"I asked a charming Japanese girl: 'How can a doll live?' 'Why,' she answered, 'if you love it enough, it will live!'"
    Lafcadio Hearn.

The English and Japanese Doll

Our English dolls, with their flaxen hair, blue eyes, and simpering faces, are certainly not a credit to the toy-maker's art if they are to be regarded as bearing even a remote likeness to living children. Put in a horizontal position, something will click in their little heads and their blue eyes will close, or more correctly roll backward; a pinch will make them emit a tolerable imitation of the words "Papa!" "Mamma!" and yet in spite of these mechanical devices they have nothing more to their credit than a child's short-lived love. They are speedily broken, or liable at any moment to be decapitated by a little brother who has learnt too well the story of Lady Jane Grey!

In Japan, however, the doll is not merely a play-thing by which little children may become make-believe mothers, but in earlier days it was regarded as a means to make a wife a mother. Lafcadio Hearn writes: "And if you see such a doll, though held quite close to you, being made by a Japanese mother to reach out its hands, to move its little bare feet, and to turn its head, you would be almost afraid to venture a heavy wager that it was only a doll." It is this startling likeness that is perhaps accountable for the quaint and beautiful love connected with Japanese dolls.

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Live Dolls

At one time certain dolls were actually said to become alive, to take to their small bodies a human soul, and the belief is merely an echo of the old idea that much love will quicken to life the image of a living thing. In Old Japan the doll was handed down from one generation to another, and sometimes remained in an excellent condition for over a hundred years. A hundred years spent in little children's arms, served with food, put to bed regularly every night, and the object of constant endearments, will no doubt work wonders in the poetic imagination of a happy and childlike people.

The tiny doll known as O-Hina-San does not come within the region of our present study; it was simply a toy and nothing more. It is the life-size dolls we must deal with, those dolls so cunningly representing little children two or three years old. The girl doll of this class is known as O-Toku-San and the boy doll as Tokutarō-San. It was believed that if these dolls were ill-treated or neglected in any way they would weep, become angry, and bring misfortune upon their possessors. They had in addition many other supernatural powers.

In a certain old family there was a Tokutarō-San which received a reverence almost equal to that shown to Kishibōjin, the Goddess to whom Japanese wives pray for offspring. This Tokutarō-San was borrowed by childless couples. They gave it new clothes and tended it with loving care, assured that such a doll which had a soul would make them happy by answering their prayers for a child. Tokutarō-San, according to legend, was very much alive, for when the house caught fire it speedily ran into the garden for safety!

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A Doll's Last Resting-place

What happens to a Japanese doll when after a very long and happy life it eventually gets broken? Though finally regarded as dead, its remains are treated with the utmost respect. It is not thrown away with rubbish, or burned, or even reverently laid upon running water, as is often the case with dead Japanese flowers. It is not buried, but dedicated to Kōjin, frequently represented as a deity with many arms. Kōjin is supposed to reside in the enoki tree, and in front of this tree there is a small shrine and torii. Here, then, the remains of a very old Japanese doll are reverently laid. Its little face may be scratched, its silk dress torn and faded and its arms and legs broken, but it once had a soul, once had the mysterious desire to give maternity to those who longed for it.

On March 3 the Girls' Festival takes place. It is known as Jōmi no Sekku, or Hina Matsuri, the Feast or Dolls.
Butterflies

"Where the soft drifts lie
Of fallen blossoms, dying,
Did one flutter now,
From earth to its brown bough?
Ah, no! 'twas a butterfly,
Like fragile blossom flying!"
Arakida Mortitake.
(Trans. by Clara A. Walsh.)

It is in China rather than in Japan that the butterfly is connected with legend and folk-lore. The Chinese scholar Rōsan is said to have received visits from two spirit maidens who regaled him with ghostly stories about these bright-winged insects.

It is more than probable that the legends concerning[Pg 217] butterflies in Japan have been borrowed from China. Japanese ............