"In the family of one Sengoku, a samurai of Matsue, there was a Tokutarō-San which had a local reputation scarcely inferior to that of Kishibojin,--she to whom Japanese wives pray for offspring. And childless couples used to borrow that doll, and keep it for a time,--ministering unto it,--and furnish it with new clothes before gratefully returning it to its owners. And all who did so, I am assured, became parents, according to their heart's desire. 'Sengoku's doll had a soul.' There is even a legend that once, when the house caught fire, the Tokutarō-San ran out safely into the garden of its own accord! "The idea about such a doll seems to be this: The new doll is only a doll. But a doll which is preserved for a great many years in one family, and is loved and played with by generations of children, gradually acquires a soul."[125] There was an abundance of outdoor sports among the Japanese children. Beginning with the New Year there came the great game with the girls of battledore and shuttlecock. The girls made a beautiful sight, of which, no doubt, they were aware. With their gayest dresses, hair arranged in a most pleasing way, faces powdered and lips painted, the graceful, rhythmic motion of their bodies, their bright eyes and laughing faces, all combined to make them and their sport a most attractive scene. Kite-flying was about as great an amusement in Japan as in China. All kinds and sizes of kites were used. Some represented birds, others men, and yet others monsters. Kite-fights were of frequent occurrence. A part of the kite-string was smeared with glue and then sprinkled with powdered glass, which prepared it for sawing another kite-string in two, thus causing it to fall and become the property of the one sawing the string. To make the fight the more realistic, at the top of the frame of the kite was set a piece of whalebone, which in vibrating in the wind made the most blood-curdling howls. Also contests in tops were held, in which it was the aim to damage one another's tops and stop the spinning. There was leaping and running and jumping and wrestling and slinging. They played blind-man's-buff, prisoner's base, and pussy wants a corner, but in these last two instead of the officer and Puss, the oni, or devil, was the chief performer. They had stilts and handled them so well as to play games on them and run races. Where there was snow and ice, the Japanese children coasted, built snow-forts, fought battles with snow-balls, and the like. They made snow-men in the likeness of Daruma, a follower of Buddha, who lost his legs by paralysis and decay from long meditation and prayer in a squatting position.