Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/224

212 and after a childbirth, was regarded as unclean. Uncleanness in these cases means liability to dangers. Thus the woman just before a childbirth was confined to a "parturition house," in order to keep her separate from the rest of the family to avoid the spread of danger by contagion. More than birth, death was feared because of its accompanying uncleanness. The dead body and anything which came in contact with it were regarded as unclean and dangerous. How much the uncleanness of death was feared is plain from a very singular custom among the early Japanese of abandoning the old house together with the dead body whenever a death occurred in it. This explains the reason why coffin-carriers, grave-diggers, as well as butchers, were classed among the outcasts and were called "not-men."

The reason why the idea of uncleanness was associated with the idea of dangerousness was, in my opinion, because uncleanness was thought to be the enemy of the gods, and the gods can not be where any uncleanness exists. The gods are clean and pure, and those who are not clean and pure can not but forfeit the protection of the gods. Those who are not protected by the gods can easily be attacked and injured by the evil and unclean spirits, and hence the idea of danger came to be associated with the idea of uncleanness. This is perhaps made plainer by some concrete case. When I was a young boy, the custom of eating beef began to spread. As blood was regarded as unclean, and also as Japan had been a strong agricultural country, there was a very deep-rooted disinclination to eat beef. In this, of course, one has also to recognize the influence of the vegetarian principle of Buddhism. But to anybody who had ever tasted beef, it was so delicious that he could hardly control his natural appetite by his religious scruple. My father was one of those who knew its taste, and so now and then we used to treat ourselves to beef. But where did we eat it? We did not eat it inside of the house. We cooked and ate it in the open air, and in cooking and in eating we did not use the ordinary utensils but used the special ones kept for the purpose. Why all these things? Because beef was unclean, and we did not like to spread this uncleanness into our house wherein the "gods-shelf" is kept, and into our ordinary utensils which might be used in making offerings to the gods. The day when we ate beef my father did not offer lights to the gods nor say evening prayers to them, as he did usually, for he knew he was unclean and could not approach the gods. Then my mother, who did not and could not eat beef till very recently, did these things; and I, who used to partake of the new dainty dish, often went to bed feeling as if I was unclean and subject to dangers.

As the gods hate uncleanness, temples, temple utensils, and all