because it seems to us that the exorcism of two Englishmen near the end of the nineteenth century is a little incident sufficiently strange to merit being put on record.
As for badgers, they are players of practical jokes rather than seriously wicked deceivers. One of their pranks is to assume the shape of the moon; but this they can only do when the real moon is also in the sky. Another common trick of theirs is to beat the tattoo on their stomach (tanuki no hara-tsuzumi). In art they are generally represented thus diverting themselves, with an enormously protuberant abdomen for all the world like a drum.
Divination. Astrology, horoscopy, palmistry, physiognomy, foretelling the future by dreams,—all these forms of superstition are current in Japan; but the greatest favourite is divination by means of the Eight Diagrams of classical China. No careful observer can walk through the streets of any large city without noticing here and there a little stall where a fortune-teller sits with his divining rods in front of him, and small blocks inscribed with sets of horizontal lines, some whole, some cut in two. The manipulation of these paraphernalia embodies a highly complicated system of divination called Eki, literally "Changes," which is of immemorial antiquity. Confucius himself professed his inability to understand the matter thoroughly, and would fain have had fifty years added to his life for the purpose of plunging more deeply into its mysteries. The common fortune-tellers of to-day have no such qualms. Shuffling the divining rods, they glibly instruct their clients in all such thorny matters as the finding of lost articles, the propriety of removing to another quarter of the town, the advisability of adopting a child, lucky days for marriage or for undertaking a journey, occasionally—if those in power be not much maligned—even affairs of state. Mr. Takashima, one of the leading citizens of Yokohama, traces his wealth to his imprisonment when a lad; for in gaol a dog-eared copy of Confucius venerable treatise on the Diagrams was his sole companion. He has not only realised a fortune by obedience to its
