Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 6/Chapter 1

by Captain F. Brinkley

JAPAN

ITS HISTORY ARTS AND
LITERATURE

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Chapter I

FESTIVALS

Japan is a country of festivals; "acts of worship" the people call them, and they certainly have their foundation in a religious observance, but so far as general revelry, feasting, and rejoicing are concerned, they present all the features of a fête, or even of a carnival. Annually or biennially the tutelary deities of a particular parish are taken out for an airing, and the whole of the parishioners participate in the picnic. That is the most accurate definition that can be briefly given of the omatsuri, to which Western writers have already devoted so many pages of description. The "worship of the deities" and the "administration of State affairs" used to be synonymous. Both were called matsuri, and both continued to be so called by the vulgar, though distinctive terms now find a place in the vocabulary of the literate. If, then, religious rites performed by the sovereign within the precincts of the Palace insured the successful conduct of national business, the same principle prompted the people to invoke, by similar means, heaven's influence in the cause of household prosperity, industrial success, and individual happiness.

History does not indicate the origin of the idea that to carry the gods in triumphal procession was the most fitting form of popular devotion. But history does show that sackcloth and ashes were never credited with any attractions in the eyes of the supernatural powers, and that the Japanese, even in very early ages, judged the brighter aspects of life to be as pleasant to immortals as to mortals. That knowledge of the nation's mood is obtained incidentally and not very agreeably. Annalists tell, not of the glories of the matsuri, but of its abuses. As early as the eighth century, the spring and autumn festivals of the North Star had to be officially interdicted because of immoral licence on the part of the devotees, and a similar prohibition became necessary a hundred years later when the people's methods of asking for blessings had become so extravagant that there stood in every street in Kyōtō a "treasury" (takara-gura) decorated with pictures of the "Seven Gods of Fortune," and a pair of images before which incense was burned and flowers were offered amid circumstances sometimes that should have repelled rather than propitiated the deities. Indeed, any one visiting the great shrines of Ise to-day will be surprised to find that Lais opens her doors to the pilgrim almost within sight of the sacred groves, and that to accept her invitation does not disqualify him in his own eyes, or in the eyes of any one else, for the subsequent achievement of his pious purpose. A single act of lustration restores his moral as well as his physical purity, and with such an easy remedy in sight the sins of the flesh seem only transiently hurtful. It is not to be supposed, however, that unsightly excesses are obtrusive features of the matsuri. On the contrary, they are for the most part conspicuous by their absence. History's mention of them notes the exception, not the rule, and is referred to here merely as indicating that the gala spirit presided at these festivals twelve or fifteen centuries ago just as prominently as it presides now.

The people enjoy and exercise all the freedom of hosts at these big picnics. Having duly provided for the deity, or deities, in whose honour the display is primarily organised, the parishioners consider themselves at liberty to entertain any other guests they please to summon from the realm of spirits or the region of allegory. For the accommodation of each principal and each accessory deity there is a sacred palanquin, a mikoshi. It is a shrine on wheels; a shrine covered with black lacquer, undecorated save that the insignia of the inmate are blazoned in gold on the panels of the doors, and that the ends of the pillars and roof-tree are wrapped in finely chased and richly gilt copper. Before and behind the shrine stand torii of rose-red lacquer; a balustrade of the same colour encircles it, and on the roof perches a golden phœnix with outspread wings. The effigy of the deity is placed within this shrine in sacred seclusion, and to fifty men wearing sacerdotal vestments the duty of bearing the mikoshi is entrusted. But there is a difference in the people's treatment of their own special guests. These are not enclosed in the gloom of a shrine: they are mounted on high, overlooking the multitude of merry-makers and looked up to by them, and they ride each on a "car of gentle motion" (nerimono or dashi), a magnificent and colossal affair, its dimensions and gorgeousness affording a measure of the piety and prosperity of the parish. Described in simplest outline, the dashi is a rectangular wooden house mounted on a four-wheeled wagon. As for its details, they defy description. From sill to eaves it is a mass of elaborate carving and rich decoration. Brilliant brocades, portly silk tassels, snow-white go-hei and wreaths of gold-and-silver flowers fill the intervals between deeply chiselled diapers, flights of phœnixes, processions of tortoises, and lines of dragons. Immediately under the roof, and thus raised some fifteen feet above the street, a broad platform affords space for fifty or sixty people, and springing from pyramidal drapery at the centre of the artistically carved ridge-pole, a tapering pillar of great height supports a canopied bracket for the figure of the sacred guest to whom the dashi is dedicated. It is impossible to convey in words any adequate idea of the grace of proportion and sobriety of grandeur sometimes attained in the construction and ornamentation of these cars. As for the guests whose effigies are thus carried aloft, they belong, for the most part, to the galaxy of national heroes or the catalogue of industrial and commercial symbols. Each parish naturally has its own particular pets and its own special obligations.

For example, the festival of Sano, one of Tōkyō's great biennial carnivals, is held in a year designated by the sign of the cock and the monkey in the two cycles. Hence there is a dashi for each of these zodiacal conceptions. There are also dashi for Benten, the goddess of matrimony; for Kasuga Riujin, the god of the sea; for Shizuka Gozen, the brave mother of Yoshitsune; for Kamo, the Kyōtō deity; for Tomyo Ichirai Hoshi, the renowned priest; for Kumasaka Chohan, the prince of mediæval burglars; for Jingo, the conquering empress; for the treasure-ship with its crew, the seven Gods of Fortune; for Ushiwaka and Sōjōbō, the young hero and his holy fencing-master; for a hammer and a weight; for a big saw; for a tea-whisk; for a whaling junk; for an axe and sickle,—symbols of the crafts, trades, and occupations most affected by the inhabitants of the districts through which the procession winds its leisurely way on every alternate 15th of June (old calendar). The tutelary deities of the Sano district, when not taking part in these periodical picnics, inhabit a shrine on the summit of a profusely wooded hill approached by an avenue of cherry-trees and tended by Buddhist and Shintō priests in coöperation. But the effigies that ride on the dashi, and the dashi themselves are kept in the houses of leading citizens. Each car, each figure, each symbol, has its history, and every properly educated parishioner knows that history. He can tell how the finely modelled kan-ko-dori (cock on drum), kept in Odemma-cho, has five-hued plumage, whereas the Kanda cock is pure white; how the monkey, which ought to take precedence of the cock if the order of the terrestrial and celestial cycles were strictly observed, was obliged, by edict of the Shōgun, to cede the pas to its bright-feathered companion; how two lifelike monkeys, a male and a female, emerge alternately from their retreat in Koji-machi to take their places in the procession, but how neither can compare with the wonderful monkey of Minamitemma-cho, modelled in the old days by that peer of puppet-makers, Hyoshi Washihei, of which, alas! only the nose and eyes now remain, but which has a not greatly inferior successor, the work of Kakumuro Eiga; how in Koji-machi there is also preserved a monster elephant, fashioned three and a half centuries ago by a Korean craftsman, and how it used once to be a prominent object in the procession, three men within each leg, and a band of musicians in Korean costume preceding it. The genuine Tōkyō man—the Yedokko, or child of Yedo, as he loves to call himself—and the orthodox citizen of aristocratic Kyōtō have a thousand traditions to relate about these festivals, a thousand respectful tales to tell about their paraphernalia, and each city regards them as the red-letter day of its chronicles. It does not fall to the lot of many Occidentals to see one of the great fêtes, and, indeed, their glory, like the glory of so many of Japan's old institutions, is rapidly passing away. Here, then, may be set down the order of the Sano procession:—

• Two large and two small hata (strips of white cotton cloth, from one and a half to two feet wide and from ten to thirty feet long, fastened, sail-wise, to bamboo poles and having the names of the tutelary deities inscribed in immense ideographs).
• A halberdier and a spear-bearer.
• Two big drums carried by eleven men.
• Two men with hyoshi-gi (wooden blocks for striking together).
• Two flautists.
• A Dog of Fo (Shishi no Kashira) borne by twenty-four men.
• A Shintō priest on horseback.
• Three gigantic spears borne by thirty-two men.
• A Shintō priest on horseback.
• The sacred horses of the principal deities.
• The sacred sword.
• Three Shintō priests on horseback.
• Attendants on the shrine.
• Mounted priests.
• Two musicians with Tengu (mountain genii) masks.
• Sacred Palanquin, borne by fifty men.
• The deity's rice-box; two bearers.
• The deity's banquet-table; six bearers.
• Shintō priest on horseback.
• Attendants on the shrine.
• Thirty leading citizens in ceremonial costume.
• Thirty inferior Shintō priests in sacerdotal costume.
• Two bearers of go-hei.
• Girl child richly apparelled, riding in palanquin.
• Two men with hyoshi-gi.
• Sacred Palanquin, borne by fifty men.
• The deity's rice-box, borne by three men.
• The deity's table, borne by eight men.
• Attendants on the shrine.
• Mounted priest.
• Thirty inferior priests in sacerdotal costume.
• Two bearers of go-hei.
• Girl child, richly apparelled, in palanquin.
• Three men with hyoshi-gi.
• Sacred Palanquin, borne by fifty men.
• The deity's rice-box, borne by two men.
• The deity's table borne by six men.
• Mounted Shintō priest.
• Ten Buddhist priests in armour, on horseback.
• The Lord High Abbot, in canonicals, in a palanquin.
• The deity's four-doored palanquin.
• The deity's ox-carriage.
• Glaivesmen and spearmen.
• The dashi, each drawn by from three to six black oxen with red and white trappings, and by an indefinite multitude of men, quaintly costumed and chaunting as they pull; and each having on its platform from thirty to sixty professional musicians, dancers, and actors, dressed in rich costumes, and posturing, dancing, and singing to accompaniment of flute and drum whenever the dasbi halts.

Such is the organisation of the parish picnic. The "gently going cars" move with the utmost deliberation, pausing here and there while the drums beat, the flutes play, and the dancers dance, so that the intervals of rest are filled with the sounds of music and with the applause of merry crowds; the intervals of motion, with the swelling chaunt of the dashi-drawers. A hundred and sixty streets constitute the Sano parish. They contribute, for the purposes of the procession, forty-five bands, each of fifty youths, chosen by lot. Two days before the festival, the citizens begin to prepare their houses. The view-places on the roofs are fitted up; the lintels are draped; the mats are overspread with whatever of gay covering the family possesses; a background of glowing richness is made by ranging gold-foil screens in all rooms opening upon the street, and from the eaves as well as from poles along the route, red-and-white paper lanterns are suspended. It is a time of general feasting. The householder violates hospitality's fundamental principles if he fails to invite his friends from the less favoured quarters of the city, and every father takes care that his unmarried daughters shall be dressed in the costliest and most picturesque garments within reach of his purse. From first to last there is no note of asceticism to disturb the glad harmony. For one day, indeed,—the day before the procession,—the parishioners are supposed to fast, but since their fasting is limited to avoiding meat and vegetables of the onion family, which things are regarded as impure, the flesh is not perceptibly mortified.

Even more important and elaborate is the Kanda festival, which absorbs Tōkyō's attention during a great part of the ninth month in the alternate years of the Sano celebration. Long before the fête, preparations are busily commenced,—lanterns hung out; nobori^[1] raised; casks of saké and boxes of macaroni piled up to feast the folks in the procession, and all the great modistes and coiffeurs of the capital engage in contriving for the daughters of their customers costumes and headdresses that shall eclipse records and rivals alike. In nothing is Tōkyō more recklessly extravagant than in the sums it lavishes for its daughters' adornment on these grand occasions. A tradesman does not exceed the sanction of custom when he spends a tenth part of his annual income on the dress of one little daughter. The Sano festival inspires similar but less costly effort, for the deities' outing lasts only one day, whereas in the Kanda parish the sacred palanquins and the dashi are three days en route. A special feature of the Kanda matsuri is a band of danseuses (geisha) who follow the dashi, and, from time to time, give displays of their skill. They are called tekomai, the name of an ancient dance, consisting chiefly of graceful hand-waving. In the course of centuries, performers as well as performance have come to be designated by the same term. These dainty little lasses do not robe themselves for the purposes of the festival in the delicately hued garments and glowing girdles with which they know so well how to enhance the lamplight effect of their charms. They dress in the small-sleeved tunic, tight-legged trousers, and narrow cincture of the common workman (shigoto-shi), and it is their coy fancy to ape the sombre hue as well as the ungraceful shape of that low fellow's habiliments. But beyond the bounds of cut and colour their feminine instinct rises in vehement rebellion. The tunic and the girdle become meadow-lands of embroidered bloom and verdure; things of costly loveliness to be cheered by the delighted crowd, applauded in private by the Don Juans of the district, and discussed despairingly by chagrined rivals. There is a hidden significance in the presence of the arch and innocent-looking tekomai. It is a lover that pays for her elaborate and most ephemeral costume; it is a lover that cuts off her raven tresses,—for even to queue and top-knot the masculine mode is affected,—and it is a lover that defrays the charges of her idle life and the fees of her employers until her hair grows again to evening-party length. So, while she seems to proclaim her religious devotion, she in reality parades her professional successes.

In describing these festivals, no lengthy mention has been made of the special deities worshipped. The omission is appropriate, for, as the reader has of course perceived, the religious element constitutes but an insignificant fraction of the fête in Japan. Sano and Kanda both revere Oana-muchi and Sukunahikona, immortal descendants of the Sun Goddess, and look for prosperity and happiness as the guerdon of these splendid matsuri. But another spirit is included among the objects of worship at the Kanda ceremonial,—the spirit of Taira-no-Masakado. This is a name heinously conspicuous in Japanese history as the name of the only subject whose hand was ever raised in open rebellion against his sovereign. Masakado's brief career of madness belongs to the annals of the tenth century. He fell doing battle with Taira-no-Sadamori on the plains of Shimosa, and his head was carried to Kanda for burial. Of such a hero is the effigy enshrined, with every mark of honour, among the divine niches at the Kanda festival. Mention has been made above of the fact that one of the tutelary ghosts in the Sano parish is Kumasaka Chohan, a burglar of mediæval notoriety. It may well be asked what kind of people they are that pay divine honours to the memory of arch traitors and villanous malefactors. The question has been thrust upon foreign attention of late years. Early on the morning of February 11, 1889, the Minister of Education, Viscount Mori, one of modern Japan's most enlightened statesmen, was about to leave his residence for the purpose of proceeding to the Palace, when a youth of twenty-five stabbed him fatally with a kitchen knife. Scarcely had the assassin been consigned to the grave when the citizens of Tōkyō began to pay visits to his tomb. Tradesmen, artisans, but, above all, actors, wrestlers, dancing-girls, fencing-masters, and youthful politicians, flocked thither, so that every day a new forest of incense-sticks smoked and a fresh garden of flowers bloomed before the sepulchre. Foreign observers of the strange pageant stood aghast. Was it conceivable, they inquired, that civilised people should worship at the tomb of a murderer and pay homage to the memory of an assassin? It seemed, on the one hand, as though the masses of Japan hid savage instincts beneath a surface of courtesy and refinement; on the other, as though a government that permitted such demoralising displays must be very feeble, and a nation that feted the murderer of a minister, very disaffected. All such constructions and inferences were based on ignorance of Japanese character. The pilgrims to Nishino's tomb obeyed the same principle that assigns a niche in the Kanda Shrine to the image of a great rebel and a place in the Sano procession to the effigy of a notorious robber. Daring and prowess, in whatever forms displayed, are dear to the Japanese. The act of Nishino Buntaro appealed strongly to their sense of the picturesque. An educated youth, who had hitherto led an unobtrusive, decorous, and law-abiding life, without political friends, without resources other than those possessed by the humblest subject, made his way into the residence of a prominent Minister of State at a moment when the inmates were all on the alert, when the whole city was en fête, when the streets were crowded with soldiers and policemen, and, in obedience to an instinct of reverential patriotism, struck down the great man with the weapon of a common scullion, within sight of armed guards and at the very moment when the Minister, dressed in full uniform, his breast glittering with orders, was about to take a leading place in the Imperial Palace among a body of statesmen associated for a purpose that was destined to make them famous as long as their country had a history. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more striking contrast between instrument and achievement. What did this object lesson teach to the average Japanese? Not that assassination is admirable or bloodshed praiseworthy, but that weakness, insignificance, and friendlessness constitute no effective barriers to signal success if they be retrieved by daring, resolution, and self-reliance. It is to be endowed with a measure of the spirit of Nishino, Masakado, and Kumasaka that the Japanese prays when he worships at the tomb of a murderer and makes offerings at the shrine of a rebel or a robber. One may "abhor the sin without hating the sinner," "loathe the priest yet love the stole." These subtle distinctions might not receive ready recognition from a Madison Square pugilist or an Alhambra ballet-girl, but tradition has taught them to the wrestler of Ekoin^[2] and the geisha of Yanagi-bashi.^[3] If the Government held up a ringer, the pilgrimages to Nishino's grave would cease; if the Emperor made a gesture of dissent, the image of a rebellious subject would not be carried in triumphal procession past the Palace gates. But the real significance of these demonstrations is not mistaken in Japan.

Greater than either the Sano festival or the Kanda festival is the Gion-matsuri in Kyōtō, the greatest, indeed, of all such celebrations in Japan. Like the Tōkyō fêtes, however, it consists essentially of a magnificent procession. The difference is in the nature of the objects of worship. Prominent among these is a halberd forged by the celebrated swordsmith Sanjo Munechika. It is supposed to be endowed with the virtue that once belonged to a king's touch in Europe: raised reverentially to the head, it cures the ague. This blessed blade has the honour of riding, a hundred feet high, on a resplendent dashi, at the head of a line of twenty-three cars bearing effigies of celebrated scholars, of Chinese philosophers, of the moon, of a mantis, and of a "flower-thief." Mencius rides side by side with a lass that pilfers blossoms, but is not insulted by the companionship, for nature alone suffers by the theft. A conspicuous object in the Gion procession is the chief danseuse, a girl of twelve or thirteen who dances on a dais in the centre of the halberd dashi. Nothing that Kyōtō can contribute of beautiful or costly is neglected in decking out this damsel for the fête. On either side of her another virgin postures in unison, but the little lady in the middle is the goddess of the hour, the queen of the summer festival. Her reign does not end when the deities, the savants, and the symbols have been reconsigned to their twelve months' seclusion in shrines and storehouses. It is then, indeed, that her triumph reaches its acme, for a procession is formed all on her own account. At the head march five samurai, in the old-time uniform of their rank; then comes a glaivesman; then two bearers of gorgeously lacquered boxes, the wardrobes of the little dame; then her palanquin, glowing with bright colours and sparkling ornaments, carried by four lads in correspondingly rich costume and flanked by the chief local officials as well as by the two companion virgins, objects almost as brilliant as the queen herself. Over the palanquin is carried a monster umbrella with handle and ribs of rose-red lacquer, cherry-blossoms and the ideograph for longevity blazoned on its surface, and a tasselled bag of brocade containing a Gion amulet suspended under its shelter. Two more wardrobe-bearers follow, and porters of umbrellas in baskets and of gold-lacquered luncheon-boxes bring up the rear. At the portals of the temple of Gion, a draught of holy wine (miki) and a "blessed amulet" (shimpu) are given to the virgin, whereupon she ceases to be a mere "young thing" (chigo) and becomes a "sacred child" (suiko). The tediousness of these details will serve, perhaps, to convey to the reader some faint idea of the elaborate code of conventionalities that has to be consulted at each point of such ceremonials. Everything is provided for by tradition; and every proviso must be observed.

If these huge metropolitan festivals show the general attitude of the national mind towards supernatural subjects, the smaller celebrations afford a still more accurate insight into the superstitions and daily ambitions of the people. Sometime in the Middle Ages, a great eagle made its appearance at Ajiki in the province of Shimosa, which lies on the eastern shores of Yedo Bay. The eagle, of course, typifies everything that is majestically aggressive and tenaciously acquisitive. It thus becomes to the Japanese a symbol of good fortune. The Shimosa people built a shrine in honour of their visitor, and covered the walls with votive tablets, depicting an eagle bestrid by a man in official robes—"a commoner rising to rank and office by the aid of wings that soar and talons that capture." By-and-by the capital of the Tokugawa grew so big that it drew to itself whatever was notable in the neighbouring provinces. The eagle's shrine found its way to the suburbs of the metropolis, and in the Shitaya district, within sight of the Paphian quarter, became a place of pilgrimage for every one craving the gifts of fortune,—for the wrestler, the courtesan, the actor, the dancing-girl, the jester, the raconteur, the musician, the tradesman, and the apprentice. Nothing that can be called a ceremony is associated with the eagle's fête,—the Tori-no Machi (abbreviation of matsuri), or worship of the bird, as the people call it. Only on the "bird days" in November—perhaps two days, perhaps three if the calendar is kind—tens of thousands of people flock out to this shrine among the rice-fields, and, after a brief act of worship, purchase harbingers of luck in the shape of big rakes, parent potatoes, millet dumplings, and bamboo tea-whisks. Stalls for the sale of these homely articles occupy all available spaces within the temple enclosure and along the avenues leading to the gate, and as the etiquette of the eagle requires that there shall be no bargaining—when did the great bird stop to discuss the preliminaries of a capture?—the hucksters drive a roaring trade, especially at the close of the day when their wares are nearly sold out and belated worshippers see a risk of returning empty-handed. The rake, as part of the paraphernalia of a pursuer of gain, explains itself. But there is a strange feature about these eagle rakes. Their teeth are said to be made from the wood of coffins. At cremations, if economy has to be practised, the corpse is removed from its casket and exposed to the direct action of the flames. The casket then becomes the property of the crematory and is purchased by the rake-makers. There is no explanation of such a singular custom, nor any evidence that it is observed on principle. The parent potato typifies humble ambition. Buried underground and growing in oblivion, it is, at all events, the head of a family. "Better be the comb of a cock than the tail of an ox." Millet dumplings are associated with the orthodox group of lucky articles by a play upon words. To "clutch millet with wet hands" is a popular metaphor for greed. Mochi, which signifies a dumpling, signifies also "to hold." Thus "millet dumpling" becomes a metaphor for grasping largely and holding firmly. The strength of the people's faith in these pilgrimages, prayers, and purchases is evidenced by the crowd that the city pours out to the Tori-no Machi every fall, and by the eager happiness of the worshippers' mien. But if any members of the upper classes go, it is only to look and to laugh.

In the festivals thus far described there is nothing that suggests any affinity between the religious rites of Japan and those of ancient Europe. But a point of marked similarity is now reached. Just as the fire of Hestia was kept perpetually burning in the Grecian prytaneum two thousand years ago, so at the national shrines in Izumo and Ise there are stone lanterns in which the flame is said to have glowed uninterruptedly since the age of the gods. If that be so, it is a flame twenty-five centuries old. The origin of the fire-guarding cult is now so well understood, and its practice has been traced to so many races, that to find it in Japan also is neither surprising nor specially significant. But, as might have been anticipated, some of the rites connected with it reflect the peculiar genius of the Japanese. In Kyōtō, on the last evening of the year, when the street leading to the temple of Gion is converted into a market for the sale of New Year's decorations, and is crowded with people of all degrees, men go about carrying short hempen ropes with one end burning. These they swing around their heads, and it is the privilege of any person struck by a rope to revile the bearer without stint. The Japanese language is not furnished with curses after the pattern of Occidental blasphemies, but it lends itself to the construction of very pregnant invective, and no one that has waited in Gionmachi to see the death of the old year, can labour under any doubt of the Kyōtō people's capacity for objurgation. But it is all perfectly good-humoured; a mutual measuring of abusive vocabularies. Meanwhile a big bonfire burns within the precincts of the shrine. It has been kindled from a year-old flame tended in a lamp hanging under the eaves of the sacred building, and people come there to light a taper which, burning before the household altar, shall be the beacon of domestic prosperity. As the night wears on, the crowds gradually flow into the temple grounds, and there, at the "hour of the tiger" (2 A. M.), the "Festival of the Pine Shavings" take place. A Shintō priest reads a ritual. His colleagues obtain a spark by the friction of two pieces of wood, and set fire to a quantity of shavings packed into a large iron lamp. These charred fragments of pine wood the worshippers receive, and carry away as amulets to protect their possessors against plague and pestilence.

In provincial districts the religious festival sometimes presents very quaint features. On the first "day of the horse" in the month of April, there is performed, at the Tsukuma Matsuri in Omi province, a manner of worship intended to promote wifely fidelity. Wives and widows are marshalled in procession, each carrying upon her head as many earthenware pots as she has had husbands. In Japan a woman's glory is to marry once, and if her husband dies, to remain always faithful to his memory. It must be confessed that among the lower orders the ideal is seldom attained. Marriage, not being preceded in their case by courtship or by any opportunity of ascertaining mutual compatibility of disposition, is often followed by separation. Upon the woman rests the responsibility for such accidents, since the theory of conjugal life is that the wife must adapt herself to the husband, not the husband to the wife. Thus to have been divorced frequently, while it does not by any means imply marital infidelity, is held to indicate some want of self-abnegation or moral pliability on the woman's part. It might be supposed that the Omi dames would shirk the obligation of parading their conjugal records in public. But a belief that the goddess whom they worship will punish insincerity prompts them to carry their proper tale of pots without scamping the number. There is, indeed, a tradition that a certain crafty woman once had recourse to the device of hiding in a big pot that represented her last husband several little pots that represented his precessors. But judgment overtook her. She stumbled as she walked in the procession, and the big pot falling from her head displayed its contents to public gaze and to her lasting shame.

An even stranger celebration takes place on the first "day of the hare," in the tenth month, at Wasa, in the province of Kishu. It is called the "laughing festival of Wasa" (Wasa no Warai-matsuri). There is a belief that in the tenth month of every year all the deities repair to the great shrines of Ise in Izumo, and there hold a conclave for the purpose of arranging the nuptial affairs of the nation. The month is called the "god-less moon" (Kami-no-zuki) for all parts of the country except Izumo, whereas, on the contrary, it is distinguished as the "moon of the gods' presence" (Kami-ari-zuki) by the inhabitants of Izumo. The legend has lost much of its old force, but it still commands the venerable faith of conservative rustics, and many a farmer in Izumo carefully locks the door of his dwelling at sunset and refrains from venturing abroad before dawn during the period of the deities' assembly at Ise. It happened that when this divine parliament was first convened, one ill-starred deity, Miawa Daimyojin, mistook the date or otherwise mismanaged affairs so that the debate had terminated before he reached Ise. The laughing festival is intended to commemorate that accident. Instead of sympathising with the belated god, the people assemble to laugh at him, as the other deities are supposed to have laughed when he presented himself to take part in a finished discussion. The fashion of the festival is as quaint as its conception. All the oldest men in the district and all the children come together and form a procession for marching to the shrine. The elders head the array, carrying two boxes of fixed capacity, filled with persimmons and oranges spitted on bamboo rods. The children follow, grouped round a go-hei and holding in their hands oranges and persimmons similarly spitted. These preliminaries as well as the progress to the shrine are conducted with the utmost solemnity. Arrived at the shrine, the grayest among the elders turns about to face the little ones and orders them to laugh. There is never any failure to obey, and from the children the contagion spreads to the adult population until the whole district ripples with merriment from morning till evening. It is a graceful notion that the deities desire the people to share their mirth as well as to pray for their tutelage.

Several provincial festivals have gradually assumed the character of athletic competitions. At the top of a mountain called Kimpo-zan, in Ugo province, stands the shrine of Ha-ushi-wake. On the fifth day of the first month all the robust men of the district, to the number of several thousands, ascend the mountain and pass the night in a snow-cave some two furlongs from the summit. At that season the snow lies ten feet deep on Kimpo-zan. To reach the cave is in itself an arduous undertaking. When the first streak of dawn is seen in the sky, the youngest and strongest of the band of worshippers start from the cave. Stripped to their loin-cloths, they race in phrensied emulation over the snow and up the steep cliffs, the first to reach the shrine being assured of the deity's protection throughout the year and of his comrades' profound admiration. This race does not end the fête. All the competitors crowd into the precincts of the shrine and engage in a bout of general wrestling. They do not attempt to hurl each other to the ground after the manner of Western wrestlers, but only to thrust one another from the enclosure. By degrees the remaining occupants of the cave join the melee, the rule observed by each new-comer being to aid the weak and beat back the strong. It may be imagined that from a mad contest in which four or five thousand strong men engage, struggling desperately in the snow and among the rocks on the summit of a lofty mountain in midwinter, many must emerge with serious injuries. But tradition affirms that no one has ever been known to receive a disabling hurt. The deity, they say, protects his devotees. The truth is that in competitions of such a nature the Japanese maintain from first to last the most imperturbable good-humour. Any one losing his temper would be ridiculed for months. After the wrestling is over, and when each man has given stalwart proof of the earnestness of his faith, they all join in one band and march down the mountain singing.

At Ono-machi in Bingo the people worship Susa-no-o, the rough deity, whose unruly conduct terrified his sister the Sun Goddess so much that she retired into a cave. The festival in honour of the god takes place in the sixth month, and is of such a nature as "the impetuous male deity" himself might be supposed to organise if he gave any thought to the question. There is no stately procession, no display of gorgeous dashi, no dancing of brilliantly robed damsels. The whole affair consists of a tumultuous trial of speed and strength. Bands of strong men seize the sacred cars, race with them to the sea, and, having plunged in breast deep, their burden held aloft, dash back at full speed to the shrine. There refreshment, wine, fish, and a box of rice are served out, and then again, the race is resumed, the goal being the central flag (nobori) among a number set up in a large plain. To this contest the bearers of the cars devote themselves with as much zeal as though they were fighting for their lives. Hundreds run beside each car ready to replace any bearer that is thrown down or exhausted; their feet beat time to a wildly shouted chorus, and as they sweep along, apparently unconscious of everything but their goal, and wholly reckless of obstacles or collisions, it seems incredible that fatal accidents should not occur again and again. Yet no sooner is the struggle ended, than these men who, a moment before, appeared ready to trample upon each other's corpses, may be seen seated in tea-houses, chatting, laughing, circulating the wine-cup, and behaving as if such an incident as a desperate struggle for the favour of the deity had never interrupted the even tenor of their placid existences.

At other fêtes the worshippers seek to gain possession of some sacred object supposed to insure exceptional good fortune to the holder. Five hundred years ago, a merchant's apprentice walking by the seaside near Hakozaki in Chikuzen, found two perfectly spherical balls of wood which had been cast upon the shore by the waves. The shrine of the "god of war" (Hachiman) at Hakozaki is celebrated in Japanese history. Supplications offered there at the time when the great Mongol armada swept down upon Japan in the thirteenth century, are supposed to have produced the storm that shattered the enemy's fleet and strewed the coast of Kiushiu with his dead. It is a place of miracles. A crystal ball is one of the three sacred insignia of Japan. It also symbolises the pearl of great price, held in the claws of the sea god's dragon. Hence two perfect spheres of finely grained wood cast upon the beach at Hakozaki necessarily suggested supernatural agency. Their finder carried them to the Hakozaki shrine, and reverentially entrusted them to the custody of the priests, having first washed them carefully in holy water taken from the granite cistern at the adjacent fane of Ebisu. From that time the young apprentice seemed to become the favourite of fortune. Ebisu, the jovial-faced fisher deity, who provides for men's daily sustenance, had evidently taken the youth under his protection. Whenever the third day of the first month came round,—the anniversary of the finding of the balls,—the apprentice, soon a thriving merchant, did not fail to repair to the temple. Taking the sacred spheres thence, he would carry them to the shrine of Ebisu, wash them in the holy water, anoint them with clove-oil, and bear them back to their place in the temple. When and how this custom was elevated to the rank of a religious rite, there is no record, but within less than a century and a half from the finding of the balls, a "jewel-grasping festival" came to be celebrated at Hakozaki on the third day of every first month. It took the form of a gigantic scramble. The priests, having carried the ball—now, by some unexplained process, transformed into a single sphere of hard stone—to the shrine of Ebisu, and having washed it and read a ritual, delivered it to the crowd of worshippers for conveyance to the temple of Hachiman. Whatever hands held it at the moment of final transfer to the temple, were the hands of a person destined to high fortune. Not the province of Chikuzen alone, but all the northern districts of Kiushiu and the regions on the opposite coast of the Inland Sea, sent their strong men to take part in the struggle. The distance between the fane of Ebisu and the temple of Hachiman is only a few yards, yet hours were spent in the passage of the "jewel" from one place to the other. Naked, except for a loin-cloth, thousands of men struggled in the narrow enclosure until sheer exhaustion gradually thinned their ranks and left space for the most enduring to win a path, inch by inch, to the temple. Almost the same description applies to a much more celebrated fête held within the precincts of the temple of Kwannon, the goddess of mercy, at Saidai-ji in Bizen province, on the fourteenth day of the first month. There the scramble is for pieces of wood thrown by the priests to a multitude of devotees. No supernatural tradition attaches to these amulets. They have their origin in a simple exercise of benevolence. In the middle era of the temple's existence (the beginning of the sixteenth century) the priests made a practice of presenting gifts to such of their parishioners as had shown special zeal during the New Year's devotional exercises, which lasted from the 1st to the 14th of the first month. By degrees the number of worshippers eligible for such distinction grew so large that some method of special selection became necessary, and recourse was had to lots. The exciting element of chance thus introduced helped, of course, to swell the concourse of devotees, and finally a clever abbot, probably borrowing the idea from the "jewel-grasping festival" of Hakozaki, devised the plan of leaving the people to settle their own eligibility by an athletic contest. The little town lying at the temple's feet contains only two thousand inhabitants in ordinary times, but at the festival season the population grows to fifty or sixty thousand, and a moralist might find food for reflection in the fact that the services of steamships and railways are borrowed to convey this stream of worshippers and sightseers to an observance so suggestive of the rudest ages. At ten o'clock on the night of the 14th of the first month (8th of February according to the present calendar) the Saidai-ji drum beats the signal, and the first band of intending competitors run at full speed through the temple ground, plunge into the river below, and having thus purified themselves, return to the sacred enclosure by a different route. A second time the drum sounds at midnight, and fresh crowds of combatants pour through the temple grounds. In truth, from the first tap of the drum until its final note is heard at 2 A. M., streams of stalwart men never cease to surge between the temple and the river, their feet beating time to a chorus of esa, esa, the echoes of which can be heard on the opposite coast, twenty-five miles distant, "like the roar of surf breaking on rocks." Exactly at two o'clock the "divine wood" (shingi), a little cylinder of fresh pine, specially marked, is thrown from the temple window to the surging crowd, and a fierce struggle commences for its possession. One prize for some ten thousand competitors would be too meagre an arrangement. The shingi is therefore accompanied by hundreds of similar but smaller tokens (kushigo), which ensure fertility to farm-lands where they are set up, and health to the farmer's family. But the shingi itself is the great prize. The competition for its possession is not confined to the actual combatants. Wealthy households also vie with one another to obtain it, each setting out in the vestibule a box of fresh sand whither the divine wood must be carried before the contest is considered at an end. Thus the struggle extends to the streets of the town itself, and long after the shingi's fate has been decided, the army of naked men wrestle and shout within the temple enclosure, the breath of the wild struggle hanging over them like a cloud in the frosty moonlight.

"Up, like spring's haze, the breath-mists creep,
"The wintry hills smile in their sleep."^[4]

It is easy to see that the upper classes take no active part in celebrations such as those described above. The religious festival in Japan owes its vitality to superstitions prevalent among the middle and lower orders only.

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1. See Appendix, note 1.

   Note 1.—The nobori is a species of flag, or standard. A strip of cotton cloth, varying in length from three or four feet to thirty or forty, and in width from a few inches to a yard, is fastened at both ends to bamboo rollers, and attached lengthwise to a long bamboo pole capped with a gilt ball. On the cloth large ideographs designating the occasion are inscribed. The nobori looks like an extravagantly elongated sail bellying in the wind.

2. See Appendix, note 2.

   Note 2.—The name of a place in Tōkyō where wrestling-matches are held annually to determine the national champions.

3. See Appendix, note 3.

   Note 3.—The "Willow Bridge" is the name of a district in Tōkyō celebrated as a resort of the geisha (danseuse) class.

4. See Appendix, note 4.
   Note 4.—

   Fuki-kaeru
   Yeyo no iki ya
   Tama warau.

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