Toys with a season
In Japan, many toys are tied to a time of year. A kite belongs to the New Year sky, a doll set to early spring, and a row of carp streamers to early summer. These toys are also part of a family’s yearly rhythm: they are brought out, played with or displayed, and then put away until the next year. This article looks at some of the best-known ones and the games that go with them. It is a general overview, since the toys differ by region and by household.
Kites
Kite flying, called takoage, is a classic New Year pastime. Many Japanese kites are made from washi paper stretched over a frame of split bamboo, and painted with bold designs such as warriors, birds, waves or characters from folklore. A well-made kite is light, strong and flexible. Crafts of this kind, including paper and bamboo work, are part of the wider story of washi paper and of bamboo craft.
Kites can be small enough for a child to fly in a park or large enough to need a team of people. In some regions, contests are held in which kites are flown in open fields or over the shore. A few of these involve special lines meant to cut an opponent’s string. Those events attract spectators and help keep local kite-making skills alive. Some are associated with a particular holiday or shrine festival, though the details vary.
Traditionally, kites were flown to wish for children’s health and growth, and the rising kite was a hopeful image to start the year. It is also worth noting that kites in other places and times had other uses, so the Japanese tradition is best understood as one local form of a widely shared toy.
Spinning tops
Tops, called koma, also have a long history in Japan. They come in many types: some are spun by hand, others by pulling a string, and some are made to be spun on a special surface or in a contest. Wooden tops are often decorated with painted rings. There are also tops that are meant to make a humming sound, with a hole cut in the body. Tops are a staple of the New Year season for children, and they are a typical example of traditional play that needs very little equipment but plenty of practice.
Skill matters because a well-spun top will stay upright longer, and children compare their tops with one another. In some places, top-spinning contests are held, and adults demonstrate tricks such as balancing a spinning top on a string. Since a top is a simple object, it also appears as a good-luck motif in decorations.
Hanetsuki and its paddles
Hanetsuki is a New Year game of batting a feathered shuttle back and forth with a wooden paddle called a hagoita. Two players try to keep it in the air, and traditionally the loser was marked on the face with a dab of ink. Plain paddles are used for play, but decorated ones are made as ornaments, sometimes with raised cloth pictures of actors or beautiful women in the style of Edo townspeople’s popular art. Because these are displayed and sold at certain temple markets in winter, some are treated more as gifts or souvenirs than as sports equipment.
The shuttle’s feathers are fixed to a hard seed, and the game is thought to bring protection against illness or mosquitoes in the year ahead, an explanation often given for the custom. As with many such beliefs, it is a tradition more than a medical claim.
Dolls and festival displays
Two seasonal doll customs are among the best known. On the third day of the third month, families with girls traditionally set out tiered displays of dolls in court dress, and the occasion is often called the Doll Festival or Girls’ Day. On the fifth day of the fifth month, families with boys have traditionally flown carp-shaped streamers, called koinobori, outside the house, and may display warrior dolls indoors. In recent years, many people describe the latter day more generally as Children’s Day.
These displays are not really toys to play with, and the dolls are often valuable and kept in boxes for most of the year. But they belong to the same world of seasonal playthings and show the same idea: an object comes out at a certain time to mark a stage in a child’s life. They are examples of the seasonal rites that structure the year. The carp motif is connected to a Chinese story of a fish that climbs a waterfall and becomes a dragon, which is why it came to stand for perseverance.
Other toys
A number of smaller toys belong to this family. Kendama, a wooden cup-and-ball toy, remains popular for its challenging tricks. Folded paper cranes, boats and hats are children’s crafts. Wooden figures such as kokeshi dolls were made in northern regions and are a craft in themselves. Daruma dolls are sometimes sold at New Year, but these are better understood as objects of luck than as toys. Fortune-telling paper and fan-shaped games add to a long list.
Why simple toys last
Part of the appeal of these toys is that they use ordinary materials and require people to make something move: pull a string, flick a wrist or catch a shuttle. Children usually learned them from older siblings or relatives. Another part is their link to the yearly calendar, since a toy that appears only once a year can feel special.
Today children also play with electronic games and imported toys, and traditional ones often appear in schools, community events and festivals as a way of passing on older customs. Many are sold as souvenirs or decorative items. What counts as “traditional” varies, and some designs that look old were popularized more recently, so it is wise to be cautious about claims of exact age.