in the
house with a fresh bamboo, games and festivities and _soba_ are in
order. In the old daimi[=o] houses, where great numbers of men and women
were employed, and where the women's quarters were in a distinct part of
the house, it was considered a great joke to catch a man on the women's
side any time between the close of the cleaning and the beginning of the
new year. The intruder was promptly seized and shouldered by the women,
who carried him about the house in triumph, finally returning him to his
own quarters. If, by any chance, they could catch the chief steward,
they sang as they carried him about:--

"This is the great pillar of the house!
May he be happy till the stone foundations rot!"

The week following the house-cleaning is devoted to the preparation of
food for the festival. Of this, the most characteristic is _mochi_, a
sort of dumpling made of rice steamed and pounded, the preparation of
which is so difficult and protracted a process that it is not lightly
undertaken. It is so distinctively the festival food of Japan that if
you find _mochi_ in a friend's house at any time except the new year,
you immediately ask what has happened, and are pretty sure to be told
that it is a present received in celebration of a birth or a marriage,
or some other domestic festival. It is, to Japanese children, what
turkey and cranberry sauce are to American children, not only a delight
to the palate, but a dish the very smell of which brings back the most
cheerful occasions in the year.

When the _mochi_ is made and set away to await the festal day, the
matter of decoration must be attended to. At every gate is erected some
token of the season, if it be only a bit of pine stuck into the ground,
or a wisp of straw rope decorated with white paper _gohei_. The great
black gates that indicate the homes of the wealthier classes are almost
concealed by structures of pine and bamboo, on which oranges, lobsters,
straw rope, straw fringe, white paper, and images of the good luck gods
are used as decorations. All these things are either efficacious in
keeping off evil spirits, or are symbols of good luck. Within the house,
in the _tokonoma_, or place of honor, in the best room, great cakes of
_mochi_, two, three, five, or seven in number, are set one upon another
in a dish covered with fern leaves, and the structure surrounded by
seaweed.

Before the new year comes in the capable housewife will have sent out
prese