accords with the conceptions I believe to underlie the cleansing sweepings to which I have referred above, and it accords also with certain Japanese beliefs as to a plurality of a person's spirits. But simple logic (not always, one must confess, a prominent characteristic of Japanese popular magic) would, if the explanation given by Dr. Steele be the true one, show the believer that sweeping at any time, and not merely sweeping within a brief period of the setting out of the absent person, would be likely to disturb the home-keeping spirit. It seems more reasonable, therefore, for us to seek our explanation in something other than the fear of displeasing a home-keeping spirit, and that notwithstanding any assumptions we may make that practical considerations have tended to limit the period during which the taboo should hold. The explanation above suggested, based upon the idea that a symbolical representing of the result wished for is attempted, appears to fit in with our evidence. Furthermore, that the sweeping after a departure has been looked upon as symbolic rather than as directly active, would seem to be shown by a certain Japanese marriage-custom—which appears at present to be regarded as purely symbolic in character—in accordance with which a bride wears white, when she marries, in order to signify thereby that she dies to her own family, while when she has left her parents' house in order to go to her husband's home, the house is "swept out, as if purified after the removal of a dead body."[1] The sweeping in this marriage-custom may, however, I think, not always have been looked upon as merely symbolical; we may reasonably conjecture that possibly it was formerly based—although not quite logically—upon an idea of sweeping out of her late home any clinging remnants of the bride's soul-substance; or, again, that it may be a modified survival of some rite for purifying or for protect-
- ↑ The Manners and Customs of the Japanese People from the Earliest Times, Madras (Sankaran & Co.), 1906, p. 102.
