Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/72

 terminated with the burning of the decorations. But there remains one observance never forgotten or curtailed. It belongs to the 20th, is called "the first face," and consists in offerings of rice dumplings (mochi) by the fair sex to their toilet mirrors, just as on the 11th the samurai makes a similar offering to his armour. While maids and matrons pay this vicarious homage to their own charms, merchants worship the deities of prosperity, Ebisu and Daikoku, the main feature of their worship being a display of profuse hospitality to friends and relatives,—a veritable housewarming.

It will be observed that the gods do not play a very prominent part in Japan's New-Year observances. People do not turn their feet to the temples, nor do the priests deliver sermons to large audiences. At the close of the month (24th and 25th), however, there is a faint revival of religious sentiment. The shrines of Emma, the deity of Hades, are visited, and the more superstitious carry with them little wooden carvings of a bullfinch, which they have carefully kept during the old year and which they now exchange at the shrines for new effigies; thus divesting themselves of the burden of their sins of deceit during the past twelvemonth and receiving a token of renewed sincerity and renewed expiation throughout the opening year. This is another example of those quaint plays upon words probably inevitable among people speaking a lan-