Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/319

Rh scrambled for by the spectators. These were carried away and pasted up over the doors as a charm against pestilence. At the present day, the popular form of tsuina consists in scattering parched beans with the cry, "Oni ha soto: fuku ha uchi," that is, "Out with the devils and in with the luck." The former phrase is uttered in a loud voice, the latter in a low tone. This office should properly be discharged by the head of the family, but it is frequently delegated to a servant. The performer is called the toshi-otoko, or year-man. In the Shōgun's palace a specially appointed toshi-otoko sprinkled parched beans in all the principal rooms. These beans were picked up by the women of the palace, who wrapped them in paper in number equal to the years of their age, and then flung them backwards out of doors. Sometimes tsuina beans were gathered by people who had reached an unlucky year (yaku-toshi), one for each year of their age and one over, and wrapped in paper with a small copper coin, which had been rubbed over their body to transfer the ill-luck. These were placed in a bamboo tube and flung away at cross-roads. This was called yaku-sute (flinging away ill-luck). Other people pass under seven tori-wi as an antidote.

The significance of the peach and bean in this ceremony has been already explained. The vulgar notion is that the beans hit the devils in the eye and blind them. A more philosophical theory is that the beans dispel the inaku no ki, or female evil influences, and welcome in the sei-yō, green male influences. By the female influences are here meant wintry influences; by male influences those of spring.

Mr. J. G. Frazer, in 'The Golden Bough,' iii. 67, second edition, gives an interesting account of another Japanese form of this custom.

The tsuina is only a special form of a world-wide ceremony. We may compare with it the Roman Lemuria, a