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THE GAMES AND SPORTS OF JAPANESE
CHILDREN.
BY
PROFESSOR W. E. GRIFFIS.
Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan,
on the 18th March, 1874.
———o———
The aim of the Asiatic Society of Japan is, as I understand it, to endeavour to attain any and all knowledge of the Japanese country and people. Nothing that will help us to understand them is foreign to the objects of this Society. While language, literature, art, religion, the drama, household superstition, etc., furnish us with objects worthy of study, the games and sports of the children deserve our notice. For, as we believe, their amusements reflect the more serious affairs and actions of mature life. They are the foretastes and the prophecies of adult life which children see continually; not always understanding, but ever ready to imitate it. Hence in the toy-shops of Japan one may see the microcosm of Japanese life. In the children’s sports is enacted the miniature drama of the serious life of the parents. Among a nation of players such as the Japanese may be said to have been, it is not always easy to draw the line of demarcation between the diversions of children proper and those of a larger growth. Indeed, it might be said that during the last two centuries and a half, previous to the coming of foreigners, the main business of this nation was play. One of the happiest phrases in Mr. Alcock’s book
