SOME ASPECTS OF RURAL JAPAN 



281 



£«:"■+. - - S 



Photograph from Jill Jones 



milady's silk frock in its truly embryonic stage 



"The honorable little gentleman," as the Japanese call the silk-worm, contributes $100,000,000 

 to the annual income of the Mikado's people. During the period of its intensive cultivation its 

 voracious appetite keeps whole households busy satisfying its mulberry-leaf needs. 



and is commonly identified with her serv- 

 ant the fox. 



In view of the all-importance of rice to 

 the whole nation, it is natural that this 

 divinity should be held in such honor, not 

 to say dread, and we find that these festal 

 gatherings partake of the nature of a com- 

 bination of communion, eucharist, and 

 love-feast. Papers stamped with the pic- 

 ture of a fox are pasted on cottage doors 

 as charms of exceptional potency. 



This animal is credited with super- 

 natural powers of bewitchment, and the 

 belief in Kitsune tsuki — "Fox-posses- 

 sion" — is very real and widespread. It 

 belongs to a class of folk-lore and super- 

 stition of which little is known outside 

 their own country, and but half acknowl- 

 edged by the educated Japanese them- 

 selves, though it is of much psychological 

 and scientific interest to the student and 

 the medical man. 



HONOR FOR THE POWERFUL RIVER GODDESS 



Japan is one of the most richly watered 

 countries in the world, and as nearly 



every swift-flowing river and impetuous 

 mountain torrent has its own presiding 

 divinity, we are not surprised to find 

 them credited with power to hurt or help 

 the lands through which their waters 

 pass. 



In districts liable to damage through 

 inundations, services of intercession are 

 held in the third month, our April, at 

 popular shrines like those of the River 

 Goddess of Kofu, in the broad and fertile 

 plain of Koshu, in central Japan. 



The goddess is taken out for an airing 

 in her sacred car and earnest supplica- 

 tions are addressed to her for the pro- 

 tection of the fields and farms of the 

 peasantry in the coming days when, with 

 the melting of the winter snows and the 

 storms of early summer and autumn, 

 the myriad mountain torrents swell the 

 parent rivers on their resistless course 

 through the cultivated plains to their wide 

 and populated deltas at the sea. 



The month of May sees the country- 

 side under its brightest, busiest, and most 

 varied aspects, and in all its activities 



