day of the year. The priests, after prayers were recited, broke up the bundles and set fire to the sticks, which the people then carried home to light their household fires with for the New Year.[1] The object of this ceremony was to avert pestilence. There is here a striking resemblance to the Christian practice mentioned by M. D'Alviella: "The fire which the clergy, on the dawn of Easter, had struck from the flint and steel, served to rekindle the fires of individuals which had all been previously extinguished." The use of such fire to prevent pestilence may also be illustrated from European customs. The need-fire, made by striking flints or by the fire-drill, and used to rekindle all household fires, is one of numerous examples.[2]
Removal of Impurity. Lustration.—With every precaution, it is not always possible to avoid the pollution of dirt, disease, and sin. In order, therefore, to do away with the offence to the Gods arising from such impure conditions, various expedients are resorted to. The most natural and universal of these is washing or lustration.[3] The Chinese notices of ancient Japan already quoted from inform us that the Japanese, after the ten days' mourning was concluded, all went into the river and washed. Hirata says that even at the present day, when mourning is over, people go to the bank of a stream or to the sea-beach and cleanse themselves. The mythical account of Izanagi's washing in the sea in order to remove the pollutions of Yomi has been given above. In a fourteenth-century work entitled Kemmu nenchiu giōgi, the ablutions of the Mikado previous to the ceremony of Shingonjiki are described with great minuteness; and if this preliminary is usually passed over in descriptions of Shinto ceremonies, the reason no doubt is that it was too well known to require special mention.
