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Updated: June 18, 2025
At the age of three the Japanese boy is taken to the temple to give thanks to the gods. Again, at the age of five, he goes to the temple, once more to return thanks. Now he is wearing the hakama, the manly garment, and begins to feel himself quite a man.
At five years old a boy is taken to the temple to thank the gods who have protected him thus far; and as he struts along, and hears with joy his hakama rustling its stiff new silk beneath his kimono, he feels himself a man indeed, and that his babyhood of yesterday is left far behind.
The ceremony of drinking wine is the same as that gone through at the weaning. If the child is a girl, a lady acts as sponsor; the hair-cutting is begun from the right temple instead of from the left. There is no difference in the rest of the ceremony. On the fifth day of the eleventh month of the child's fourth year he is invested with the hakama, or loose trousers worn by the Samurai.
This victim was one Gensuke, who had lived in the street Saikamachi; for it had been determined that the first man who should cross the bridge wearing hakama without a machi should be put under the bridge; and Gensuke sought to pass over not having a machi in his hakama, so they sacrificed him Wherefore the midmost pillar of the bridge was for three hundred years called by his name Gensuke-bashira.
Flower-forms are the most ordinary patterns; sometimes certain ideographs are given as subjects. No uniform is worn in this elementary school: all are in Japanese dress the boys in dark blue kimono, the little girls in robes of all tints, radiant as butterflies. But in addition to their robes, the girls wear hakama, and these are of a vivid, warm sky-blue.
But below the hem of the white robe I see the gleam of hakama of crimson silk. She advances to a little table in the middle of the apartment, upon which a queer instrument is lying, shaped somewhat like a branch with twigs bent downward, from each of which hangs a little bell. Taking this curious object in both hands, she begins a sacred dance, unlike anything I ever saw before.
Happily Akira is able to borrow a pair of hakama from the landlord; and, after having arranged ourselves as neatly as we can, we take our way to the temple, guided by the messenger.
According to his own explanation, he has his shirts made to order for the sake of his health as the red color is beneficial to the physical condition. Unnecessary worry, this, for that being the case, he should have had his coat and hakama also in red. And there was one Mr. Koga, teacher of English, whose complexion was very pale. Pale-faced people are usually thin, but this man was pale and fat.
Even before he was invested with his first hakama, or trousers, a great ceremony in that epoch, he was weaned as far as possible from tender influence, and taught to check the natural impulses of childish affection.
Nakayama, the intended father-in-law, afterward sent to Taro a present of a jar of the finest tea from his own plantation in Shimosa, a pair of swords, and a piece of satin, such as that of which the hakama or trousers which indicate the rank of the samurai are made. The betrothal was now published in both families, and in both houses there were festivities, rejoicing and congratulation.
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