JAPAN
important customs of the nation. But others of great interest, though now more or less obsolete, deserve passing notice. Among these the oldest appears to have been scapulimancy, or divining by the cracks and lines in the scorched shoulder-blade of a deer. It is suggestive that the same method of discerning the future was practised in ancient times in Tartary, Mongolia, Arabia, Lapland, and even England, being known in the last-named country as "reading the speal-bone." Tortoise-shell was subsequently substituted for shoulder-bones, — a change especially convenient for women, who, by burning the ends of their tortoise-shell combs, and observing the divergence or convergence, regularity or confusion, of the lines on the charred surface drew inferences about the course of their love affairs. Another method, much practised by girls, was to stand by the roadside in the evening and construct auguries by patching together such fragments of wayfarers' talk as were wafted to their ears. This tsuji-ura, or road divining, has quite gone out of vogue. The term is now applied to mottoes placed within envelopes of sweet biscuit, after the "cracker" fashion of the West. But, in former days, the doubts of the heart-sick were often resolved, and the aspirations of the village belle encouraged, by such glimpses of fate's purposes. Sometimes a rod was planted in the ground to personify the deity of roads, — the god formed from Izanagi's staff which he cast behind him to stay the demons as they pur-
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