The oldest dolls did not represent the Emperor and Empress, but simply a man and a woman, and were modeled closely after the old white paper dolls of the religious ceremony. When the Tokugawa Shōguns had firmly established their splendid court at Yedo, a decree was issued designating the five feast days upon which the daimiōs were to present themselves at the Shōgun's palace and offer their congratulations. One of the days thus appointed was the third day of the third month. It is believed that the giving of the chief place at the feast to effigies of the Emperor and Empress was a part of the policy of the Shōgunate,--a policy which aimed to keep alive the spirit of loyalty to the throne, while at the same time the occupant of the throne remained a puppet in the hands of his vice-gerent. Each girl born into a family has a pair of _O Hina Sama_ placed for her upon the red-covered shelf, on the first Feast of Dolls that comes after her birth. When, as a bride, she goes to her husband's house, she carries the dolls with her, and the first feast after her marriage she observes with special ceremonies. Until she has a daughter old enough to carry out the observance, she must keep up the ceremony. The feast, as it exists to-day, is said by the Japanese to serve three purposes: it makes the children of both sexes loyal to the imperial family, it interests the girls in housekeeping, and it trains them in ceremonial etiquette. _Page 40._ Because of the complexity of the Chinese language and the time needed for its mastery, there has been a movement to lessen the study of pure Chinese in the government schools, or abolish it altogether, and with this to simplify the use of the ideographs in the Sinico-Japanese. The educational department is requiring that text-books be limited in their use of ideographs; that those used be written in only one way and that the simplest, and that the _kana_ (the Japanese syllabary) be substituted wherever possible. Several plans for reform in this matter are being agitated, one of which is to limit the use of ideographs to nouns and verbs only. _Page 41._