Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/50

 speed through the temple ground, plunge into the river below, and having thus purified themselves, return to the sacred enclosure by a different route. A second time the drum sounds at midnight, and fresh crowds of combatants pour through the temple grounds. In truth, from the first tap of the drum until its final note is heard at, streams of stalwart men never cease to surge between the temple and the river, their feet beating time to a chorus of esa, esa, the echoes of which can be heard on the opposite coast, twenty-five miles distant, "like the roar of surf breaking on rocks." Exactly at two o'clock the "divine wood" (shingi), a little cylinder of fresh pine, specially marked, is thrown from the temple window to the surging crowd, and a fierce struggle commences for its possession. One prize for some ten thousand competitors would be too meagre an arrangement. The shingi is therefore accompanied by hundreds of similar but smaller tokens (kushigo), which ensure fertility to farm-lands where they are set up, and health to the farmer's family. But the shingi itself is the great prize. The competition for its possession is not confined to the actual combatants. Wealthy households also vie with one another to obtain it, each setting out in the vestibule a box of fresh sand whither the divine wood must be carried before the contest is considered at an end. Thus the struggle extends to the streets of the town itself, and long after the shingi's fate has