452 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
Numerous observers have reported the practice of holding spring 
festivals by these people for the promotion of the fertility of their 
fields. At these gatherings a bull or water buffalo, previously chosen 
and fattened for sacrifice, is made to fight another animal of the same 
species. The contestants are first infuriated with strong drink, and 
if the one predestined for sacrifice is the victor, the omen is regarded 
as a favorable one. In a slightly variant form the contesting bulls 
represent different clans, and it is the victor which is sacrificed. The 
flesh is eaten at a ceremonial banquet, to the accompaniment of much 
hard drinking, and the horns are preserved, being sometimes, al- 
though not invariably, fastened to poles or trees, where incense is 
burned before them at intervals. 
The coast lands of China from the Yangtse southward have never 
been fully assimilated by the Chinese proper of the Yellow River 
basin, and many aboriginal customs are still kept up. Among these 
is that of bullfighting, particularly in vogue in that Ningpo region 
where the powerful non-Chinese kingdom of Yiieh had its seat down 
nearly to the close of the fourth century B. C..° The reason at 
present alleged for the custom is “ to take the spirit of combativeness 
out of the air, so that all may live in harmony ”—a highly desirable 
consummation where clan fights are as rife as they are here. The 
fact, however, that these fights are held in the spring would appear 
to link them, in their origin at least, with the fertility rites found 
elsewhere in connection with the practice. Before leaving this region 
it will not be without interest to recall that an attempt was made, 
during the summer of 1919, to introduce this type of bullfight into 
Shanghai as a popular amusement. 
For Japan proper I have not yet found the ritual bullfight of either 
type recorded, though in view of the extent to which that country 
has borrowed her ceremonial practices from the continent I should 
not be at all surprised to learn that the custom of “beating the 
spring ox” occurs there also. There is, however, indirect evidence 
that the second form, where two bulls are the contestants, existed 
there at one time. Domestic cattle appear first to have been im- 
ported into Japan, almost certainly from Korea, about the fourth 
or fifth century of the Christian era, and it is possible that the 
absence of a genuine agricultural tradition, or the spread shortly 
afterward of the humanitarian faith of Buddhism, prevented the 
custom from taking root. That it was actually introduced, however, 
along with domestic cattle and irrigated rice growing, seems certain 
from the fact that it still exists, or did until recently, in the little 
islets of Oshima (Vries Island of the foreign residents) and Hachijo, 
16 W,. A. P. Martin, A Cycle of Cathay, pp. 95 et seq. Further and more detailed infor- 
mation regarding the Chekiang bull fights would be most welcome. 
