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Infants under three months are not mourned for, and the period of mourning for children is greatly reduced if they are under seven years of age.

Whenever a death occurs in the family of an official, he must at once report it to the Department to which he is attached. The theory is that he should remain at home during the whole of the proper period of mourning. But as this would cause inconvenience in practice, he is always absolved from the operation of the rule, and ordered to "attend office though in mourning." When any member of the Imperial family dies, a notification is issued prohibiting all sound of music throughout the land for the space of three days, and even for a longer period if the deceased personage stood very near the throne.

Periodical visits to the grave of the deceased—haka-mairi, as they are termed—form an essential part of the Japanese system of mourning. The days prescribed by custom for these visits are the seventh day after decease, the fourteenth, twenty-first, thirty-fifth, forty-ninth, and hundredth; then the first anniversary, the third anniversary, the seventh, thirteenth, seventeenth, twenty-third, twenty-seventh, thirty-third, thirty-seventh, fiftieth, and hundredth. On the more important of these occasions Buddhist services are performed, for instance, on the first and third anniversaries. By some, especially among the poorer classes, the whole of this extensive programme proves to be impossible of fulfilment, and even in the upper class not a few are now found who sensibly imitate Europe by moderating the outward symbols of grief; but the seventh and thirty-fifth days and the first and third anniversaries are never neglected. The observance of the anniversaries of several members of a family is sometimes lumped together when the dates nearly coincide, provided always