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174 of Ching Khang-ch'ing [a commentator of the second century], who said … that 'with brooms ["bundles of reeds"] obnoxious things may be swept away.' … I have not heard or read of the use of twigs or brooms [as protections] at visits of condolence in later times; but the hanging out of brooms at doors about New Year's time is mentioned frequently in books. Many families are in the habit of performing a kind of pretence sweeping with a broom on the last day of the year, rather intending the removal of evil than that of filth. A broom with a basket to receive the sweepings is sometimes fastened to the top of a bamboo pole on the roof of a house, … [lest] the house may become a prey to sié. … Small brooms are often suspended by careful mothers to the bed-curtains of their babies. … I have seen in South Fuhkien people who had swooned being beaten with brooms to expel the devil that held the soul in his grip." We shall have occasion to observe some examples of other Chinese employments of brooms, in magic, in connection with our further examinations of Japanese practices.

In Japan, when the year-end sweeping ceremonies were carried out at the Shogun's Court, the broom used had its functions extended beyond the mere dispersal of evil influences, for two aged court-officials "proceeded through all the apartments, flourishing the sweeping pole in a certain way, for they had to write, merely by imitative motions, the Chinese ideograph for 'water' upon the ceiling, so that the calamity of fire might not overtake the buildings." A very similar idea occurs in the use of roof-tiles, marked at their exposed and decorative ends with the "water" character, for the purpose of securing protection against conflagration; and in that of the same character deeply cut in the straw at the end of the thatch of a