ing the bride. With further reference to the symbolism involved in the rites at this time, it is worth mentioning that I have been told by a Japanese friend [from Chikuzen province] that when a woman leaves her home at her marriage-time she is dressed in white as if to indicate her death, "so that she will never return," and the rice-bowl she has been accustomed to use is broken upon the stone steps of the house, at the moment of her departure, with exactly the same intention.[1]
There is, however, another explanation of the taboo against sweeping too soon after a departure, seemingly fitting in with our evidence, which is based upon the principles of contagious magic—namely, that there is a fear of sweeping out of the house, where there are protections against the machinations of evilly disposed beings (whether they be natural or supernatural), things which have recently been in contact with the absent person and through which, therefore, injury may be caused to him. The principles involved are too well known to require restatement here, and their very frequent occurrence in Japanese magical practices suggests that they may well form the basis of the practice we are discussing. The time-limit in that practice, if we accept as a basis for the practice a fear of contagious magic, I think is to be explained by an idea that the psychical traces left by a person upon an object with which he has been in contact are evanescent and gradually disappear, just as do such physical traces as warmth from his body, or odours. I am under the impression that, for example, the effect which is thought to be producible upon an absent person by working upon a footprint or other trace left by him is believed to be the greater the less the time which has
- ↑ It need hardly be pointed out that, whatever may be its present intention, the breaking of crockery at this moment may well be a survival of some rite (or rites) having a character quite different from that at present assigned to the practice.
