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Rh opinion that the idea of the necessity of counting is an accretion masking the conception originally underlying the use of the broom in the case cited, there seems to me room for a possibility that a similar association of the broom with indefiniteness, and thus with immunity from the attack of a supernatural being, may occur in Japan and as a factor in the employment there of the broom for the laying of reanimated corpses.

We have observed above that if a living person be struck with a bamboo-broom, the striking is thought to be exceedingly insulting, and serious harm of some kind to that person the possible consequence of it [Yokohama]. Death within three years is sometimes specified as the result of being struck with a broom, but the menace is probably not intended to be taken too literally, because death within the same period is threatened to one who is besprinkled with chōzu-mizu (the water standing near