Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/261

 sued him from the under-world. Offerings having been made to this rod, the conversation of the passers-by was earnestly listened to. Another method of later origin required the coöperation of three maidens. Repairing to a place where roads crossed, they thrice repeated an invocation to the deity of ways; marked out a space over which they scattered rice to drive away evil spirits, and then, having drawn their fingers along the teeth of a box-wood comb — box-wood because the Japanese name for that wood (tsuge) means also "to tell" — stationed themselves, each on a different road, waiting to catch the words of people going by. Dreams, strange to say, do not seem to have been regarded in the light of important supernatural revelations, though auguries were occasionally drawn from them, and the service of interpreting them has, of course, found professors. Sometimes an augury was sought by standing under a bridge and listening to the patter of feet overhead; sometimes the familiar device of pitching coins was employed, and sometimes divine revelations were supposed to be conveyed in the sounds made by a priest whistling by inhalation. It need scarcely be said that the old custom of trial by ordeal, to which allusion is made in previous chapters, has disappeared, but there still exists a device for detecting guilt which, though not disfigured by physical cruelty, partakes of the nature of an ordeal. It is called sumi-iro, or the "colour of ink." Suppose that a theft has oc-