elapsed between the production of the trace and the performance of the magical operation—unfortunately, I seem to have no note bearing directly on the occurrence of this idea in Japan, although some of my records refer to Japanese practices which may conceivably be based on it.
One more conjecture as to the reason for the taboo against sweeping within too short a period after a member of the family has left the house seems worth mentioning—namely, that sweeping (as further suggested below) tends to irritate the normally beneficent or at least quiescent supernatural beings settled about the house, and that these beings will therefore be likely either to withdraw their protecting care from him even while he remains within their radius of action, or to try to injure him (who, away from the shelter of his home, is the member of the family who is most open to attack) as long as he remains within their reach.[1] This conjecture, while seeming to accord with what I take to underlie the taboo forbidding the combing of the hair,[2] and the one concerning sweeping at night, does not appear to explain quite satisfactorily the practice of sweeping after an unwelcome guest, although that practice has the appearance of being closely associated with the taboo under discussion.
There is a taboo which forbids the sweeping of a house at night, poverty being the penalty threatened if the operation be performed at that time.[3] Night is the time
- ↑ Compare footnote 3, p. 173, supra.
- ↑ Cf. "Some Japanese Minor … Practices connected with Travelling," p. 104.
- ↑ J. Inouye, Sketches of Tokyo Life, Tokyo, 1895, p. 66. Ehman, op. cit. p. 337, tries to explain this from a rational standpoint (as he does with many of the other Japanese beliefs which he records), and suggests that it is founded on a fear lest valuable things might be swept out accidentally at night. In E. Prussia, in Mecklenburg, and in Silesia sweeping, or the throwing out of sweepings, after sun-down is forbidden, lest one expel good-fortune (Samter, op. cit. p. 38, footnote 1); similar beliefs are recorded of the Venetians and of the
