curious narrow street is one long blaze of lights--lights of lantern
signs, lights of torches and lamps illuminating unfamiliar rows of
little stands and booths set out in the thoroughfare before all
the shop-fronts on each side; making two far-converging lines of
multi-coloured fire. Between these moves a dense throng, filling the
night with a clatter of geta that drowns even the tide-like murmuring of
voices and the cries of the merchant. But how gentle the movement!--
there is no jostling, no rudeness; everybody, even the weakest and
smallest, has a chance to see everything; and there are many things to
see.
'Hasu-no-hana!--hasu-no-hana!' Here are the venders of lotus-flowers for
the tombs and the altars, of lotus leaves in which to wrap the food of
the beloved ghosts. The leaves, folded into bundles, are heaped upon
tiny tables; the lotus-flowers, buds and blossoms intermingled, are
fixed upright in immense bunches, supported by light frames of bamboo.
'Ogara!--ogara-ya! White sheaves of long peeled rods. These are
hemp-sticks. The thinner ends can be broken up into hashi for the use of
the ghosts; the rest must be consumed in the mukaebi. Rightly all these
sticks should be made of pine; but pine is too scarce and dear for the
poor folk of this district, so the ogara are substituted.
'Kawarake!--kawarake-ya!' The dishes of the ghosts: small red shallow
platters of unglazed earthenware; primeval pottery suku-makemasu!' Eh!
what is all this? A little booth shaped like a sentry-box, all made of
laths, covered with a red-and-white chess pattern of paper; and out of
this frail structure issues a shrilling keen as the sound of leaking
steam. 'Oh, that is only insects,' says Akira, laughing; 'nothing to
do with the Bonku.' Insects, yes!--in cages! The shrilling is made by
scores of huge green crickets, each prisoned in a tiny bamboo cage by
itself. 'They are fed with eggplant and melon rind,' continues Akira,
'and sold to children to play with.' And there are also beautiful little
cages full of fireflies--cages covered with brown mosquito-netting, upon
each of which some simple but very pretty design in bright colours
has been dashed by a Japanese brush. One cricket and cage, two cents.
Fifteen fireflies and cage, five cents.
Here on a street corner squats a blue-robed boy behind a low wooden
table, selling wooden boxes about as big as match-boxes, with red paper
hinges. Beside the piles of these little boxes on the table are shallow
dishes filled with clear water, in which extraordinary thin flat shapes
are floating--shapes of flowers, trees, birds, boats, men, and women.
Open a box; it costs only two cents. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper,
are bundles of little pale sticks, like round match-sticks, with pink
ends. Drop one into the water, it instantly unrolls and expands into
the likeness of a lotus-flower. Another transforms itself into a fish.
A third becomes a boat. A fourth changes to an owl. A fifth becomes a
tea-plant, covered with leaves and blossoms. . . . So delicate are these
things that, once immersed, you cannot handle them without breaking
them. They are made of seaweed.
'Tsukuri hana!--tsukuri-hana-wa-irimasenka?' The sellers of artificial
flowers, marvellous chrysanthemums and lotus-plants of paper, imitations
of bud and leaf and flower so cunningly wrought that the eye alone
cannot detect the beautiful trickery. It is only right that these should
cost much more than their living counterparts.