It is very amusing to watch
the practice of the little boys who are going to be dentists. In Japan the
dentist of the people fetches out an aching tooth with thumb and finger,
and will pluck it out as surely as any tool can do the work, so his pupils
learn their trade by trying to pull nails out of a board. They begin with
tin-tacks, and go on until they can, with thumb and finger, pluck out a
nail firmly driven into the wood.
Luckily for them, they often get a holiday. The Japanese have many
festivals, when parents and children drop their work to go to some famous
garden or temple for a day's pleasure. Then there is the great boys'
festival, the Feast of Flags, held on the fifth day of the fifth month. Of
this festival we shall speak again.
Every Japanese boy is taught that he owes the strictest duty to his parents
and to his Emperor. These duties come before all others in Japanese eyes.
Whatever else he may neglect, he never forgets these obligations. From
infancy he is familiar with stories in which children are represented as
doing the most extraordinary things and undergoing the greatest hardships
in order to serve their parents. There is one famous old book called
"Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Virtue." It gives instances of the doings
of good sons, and is very popular in every Japanese household.
Professor Chamberlain, the great authority on Japan, quotes some of these
instances, and they seem to us rather absurd. He says: "One of the paragons
had a cruel stepmother who was very fond of fish.
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