Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/453

Rh have brought down a maiden from the moon to do penance on earth amid various picturesque scenes. But the genuinely popular imagination of the present day allows only of a hare in the moon, which keeps pounding away at rice in a mortar to make into cakes. The idea of the hare was borrowed from China; but the rice-cakes seem to be native, and to have their origin in a pun,—the same word mochi happening to have the two acceptations of "rice-cake" and "full moon." The sun is supposed to be inhabited by a three-legged crow,—also a Chinese notion. Hence the expression kin-u gyoku-to, "the golden crow and the jewelled hare," is a periphrasis for the sun and moon.

Far more important than the sun to esthetic persons is the moon. Of all subjects, this is the one on which Japanese poets and romance-writers most constantly dwell, one of them emphatically asserting that "all griefs can be assuaged by gazing at the moon." People still worship the crescent, each time it is first seen; but the greatest nights of the lunar year are the 26th of the 7th moon, the 15th of the 8th moon, and the 13th of the 9th moon, Old Calendar, which roughly correspond to dates some five or six weeks later according to our calendar, and thus include the three moons of the autumn trimester. On the 26th night of the 7th moon, people in Tōkyō visit the tea-houses at Atagoyama or those on the sea-shore of Takanawa, and sit up till a very late, or rather early, hour to see the moon rise over the water, drinking sake the while, and composing verses appropriate to the sentimental character of the scene. The 15th night of the 8th moon, which is no other than our harvest-moon at the full, is celebrated by an offering of beans and dumplings and of bouquets of eulalia-grass and lespedeza blossom. This moon is termed the "bean moon." The 13th night of the 9th moon sees offerings of the same bouquets, of dumplings, and of chestnuts. It is termed the "chestnut moon."

The stars are much less admired and written about in Japan than in Europe. No Japanese bard has ever apostrophised them as "the poetry of heaven." The only fable worth mentioning