Lafcadio Hearn

1 Such are the names given to the water-vessels or cisterns at which Shinto worshippers must wash their hands and rinse their mouths ere praying to the Kami. A mitarashi or o-chozubachi is placed before every Shinto temple. The pilgrim to Shin-Kukedo-San should perform this ceremonial ablution at the little rock-spring above described, before entering the sacred cave. Here even the gods of the cave are said to wash after having passed through the seawater.

2 August Fire-Lady'; or, 'the August Sun-Lady,' Amaterasu-oho-mi-Kami.

Seki wa yoi toko, Asahi wo ukete; O-Yama arashiga Soyo-soyoto! (SONG OF MIONOSEKI.)

[Seki is a goodly place, facing the morning sun. There, from the holy mountains, the winds blow softly, softly - soyosoyoto.]

1

THE God of Mionoseki hates eggs, hen's eggs. Likewise he hates hens and chickens, and abhors the Cock above all living creatures. And in Mionoseki there are no cocks or hens or chickens or eggs. You could not buy a hen's egg in that place even for twenty times its weight in gold.

1 Mionoseki

2 Zashiki, the best and largest room of a Japanese dwelling - the guest- room of a private house, or the banquet-room of a public inn.

1

KITZUKI, July 20, 1891.

AKIRA is no longer with me. He has gone to Kyoto, the holy Buddhist city, to edit a Buddhist magazine; and I already feel without him like one who has lost his way - despite his reiterated assurances that he could never be of much service to me in Izumo, as he knew nothing about Shinto.

1 Fourteenth of August.

2 In the pretty little seaside hotel Inaba-ya, where I lived during my stay in Kitzuki, the kind old hostess begged her guests with almost tearful earnestness not to leave the house during the Minige.

3 There are ten rin to one sen, and ten mon to one rin, on one hundred to one sen. The majority of the cheap toys sold at the matsuri cost from two to nine rin. The rin is a circular copper coin with a square hole in the middle for stringing purposes.

by Lafcadio Hearn

"Perhaps all very marked national characters can be traced back
to a time of rigid and pervading discipline" - WALTER BAGEHOT.

by Lafcadio Hearn