THE EMPEROR'S BIRTHDAY
"Let the Emperor live forever!" sang Umé, on the third day of the
eleventh month.
This day is the Emperor's birthday, and all loyal Japanese pray that
their ruler may see the chrysanthemum cup go round, autumn after autumn,
for a thousand years.
Autumn is the loveliest month of all the year in Japan. Then the maples
put on their glorious crimson and orange colors, and the chrysanthemums
fling out their beautiful many-colored petals to the sun.
The Japanese say that the maples are the crimson clouds that hang about
the sunset of their flower life.
From February until November different flowers reign, one after another,
for a few short weeks. First comes the plum blossom, about which
everyone writes a poem. Next the great double cherry blossoms make the
island look like a lovely pink cobweb on the blue sea. After that,
wistaria blossoms, five or six feet long, hang from trellises and
flutter in the breeze; and so on, until at last the chrysanthemum, the
royal flower, says "Sayonara," and the sun of the flower-year has set.
"The last flower is honorably the best," said Umé, as she hovered over
the masses of color in the garden-beds.
She looked like a beautiful blossom herself in her blue silk kimono.
Chrysanthemums in deep golden brown and palest pink were embroidered in
the silk. Her undergarment of pink showed at the throat; and about her
waist was a pink sash embroidered with blue.
That sash was Umé's delight. It was tied in an immense bow behind, and
Tara had never been able to find the ends that he might pull them out
and so tease his sister a little.
On her feet Umé wore black lacquer clogs and white stockings, with the
great toe in a room by itself.
Her hair was carefully drawn up to the top of her head, where it was
tied with a broad piece of blue crêpe, and then formed into several
puffs at the back. A brilliant pink chrysanthemum pin was stuck through
the puffs in one direction and a butterfly pin in the other.
Umé's pins and sashes were her dearest treasures!
The finishing touch was given to her face and lips. Rice powder made her
skin look very white, and a touch of paint made her cheeks and mouth
very red, although they were quite red enough before.
Her mother was wholly pleased with Umé's appearance, but Umé shook her
head over the clogs; she wished for something different.
"It is time to make the honorable start to the gardens, Umé-ko!" called
her mother at last, and the little girl left the flowers and took her
seat in the waiting jinrikisha.
Umé was going with her mother, first to make an offering at the temple,
then to look at the flowers in the gardens at Dango-Zaka.
Tara was going with his father to see the Emperor review the troops.
Yuki San was not forgotten. She was going with her grandmother to play
in the gardens at Asakusa once more.
All wore their festival clothes, as was proper on the Emperor's
birthday.
Tara and his father wore kimonos, but they were much darker in color
than Umé's; their sashes were narrower, and there were no bows in the
back.
Yuki-ko was the really gorgeous one. Her kimono was of bright red silk,
her sash pale yellow. A gold embroidered pocket hung from the sash and
in the pocket she carried a charm to keep her safe from harm in case
something happened to her name-label.
The "honorable start" was made at last and the three jinrikisha coolies
dashed through the gate, one behind the other, Tara and his father in
the lead.
A fuzzy caterpillar was humping his way along the road outside the gate.
The three runners turned aside and left a large part of the road to the
caterpillar, although so much room was more than the fuzzy creature
needed. The men thought that perhaps the soul of an ancestor might be in
the little insect, and they feared to crush it.
The city was in its gayest holiday attire. Red and white Japanese flags
adorned every house. Men dressed in uniform were hurrying through the
streets, soldiers were marching toward the parade grounds, and there
were crowds of happy people everywhere.
After riding over the wooden bridge Tara and his father took their way
to the Emperor's review, while the other two jinrikishas turned toward
Asakusa Temple.
Umé sat up very straight, making herself as tall as possible, and said,
as she watched her father being whirled down the street, "My son, it is
now my unworthy privilege--" then stopped, because her mother looked at
her in reproof.
"It is my unworthy privilege to remind you that respectful children do
not thus mimic their parents in voice and word," said her mother
gravely.
"I will ask to be forgiven when we are in the temple," said Umé
penitently.
She was still serious when she dropped a rin into the grated box that
waits always for offerings in the temples.
"May I write a prayer to the goddess Kwannon?" she asked, as the coin
clinked against others in the box.
"Is there something you very much desire, Umé-ko?" asked her mother with
a smile.
Umé nodded. "There is something I have asked from every one of the gods
and goddesses you have ever told me about," she said. "I have been
asking for it constantly ever since my last plum-blossom birthday."
"Kwannon is the goddess of mercy; perhaps she will be merciful to you
and grant your wish, whatever it may be," said her mother.
So Umé wrote her wish on a slip of paper and hung it where hundreds of
other prayers were hanging on a lattice in front of a shrine.
Afterwards she went with her mother to the corner where the god Binzuru
was waiting to cure any sort of disease.
Umé's mother had an ache in her back. She rubbed her hand gently over
the back of the god and then tried to rub her own back; but it was not
easy to reach between her shoulders and rub the pain away. After she
finished reaching, her back ached more than before.
"We will go to the gardens at Dango-Zaka; there we shall forget our
aches in looking at the lovely flowers," she told Umé.
Baby Yuki was already feeding the goldfish and did not care whether her
mother stayed at Asakusa Temple or not.
So the two rode away through the city streets toward the district of
Dango-Zaka. Sometimes they mounted a hill from which they could look
over the city and see the flags fluttering in the breeze; sometimes they
crossed a canal crowded with heavily-laden scows; sometimes they passed
through business streets where people sat in their houses or shops with
the front walls all open to the sidewalk. The people sat and worked, or
ate their lunch, or sold their wares, as if they were all a part of one
great family with the people in the streets and had no secrets from
them.
Wells and water-tanks stood at convenient distances along the streets,
and from their jinrikishas Umé and her mother saw crowds of women
washing rice and chatting with one another as they worked.
At the chrysanthemum gardens there were many little gates, at each one
of which Umé paid four sen before they could enter and look at the
flowers in living pictures.
The gardeners in Japan make all sorts of wonderful stories and pictures
with the chrysanthemums.
Here you will see a ship filled with gods and goddesses. There you will
be astonished at the sight of a sail set to carry a junk over a
chrysanthemum sea. Somewhere else you will come upon an open umbrella, a
flag, a demon or a dragon; there is no end to the quaint fancies!
It is hard to understand how these pictures can be made until one learns
that the gardeners have been at the business for several generations.
They say that, to have a thing well done, your children and
grandchildren must do it after you.
To make the chrysanthemum pictures, they tie the branches of the plants,
and even the tiny flowers, to slender bamboo sticks; there is also a
delicate frame of copper wire through which the flowers are sometimes
drawn, and sometimes the gardeners use light bamboo figures of boats and
dragons and gods.
The faces of the people in the flower pictures are paper or plaster
masks. It would really be too much to ask the gardeners to make
chrysanthemum expressions. Nowhere outside of Japan will you find such
curious pictures!
It was very late when Umé and her mother reached home again. Now the
houses on both sides of the streets were hung with festoons of flags and
lanterns on each of which was the round red sun of Japan.
The wide-opened shutters showed brightly lighted rooms in which the
families were entertaining friends or having tea and cakes; they sat on
the floors, which were covered with scarlet blankets in honor of the
Emperor.
In the shops were tempting displays of fruits, fish and toys, and in the
distance Umé could see the fireworks which were being set off in the
palace grounds.
Tara and his father were already at home, but the boy was far too
excited over the grand review of the Emperor's troops to listen to
anything his sister had to tell.
"He is an honorably wonderful man, our most illustrious Emperor," said
Tara. "My admirable father told me that he never stood upon his own feet
until he was sixteen years old."
"I think that is not so honorably wonderful," said Umé stoutly. But when
she took both of her own feet up at the same time, to try how it could
be done, she found herself suddenly upon the floor.
"Did he walk upon his august head?" she demanded.
"Umé," said her mother, "speak not so disrespectfully of the Son of
Heaven!"
But Tara explained: "He was carried about all the time, and shown only
to very noble people once in a while. But when he became a man, he said
it should all be different. And he put down all the old nobility that
had kept him so honorably helpless, and then he made everything as it is
to-day in Japan.
"Under the old rule, no one was allowed to leave the country and we knew
no other people except the Chinese. Now we know the whole world and can
teach the other nations many things."
Just then old Maru entered the room with tea and cakes. The cakes looked
exactly like maple leaves. There were also candies made to look like
autumn grasses and chrysanthemums.
Umé clapped her hands and danced about the room.
"May the Emperor live forever!" she sang; and Tara wheeled and marched
like a soldier, shouting, "May Japan never be conquered!"