Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/322

312 festival for the souls of the dead, in which the celebrators threw black beans nine times behind their backs, believing by this ceremony to secure themselves against the Lemures. Some of my readers may have witnessed the Scotch Hogmanay, when the house is thrice circumambulated on the last day of the year in order to frighten away devils. In Lady Burton's life of her husband she tells us that at Trieste on St. Sylvester's Eve, the servants went through a very usual ceremony of forming procession and chevying the evil spirits with sticks and brooms out of the house, inviting the good spirits and good luck to come and dwell there. This is curiously like the Japanese formula just quoted. At Chæronea, in Bœotia, the chief magistrate at the town hall and every householder in his own house, as we learn from Plutarch, had on a certain day to beat a slave with rods of agnus castus, and turn him out of doors, with the formula, "Out hunger! in health and wealth." The "expulsion of winter" of Teutonic and Slavonic folk-lore belongs to the same class of customs. It should be remembered that the Japanese New Year was later than our own, and was recognized as the beginning of spring.

I must not quote further from the extensive literature of this subject. The reader is referred to 'The Golden Bough,' second edition, vol. iii. pp. 39 et seqq., for a rich collection of evidence relating to it.

New Year in Modern Japan.—Although most of the New Year's observances in modern Japan belong to the province of popular magic rather than of Shinto, some general account of them may not be out of place here. The preparations begin on the thirteenth day of the last month, which is therefore called koto-hajime (beginning of things). On this day people eat okotojiru, a kind of stew, whose ingredients are generally red beans, potatoes, mushrooms, sliced fish, and a root called konnyaku. Presents of money are made to servants at this time. About the same date there is a partly real, partly ceremonial house-cleaning