moon, Old Calendar, are looked on as days of special importance to the crops, which are certain to be injured if there is a storm, because the rice is then in flower. They fall early in September, just in the middle of the typhoon season. St. Swithin's day has its Japanese counterpart in the Ki no E Ne, mentioned above as the first day of the sexagesimal cycle, which comes round once in every two months approximately. If it rains, it will rain for that whole cycle, that is, for sixty days on end. Again, if it rains on the first day of a certain period called Hassen, of which there are six in every year, it will rain for the next eight days. These periods, being movable, may come at any season. Quite a number of festivals, pilgrimages to temples, and other functions depend on the signs of the zodiac. Thus, the mayu-dama, a sort of Christmas tree decorated with cakes in honour of the silkworm, makes its appearance on whatever date in January may happen to be the "First Day of the Hare" (Hatsu-U).
We have said that official Japan has quite Europeanised herself so far as methods of computing time are concerned. The assertion was too sweeping. Although the Gregorian calendar has been in force ever since the 1st January, 1873, she has not yet been able to bring herself to adopt the Christian era. Not only would the use of this era symbolise to the Shintō Court of Japan the supremacy of a foreign religion;—it would be derogatory from a political point of view, the fixing of the calendar from time to time, together with the appointing of "year-names,"[1] having ever been looked on in the Far East as among the inviolable privileges and signs of independent sovereignty, much as coining money is in the West. China has its own year-names, which it proudly imposes on such vassal states as Thibet. Japan has other year-names. The names are chosen arbitrarily. In China the plan was long ago introduced of making each year-name coincide with the reign of an emperor. This has not hitherto been the case in Japan, though an official notification has been
- ↑ In Japanese, nengō.
