480 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



the same manner as above described, using the drinking apparatus 

 which was set before the bear. Tbe others followed, and soon a good 

 portion of the company was lying helplessly drunk upon the mats. The 

 older men far excelled the younger in excessive drinking. 



Turning now to the women, the sorrow which they, especially the 

 older women, manifested when the bear was crushed, soon passed off 

 and gave place to general hilarity which, since they did not despise the 

 sake, increased at times to ecstacy. They gave themselves up to the 

 pleasures of the dance, in which only short breathing spells were allowed. 



The older women showed themselves the more vigorous and wildest 

 dancers. 



Meanwhile the feast had reached its height, and the young men who 

 had led the bear from the cage, mounted to the roof of a house in order 

 to throw millet cake from a basket among the people. 



The bear is usually cut up on the following day, when the company 

 again assembles to continue the drinking bout. After the animal is 

 skinned and disemboweled, the legs and trunk are separated from the 

 head, which remains in the skin. One of the young Ainos acted as 

 butcher, while the others stood or sat around. The blood was caught 

 by these in cups and greedily drunk. The liver was taken out, cut in 

 small pieces, and eaten raw with salt. The flesh and other entrails were 

 preserved in the house, to be divided among the participants in the 

 feast on the following day. During this work the women danced around 

 the sacred hedge, as they did around the cage at the beginning of the 

 feast. 



The bear's head, within the skin, was placed before the hedge and 

 decorated in the same manner as the body was adorned before, one inao 

 being added, and a general drink-offering was made. At the end of 

 this the skin was drawn from the skull, leaving such as adheres to the 

 snout and ears. In the left side of the back skull-bone of male bears, 

 in the right side of females, an opening is made, through which the 

 brains are removed. These are divided in the cups, mixed with sake, 

 and drunk. The skull is then filled with shavings. The eyes were 

 takeu out and the orbital fat was bitten off and eaten by the young 

 butcher. The eyes were wrapped in shavings and returned to their 

 sockets. The mouth was stuffed with bamboo leaves and the skull 

 decorated with shavings. The skull was again returned to the skin, 

 and both, with sword, quiver, inao, and the piece of wood which the bear 

 held in his mouth when he was crushed,were laid before the hedge. After 

 another drink-offering the skull was raised upon a pole in the hedge, 

 (Fig. 88,) which terminated in a forked end, and the entire company of 

 men and women, singing and crying, danced before it. The pole had 

 also an inao on either side of its upper forked end, and bamboo leaves 

 attached. Beneath the skull, the piece of wood from the bear's mouth 

 was fixed crosswise, and from it the sword and quiver were suspended. 

 The two latter are usually removed in the course of an hour. A final 



