Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/57

 Chinese legends speak of three islands in some remote ocean where youth is everlasting, where birds and animals are all pure white, and where the mountains and palaces are built of gold and silver. The "elysian stand" (hōrai-dai) represents the principal of these three islands (hōrai-jima), and the viands piled upon it are either homonymous with words expressing perpetuity and longevity, or present some feature suggesting long life and prosperity. Thus the leaves spread upon the stand are from the shrub yuzuriha, and on them repose bitter oranges called daidai. But in ordinary colloquial, daidai yuzuri signifies to "bequeath from generation to generation." The kernels of chestnuts, dried and crushed, are called kachi-guri, and kachi also signifies "victory." The lobster (ebi), with its curved back and long tentacles, is typical of life so prolonged that the back becomes bent and the beard grows to the waist. The sea-weed (kombu) is a rebus for yoro-kobu, or yoro kombu, to "rejoice." Sardines are set out because the little fish swim never singly but always in pairs, suggesting conjugal fidelity; herring roe, because of all the sea's inhabitants the herring is supposed to be the most prolific; dried persimmons, because of the fruit's medicinal qualities; and rice-cake, otherwise called "mirror-dumpling (kagami-mochi), because, in the first place, its shape and name refer to the "sacred mirror" of the Shintō paraphernalia, and, in the second, when cut up for consumption it is known as