YUKI SAN IN THE STREET OF SHOPS
Asakusa Temple and its beautiful grounds are in the eastern part of the
city of Tokio.
Jinrikisha runners could cover the distance between the Utsuki house and
Asakusa Temple in fifteen or twenty minutes, but Baby Yuki was two hours
on the way, because she toddled along so slowly and stopped so often to
watch the children who were playing in the streets.
The baby slipped quietly out of the house while her mother was having
her honorable hair dressed. It takes a hair-dresser about two hours to
dress a Japanese lady's honorable hair, but fortunately it has to be
done only once in five or six days because the hair is never mussed at
night.
The women in Japan keep their heads peacefully quiet all night, letting
their necks only rest upon the thin cushion of their wooden pillow. In
this way the soft rolls and puffs of their shining black hair are not
disturbed, and even the big pins do not have to be removed.
Hair-dressers go from house to house as often as they are needed, and
when Baby Yuki saw one come into the room and begin taking down her
mother's hair, she began quietly taking her way along the stepping
stones to the gate. Once outside the gate she trotted along toward the
bridge over the moat.
This moat ran around the old feudal castle where a daimyo used to live,
and Yuki-ko often went as far as the bridge with Umé or Tara when they
started off for school. Sometimes all three of the children went there
to look at the green lotus leaves or the beautiful lotus blossoms which
cover the water in July and August.
But to-day Baby Yuki did not stop on the bridge. She crossed it and
clattered down the street to a far corner where a street-peddler was
selling toys.
Japanese peddlers are always very pleasant people, and this one danced
and sang funny songs which the baby was only too glad to hear.
Up one street and down another the man took his way, stopping wherever
he found a few little children to listen to him; and one or two children
from every group followed along with Yuki San, making a pretty sight.
A foreign lady with a camera stopped her jinrikisha-man, saying, "That
is the very smallest child I ever saw standing on its own two feet and
walking with other children in the street. One of the older girls should
carry the baby on her back."
Baby Yuki stood on the outside of the group, making a pretty picture all
by herself. She was so clean and sweet that the lady determined to
follow her and take several pictures. She dismissed her jinrikisha and
became a child with the others, following where the peddler led.
At last they reached Asakusa street, which leads to Asakusa Temple. This
street is lined with booths on each side, and in each booth there is a
man selling toys, or candies, or paper parasols, or kites, or something
to tempt the rin and sen out of a child's pocket.
Wherever there is a temple in a Japanese city there is also a toy-shop,
and where there is a toy-shop there is, of course, a toy which one must
surely buy. The children love to buy the toys and play with them in the
temple gardens.
In the gardens of Asakusa Temple there are ponds filled with goldfish
and silverfish and carp. These fish are tame and will eat from the
children's fingers because children have fed them for years and years.
Just outside the gateway to the temple, old women sit beside little
tables and sell saucers full of food for the fishes in the ponds and the
doves that live in the temple eaves. And where one person sells anything
many other people also sell something. They sell, the children buy, and
the doves and fishes are fed.
"It is like the 'House that Jack Built,'" said the American lady. "This
is the pond that held the fish, that ate the cakes, that lay in the dish
and were sold in the booths with all kinds of toys, from dolls to kites,
for girls and boys."
[Illustration: The Street of Shops and Asakusa Temple. _Page 91._]
It does not take the little street of shops a long time to reach the
temple steps, in Asakusa; but it does take the little people a long time
to get through the street.
Baby Yuki stopped to kotow to the first old woman she saw selling beans.
In that moment the toy-peddler and all the children seemed to disappear.
The baby looked around for them, and was frightened to find that she was
all alone.
But before she had time to realize that she was lost, the foreign lady
had bought beans from the old woman and poured them into the baby's
hands, and the doves were flying down to pick up the beans as she
scattered them in the street.
From feeding the doves it was but a step to other joys. The lady bought
a paper parasol at one of the booths, at another a doll and a Japanese
lantern on the end of a slender bamboo stick. She tied the doll to the
baby's back, tilted the parasol over her shoulder, gave her the lantern
to hold, and took her picture.
Then she took the child's hand and they walked along together until they
came to an old woman who sat on the ground holding a tray of paper
flowers.
The lady stopped to buy some of the flowers, and might have gone on
buying gifts--for there was no end to the toys for sale in that short
street--but the paper flowers had to be opened in a bowl of water.
To find the bowl of water the big lady and the little girl had to pass
under the temple gate and walk off among the trees and fish-ponds till
they came to a tea-house. There they sat down to rest, and a maid
brought tea and cakes for them to eat, and a bowl of water for the
flowers.
There are always picnics going on in the grounds of the temple,
especially at chrysanthemum time; but there was never a prettier picnic
sight than the one made by Yuki-ko San and her foreign friend as they
knelt on the mats, sipping their tea, and watching the tiny paper
flowers change into all sorts of shapes.
Some of the flowers became beautiful potted plants, about an inch tall.
Others changed into trees, or birds, and one even took the shape of
Fujiyama, the lofty mountain. They seemed like fairy trees and birds,
and not until the last one had opened did Yuki San lift her little face
from the bowl of water. Then she spoke for the first time. "Yuki take
little birds home to O Chichi San," she said.
"Mercy! the child is lost and I don't know how to find her people," said
the foreign lady. But the maid who served the cakes said, "She must have
a name-label around her neck."
Fortunately she had, and not only the street where she lived, but also
the street and number of her father's shop, was written on it.
It was so far to either place that the lady said very sensibly, "We will
take a carriage." So she called a jinrikisha-man, and off they went to
the father's shop.
At a little distance from the silk shop, where the father sat waiting
for customers, the lady stopped her runner and put the little girl down
upon the ground. "Run to your O Chichi San," she said, pointing to the
shop, and then she watched the baby to see if she found the right
father.
In the meantime someone else was hurrying to find her father. It was
Umé, who had been sent with one of the maids to tell the sad news that
Baby Yuki had wandered away from home and was surely lost.
Just as Umé reached the silk shop and poured out her story, who should
toddle along with her hands full of toys, dropping one and then another
as she kotowed her fat little body over them, but the baby herself.
Of course there was much talk, and many questions were asked of her; but
the child could only say that "Haha San with many hands" had given her
the toys and brought her to her father.
"It was Benten Sama," said Umé.
It is well known that Benten Sama has eight hands, and who but Benten
Sama would give Baby Yuki so many lovely gifts and bring her safely
through the city streets to her father's shop?
As they took the baby home to her frightened mother, Umé said softly to
her father, "Yuki-ko San did as much in finding you as Fishsave did when
he found his father."
And her father answered, "The tie between fathers and children is
honorably strong."
But Umé was already thinking that probably Benten Sama would answer her
prayer.
As they passed the foreign lady, who was still sitting in her jinrikisha
at the corner of the street, Umé looked longingly at the tan-colored
shoes she was wearing.
"Red ones with black heels are prettier," she said to herself.