Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/129

Rh or two, and sometimes the patient is unconscious of what has happened.

"To mention but one among several cases, I was once called in to a girl with typhoid fever. She recovered; but during her convalescence, she heard the women around her talk of another woman who had a fox, and who would doubtless do her best to pass it on to some one else, in order to be rid of it. At that moment the girl experienced an extraordinary sensation. The fox had taken possession of her. All her efforts to get rid of him were vain. "He is coming! he is coming!" she would cry, as a fit of the fox drew near. "Oh! what shall I do? Here he is!" And then, in a strange, dry, cracked voice, the fox would speak, and mock his unfortunate hostess. Thus matters continued for three weeks, till a priest of the Nichiren sect was sent for. The priest upbraided the fox sternly. The fox (always, of course, speaking through the girl's mouth) argued on the other side. At last he said: "I am tired of her. I ask no better than to leave her. What will you give me for doing so?; The priest asked what he would take. The fox replied, naming certain cakes and other things, which, said he, must be placed before the altar of such and such a temple, at 4 p.m., on such a day. The girl was conscious of the words her lips were made to frame, but was powerless to say anything in her own person. When the day and hour arrived, the offerings bargained for were taken by her relations to the place indicated, and the fox quitted the girl at that very hour.

"A curious scene of a somewhat similar nature may occasionally be witnessed at Minobu, the romantically situated chief temple of the Nichiren sect, some two days journey from Tōkyō into the interior. There the people sit praying for hours before the gigantic statues of the ferocious-looking gods called Ni-ō, which are fabled to have been carried thither from Kamakura in a single night on the back of the hero Asaina some six hundred years ago. The devotees sway their bodies backwards and forwards, and ceaselessly repeat the same invocation, "Namu