The streets during the New Year’s festival are veritable playgrounds; stilt walking, rope pulling and jumping, top spinning and ball playing are all indulged in. Kite-flying is perhaps the most conspicuous sport, for kites of many shapes and sizes are sent up by all lads on these days. In Japan kite-flying is not only more picturesque than with us, on account of the use of such fantastic forms as double fans, birds, butterflies, cuttlefish or huge portraits of heroes in brilliant colors and unusual proportions, but it is also apt to be a very exciting sport. Occasionally opponents try to capture an enemy’s kite. Competitive kite-flying is accomplished by covering the first ten or twenty feet of the kite string with fish glue or rice paste, and then dipping it into pounded glass or porcelain. On hardening, this portion of the string becomes a series of tiny blades which when crossed with another string at high tension can soon saw away the kite of the adversary. It is also customary to attach a strip of whale bone or a bow of bamboo to the large kites, so that on ascending a loud humming is produced which adds to the excitement of the flight. Only boys and men fly kites in Japan. [Illustration: FIG. 3. SAMBO AND MOCHI FOR NEW YEAR BY I-ITSU GETCHI ROJIN.] [Illustration: FIG. 4. KADO-MATSU, KITE AND ROPE PULLING. BY HOKKEI.] The girls, dressed in their best costumes, are picturesque as they play with a hand ball and at battledore and shuttlecock. The balls are made of paper and wadding wound with silk of different colors. The battle boards are of a white wood called _kiri_ and are often elaborate affairs, adorned on one side with the portrait of a hero made of colored silks. The shuttlecock is composed of the seed of the soapberry, to which bright feathers are attached. On a _surimono_ in this exhibition two girls are at play upon a red mat spread beneath the blossoming plum tree. To one of the branches is clinging a nightingale, the bird which heralds the approach of spring. All of the poems on this _surimono_ treat of the New Year and the nightingale’s song. One, literally translated, reads, “Spring’s first wind melting the snow, let laugh the plum, let cry the nightingale.” Another rendered in English is as follows: “Like the comical manner of a bouncing ball, the nightingale’s song rolls (like a ball) on the plum branch.” Young maidens carrying flat bamboo baskets make excursions into the country to gather the seven spring grasses (_nanakusa_). These greens, the water drop-wort, shepherd’s purse, radish, celery, dead-nettle, turnip and rock-cress, are the components which are needed for the celebration of the first of the five festivals known as _Go-sekku_. This one occurs on the seventh day of the first month.