Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/207



subject of Japanese magic has been already treated by me briefly in Shinto (The Way of the Gods), and the present paper does little more than add a few gleanings left over from the main harvest. They are taken chiefly from two Japanese books of "wonderful arts" which are a strange medley of household receipts and magic. We are told, for example, on one page that, if a man wishes to know whether a fascinating musŭme is not in reality a fox who is luring him to disgrace or destruction, he should obtain her reflection in an old mirror, upon which her vulpine form will be revealed. The very next item is "How to have large, handsome and well-flavoured oranges:—Thin them out freely at an early stage of their growth."

One Japanese lexicographer defines magic (majinai) as the "healing of disease by borrowing the power of Kami or Buddhas," while another describes it as "the keeping off of calamity by the aid of the supernatural power of Kami and Buddhas." Worse definitions it would be difficult to give, though perhaps the famous description of a crab as a small red fish which only walks backwards may be quoted as a parallel. In reality it is but rarely that the Kami and Buddhas are utilized by the Japanese magician. The healing of disease is only one of his many objects, and "the keeping off of calamity" is also a very inadequate description.