AMUSING JAPANESE CHILDREN by Popular Science Monthly

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 23, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 37.

AMUSING JAPANESE CHILDREN.

By Popular Science Monthly

JAPAN has been frequently referred to as the "children's paradise," and with considerable justice, for in no other country is childhood made so much of, and are children surrounded by so many devices for their amusement. In every town there are numbers of street venders and hawkers whose sole customers are children.

One class of these venders carry two charcoal stoves, or furnaces, swung, in the conventional manner of the country, from the ends of a pole which rests across the shoulder. Arriving at a convenient corner, the load is put down, and a group of eager children quickly gathers. For the moderate sum of one or two rin the children are each supplied with a tiny cup of sweetened batter and a spoon. Thus equipped, they proceed to bake their own cookies on the smooth iron top of the stoves, fashioning the dainties into whatever shape they please, and when they are crisp and brown, devouring them.

The ame vender also devotes his skill to children. His "stock in trade" consists of dried reeds and a quantity of midzu ame, a sort of malt paste. Some of the ame is put on the end of a reed, and is moulded or blown into some fantastic shape by the vender. The young customers dictate as to the figures, and butterflies, flowers, gourds, or what not, are shaped from the sweet paste. The children, after having satisfied their tastes for artistic design, eat the finished work, the reed handle preventing their fingers from becoming sticky.

There is another of the child amusers that can be seen in the streets of Tokio or any other Japanese city. This artisan moulds fruit, flowers, and vegetables from colored rice-flour dough, and does his work so deftly that it is really difficult to distinguish the artificial from the real fruit. This universal love and regard for children is also displayed at every temple festival, where numerous booths, gay with toys, flags, and games, form always a prominent feature.—Popular Science Monthly.