Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/243

 in the window through which he had looked at the image. Like many other peoples the ignorant classes in Japan regard comets as omens of evil and falling stars as precursors of death. They believe also in plague gods, so that when smallpox becomes epidemic special prayers are uttered and charms employed, and when influenza prevails the deity of the evil blast is manufactured in straw effigy, and escorted out of the district with beating of drums and reciting of exorcisms. Of course miraculous events have frequently occurred. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the spirit of the renowned prelate Kōbō Daishi fashioned the grooves on a mill-stone in one night by way of token that the people of the district should enjoy his protection during the year, and in the middle of the nineteenth century the inhabitants of Owari and Mino were thrown into a state of ecstasy by a shower of sacred paper which fell from heaven to indicate the presence of the deities.

Believing that the spirits of the dead watch over and protect their living kindred, the Japanese believe also that the ghosts of the departed sometimes vex and torture those that used them ill on this side of the grave. Deeds of blood and cruelty have brought upon their perpetrators apparitions and mental torments ending in madness, ruined fortunes, and suicide. The lower orders found comfort in thinking that the miseries they had sometimes to suffer unresistingly at the hands