Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/203

Rh Fire, kindled from kedzurikake after prayer, was given out to the people by the priests of Gion in Kiōto on the last day of the year. It was transferred to a slow match, and used for rekindling the household fires, the object being to prevent pestilence during the coming year. The mythical burning of a wobashira (also a phallic emblem) by Izanagi in Yomi was probably suggested by some such custom. It will be observed that the prophylactic virtue of the phallus has not been forgotten in the kedzurikake.

The kedzurikake are sometimes described as the shintai of Dōsōjin, and are placed on the domestic altar to be worshipped as his representative. They are also, by a known confusion of ideas, presented to the Gods as offerings. The Ainus of Yezo, who have adopted the kedzurikake as the general form of offering to their Gods at all times, and attach to it no phallic signification, were no doubt familiar with this use of it by their Japanese neighbours. It is by them called inao or nusa, the latter being the old Japanese word for offering. The facility with which such offerings could be prepared by savages must have been a recommendation.

The two cylindrical shingi, or "divine sticks," eight or nine inches in circumference and one foot long, thrown to the crowd by the priests of Seidaiji, near Okayama, on the night of the 14th day of the 1st month, and called o fuku (luck), to keep off pestilence and bring prosperity, are probably of phallic origin.

The gruel partaken of at the Sahe no Kami_Jestiyal on the 15th of the 1st month was made of rice, and was coloured with an admixture of the small red bean called adzuki. The bean is a well-known synonym in Japan for