Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/263

 pious people inaugurated the custom of visiting the temple of Temman at the hour of the bird on the night of the 7th of January, and offering effigies of the uso. The priests distributed new effigies in exchange, and among the latter was one covered with gold-foil. The devotee to whose lot this gilded bullfinch happened to fall counted himself secure for a year against all dangers or consequences of deception. In the beginning of the present century the custom was extended to Tōkyō, where it is widely observed up to the present time. The wooden uso is carved from the sacred sakaki ().  —Agents (keiwan) for the hire of domestic servants constitute a numerous and, for the most part, an unscrupulous class. Their occupation includes also letting and selling of houses and lands, but recourse to their services is avoided as much as possible by respectable folks. They depend for their fees on the success of the business entrusted to them, and it is well understood that female servants may be "procured" from a keiwan for purposes other than domestic employment.  —Japanese tradition says that it was invented by an Indian prince during a period of imprisonment. The hybrid nature of the name sugoroku indicates a foreign origin.  —There existed among the foreign residents at the Treaty Ports an apprehension that when they passed under Japanese jurisdiction, they would be liable to have their houses entered by the police, and the players of an innocent game of whist hauled to prison. There was no basis for such a forecast. The Japanese police cannot enter any private house without a warrant, and the possibilities of playing cards at social réunions without interruption are quite as large in Japan as in Europe or America.  —The ox-headed monarch (Gozu) is often represented in Japanese pictorial and decorative art. He had passed through three cycles of existence, and ruled the stars before he descended to govern India, but perhaps because he was such a great personage, perhaps because he had the aspect of a demon and horns of a bull, he found difficulty in procuring a wife. At last, obeying the directions of a little bird with a dove-like voice, he set off for the dragon god's palace in the southern seas. He 