Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/265

 a bow for the rite, and as she draws the string she utters the following form of incantation:—

""Reverentially I entreat the deities, those of heaven, Bontentaishaku and Shitendaio; those of hell, Emmaō and Godōmeikwan; all the deities of the sky and of the earth; the Deity of the Well; the Deity of the Hearth; the Goddess of the Sun at her Shrine in Ise, at her forty sub-shrines and at her eighty branch-shrines; the Deity of Rain; the Deity of the Wind; the Deity of the Moon; the Deity of the Sun; all the deities of divine seats of government and of the Great Shrine of Idzumo; the ninety-eight thousand and seven gods and the thirteen thousand and four denizens of Buddhist sanctuaries. Vouchsafe the divine presence. Teach us so that there shall be no lack of knowledge. Oh, God of the Bow! Oh, Spirits of our relatives! Oh, Souls of parents! Man may change; water may be transformed, but this bow, five feet in length, is immutable. Let the bow twang once and its sound will reach the sacred place in every temple.""

The Ichiko's function as a medium of penetrating the thoughts of other persons, living or dead, is little utilised in modern times, but the sick often appeal to her, and it is beyond doubt that many faith cures are effected by her influence.

No form of superstition is more general than the belief that each individual has special reason to apprehend misfortune at certain periods of his existence,—the twenty-fifth, forty-second, and sixty-first years of life in the case of men, and the nineteenth, thirty-third, and thirty-seventh in the case of women. During these unlucky years