JAPAN
ITS HISTORY ARTS AND
LITERATURE
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
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