Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/262

 curred in a household. Then each domestic is required to write a certain word with the same brush and the same solution of Indian ink. The writing should take place, if possible, in the presence of the diviner, but that condition is not essential. Conscience is supposed to betray its working in the lines of the ideographs written. There is in this device a practical element that often secures the desired result. It is on record that when the Emperor Inkyo (411-453 A.D.) commanded the ordeal of boiling water as a means of detecting usurpers of noble names, the guilty folks ran away rather than submit to the test. Something of the same kind frequently happens when the sumi-iro device is employed; but, under any circumstances, the tracing of an ideograph involves such an effort of muscular directness and undivided attention that the quality of a suspected person's writing may often have much significance.

The simplest and perhaps the most senseless method of divination is by the abacus (soroban). Its use is confined to cases of illness. To the number of years that the patient has lived are added the numbers of the month and of the day of his birth. The sum thus obtained is multiplied by 3 and divided by 9. If the remainder is 3 or a smaller number, recovery is considered certain. If it is a number between 3 and 6, the case is grave, the danger growing as the remainder ascends. Equal division is counted as a remainder of 9, and signifies certain death.