Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/231

Rh ''a profound mystery by the priestly house. Of late years couriers have been caught and subjected to purification. This was put a stop to. The custom is celebrated yearly, so that nowadays everybody is aware of it, and there are no passers-by. Therefore the priests go to a neighbouring village and seize a man. If they catch nobody on the 11th, they bring in a man on the 12th''."

The Nawoye (rectification) festival had probably the same intention as the Harahi, namely, to obtain absolution from ritual impurity, and the captive is therefore apparently a scape-goat. As readers of Mr. Frazer's 'Golden Bough' need not be told, the custom has numerous parallels in European folk-lore. There is some difficulty in applying the principle of substitution for an actual human sacrifice to a custom which was in force so recently. It does not appear probable that it could have descended from such a remote antiquity as the time when real human sacrifice was known in Japan. Might not the instinct of dramatic make-believe alone account for it? Confucius condemned the practice of offering effigies of men on funeral occasions because he thought it led to the substitution of living victims.

Slaves.—Another form of human offerings was the dedication of slaves to the service of a shrine. Such slaves were called kami-tsu-ko, and are to be distinguished from the kamube, who were freemen. The gift by the legendary Yamatodake to a shrine of a number of Yemishi (eastern savages) whom he had captured is to be understood in this sense. There is a more historical instance in the Nihongi, under the date A.D. 469, when a seamstress was presented to the shrine of Ohonamochi. In 562 a man was allowed to be given over to the hafuri as a slave for the service of the Gods instead of being burnt alive for a criminal offence committed by his father.

Horses.—Presents of horses to shrines are often men-