Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/95

Rh soon as a broomstick is set up on its handle or a pinch of moxa is burnt on his clogs; upon sneezing, the shoulders should be tapped three times to prevent the sneezer’s catching cold; biting the thumb before sleeping is an infallible charm against nightmare; a sufferer from headache should, to get rid of it, bind his head with a paper-twine, which is afterwards taken off and put into a mokugyo (a hollow, fish-shaped wooden block which is beaten when prayers are recited); aged persons provide against failing memory by passing through seven different shrine-gates on the spring or autumn equinox; the surest way to draw a prize at a lottery is to steal an article of daily use from a friend’s house and take it to the lottery-room; it is, however, added that the article should afterwards be as stealthily returned. To prevent the escape of a fugitive, needles are driven into the feet of a picture of Daikoku, one of the gods of fortune, obtained from the temple of Chuzenji, at Nikko; a picture of a cat by Nitta Manjiro, a descendant of a famous loyalist general in the fourteenth century, will, if hung on a wall, keep rats at a distance; a thief, by inverting a wash-tub before entering a house, plunges its inmates into profound sleep during his depredations; an incantation against noxious insects written with an infusion of Indian ink in liquorice water on the eighth day of the fourth moon, Buddha’s birthday, will prevent their entrance at every doorway or window where it is posted; a baby’s crying at night is effectually stopped by hanging over its bed a picture of a devil praying to Buddha and beating a prayer-gong; a snake-gourd from which the flower has just fallen off preserved in rice-bran, will, if given to an innocent child, prevent his taking to dissipation when grown up; immunity from measles, when they are prevalent, is ensured by the child’s putting over its head for a few moments the bucket of the sacred horse at a shrine.

Fortune-telling was practised in Japan from very ancient times. The first form of divination recorded in history