Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/268

 "man" inscribed on it; or a peach-stone divided into two parts, one with the ideograph "able" written on it, the other with the ideograph "emerge." If the halves of a soja bean are swallowed, the character i having been traced on one and the character se on the other, then, should a male child be born, it will hold the bean in his left hand, whereas a female child will have it in her right. These are but a few of the many superstitions connected with childbirth and childhood, but in general the details do not lend themselves to narration.

Quaint methods of dealing with ordinary maladies are also practised. Bleeding at the nose is supposed to be checked by placing on the head a piece of paper folded into eight and dipped in freshly drawn well-water. A hiccough is driven away by applying under the knee a sheet of hanshi, folded to the left in the case of a man and to the right in the case of a woman. It is essential, however, that this aid should be rendered without the knowledge of the sufferer. Paralysis may be cured by putting on the tip of the nose dust gathered from a floor-mat and saying, "Take a trip to the capital;" a pain in the head, by placing on the pate a saucer containing a burning moxa; and toothache, by fumigating the tooth with the smoke of calcined Nandina domestica. If a fish bone sticks in the throat, the phrase "A descendant of Sayemon Kenjuro of Izumo"