Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/68

 compared with the spirit of the time when interpreters of the Book of Changes (the Inyō-shi) were consulted on the eve of every important enterprise. It is not to be inferred, however, that superstition had faded out of the life of the people at large. The agricultural, the industrial, and the mercantile classes continued to torment themselves as much as ever about omens, affinities, coincidences, apparitions, demonology, enchantment, and divination, and even the inferior orders of the military often laboured under similar delusions. The great founder of the Tokugawa dynasty, Iyeyasu, makes a strange appearance in the annals of the monkey-masters just enumerated. On entering the city of Yedo to make it his stronghold, his favourite horse fell sick, and instead of consulting a horse-leech, he ordered the Chōri to summon a monkey-man, whose incantations cured the animal. Thenceforth, on the 11th of January, year after year, the Chōri received several strings of cash in the castle scullery for distribution among the monkey-masters.

All persons who made a livelihood by means of performing animals were credited with occult methods. Even the trainer of the docile dog was regarded mysteriously. On the occasion of the Moriya rebellion in the sixth century, Toribe-no-Yorozu, whose title shows that he had to tend the birds kept in the Palace, entrenched himself with a hundred companions and defied the Imperial troops. Threatened with starvation, he forced