Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/255

 Professors of this art of divination are numerous, their clients legion. The great adepts live in imposing mansions; the rank and file are content to spread a mat by the roadside, and there, with conspicuously disposed paraphernalia of rods and tomes, await the casual consultations that timid or bashful folks are glad to hold. The fee varies from two or three sen to a yen, and in cases of importance very much larger sums are paid. It will readily be conceived that many other systems of vaticination are practised. Two of the best known are the Ten-gen (heavenly original), and the Tō-kiu (zodiacal essence system). The former was introduced from China in the year 960 A.D.; the latter is a Japanese modification of the former, dating from 1835. A third and cognate system, known as Kanshi-jutsu (the element and zodiacal art), is of somewhat later origin than the Tō-kiu. Among living representatives of the Tō-kiu are the widows of two of its formerly renowned professors, and it receives large support from the noble families of Suwa and Tachibana. The Ten-gen and To-kiu are much in vogue. They may be roughly described as the casting of horoscopes. Both are primarily based on the assumption that every human being has received from heaven a vital essence or spirit (ki), by the influence of which his health, his conduct, and his moral ability are determined. The hour, the day, the month, and the year of a man's birth, when expressed in terms of the elementary and