HANA AND TORA

Their Festival Days

I.

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A beautiful garden lies back of the house where Hana and Tora live.

In Japan the people love the flowering trees and plant them in their gardens. Now it is early springtime and the plum trees are just beginning to burst into bloom.

The children ask us to go with them and look for the first plum blossoms. The pink buds are pushing out of their brown coverings. "Oh, I am so glad!" Hana says. "Soon the peach trees will bloom, and then it will be time for the Doll Festival.

"How I wish I could show you my dolls! I have more than a hundred, but they are all packed away in the storehouse.

"Some of them are very old. They used to belong to my grandmother and to my great-grandmother. The doll I like best was given to me when I was a baby. It is as large as I am, and it can wear my clothes.

"When the Doll Festival comes I have a merry time. In the morning when I get up I find all my dolls waiting for me in the guest room.

"With them are doll houses, little tables, sets of dishes, and boxes full of pretty gowns and sashes. The first thing I do is to dress all the dolls in their best clothes.

"Of course they must have something to eat, for it is the Feast of Dolls.

"I make tea for them and put dishes of candy and cake and rice on their little tables. It is not polite to leave anything on one's plate, and so Tora and I have all the food that the dolls do not eat.

"For three whole days I can play with my dolls. Then I take off their beautiful clothes and put on their sleeping coats. My mother packs them in their boxes and stores them away for another year, until the Feast of Dolls comes again."

II.

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"Tora does not care for the Feast of Dolls, because that is a girls' festival. The Feast of Flags is the boys' day."

"Oh, yes," Tora says, "I think the Flag Festival is the very best day of the whole year. Then everybody flies kites and the boys have their feast.

"What fun it is to see the huge paper fishes flying over all the houses and gardens! Some of the fishes are as large as a man. They open their mouths and swim about in the air as if they were in the water. All day long they flap their fins and tails and rustle in the wind."

"But why are so many of your kites made like fishes?" we ask.

"Because there is one kind of fish in our country so strong and brave that he swims up stream and leaps the waterfalls," Tora answered. "So Japanese parents fly kites made like fishes to help their sons remember that they must struggle bravely to win success.

"There are many kinds of fish, my father says, that can float down the stream with the current; but there is only one fish that can swim up the stream and leap over a waterfall.

"We have many other kites too. Some of them are shaped like butterflies. Some are shaped like birds and they make a singing noise when the wind blows through them.

"On the morning of the Flag Festival I find all my toys in the guest room where Hana finds her dolls.

"Among my toys are wooden soldiers older than Hana's oldest dolls. My grandfather's grandfather used to play with them when he was a little boy.

"And there are banners and swords, and images of the famous generals of Japan dressed in splendid armor. My father always plays with me on the day of the Flag Festival, and he tells me about the brave soldiers of our country.

"In the evening the people light their prettiest paper lanterns, and hang them in the gardens and before every house and store.

"Sometimes my father takes me boat-riding, and the most beautiful sight of all is the river with the many colored lights twinkling from the boats."

Hana and Tora tell us about other great festivals of their country, and they invite us to visit them again at the time of the Feast of Cherry Blossoms.