It may be asked how is the invisible presence of Bimbogami to be detected.
The little insect which makes that weird ticking noise at night called in England the Death-watch has a Japanese relative named by the people Bimbomushi, or the 'Poverty-Insect.' It is said to be the servant of Bimbogami, the God of Poverty; and its ticking in a house is believed to signal the presence of that most unwelcome deity.
Sec. 6
One more feature of the Setsubun festival is worthy of mention—the sale of the hitogata ('people-shapes'). These: are little figures, made of white paper, representing men, women, and children. They are cut out with a few clever scissors strokes; and the difference of sex is indicated by variations in the shape of the sleeves and the little paper obi. They are sold in the Shinto temples. The purchaser buys one for every member of the family—the priest writing upon each the age and sex of the person for whom it is intended. These hitogata are then taken home and distributed; and each person slightly rubs his body or her body with the paper, and says a little Shinto prayer. Next day the hitogata are returned to the kannushi, who, after having recited certain formulae over them, burns them with holy fire. [6] By this ceremony it is hoped that all physical misfortunes will be averted from the family during a year.
Chapter Six By the Japanese Sea
Sec. 1
IT is the fifteenth day of the seventh month—and I am in Hokii.
The blanched road winds along a coast of low cliffs—the coast of the Japanese Sea. Always on the left, over a narrow strip of stony land, or a heaping of dunes, its vast expanse appears, blue-wrinkling to that pale horizon beyond which Korea lies, under the same white sun. Sometimes, through sudden gaps in the cliff's verge, there flashes to us the running of the surf. Always upon the right another sea—a silent sea of green, reaching to far misty ranges of wooded hills, with huge pale peaks behind them—a vast level of rice-fields, over whose surface soundless waves keep chasing each other under the same great breath that moves the blue to-day from Chosen to Japan.
Though during a week the sky has remained unclouded, the sea has for several days been growing angrier; and now the muttering of its surf sounds far into the land. They say that it always roughens thus during the period of the Festival of the Dead—the three days of the Bon, which are the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth of the seventh month by the ancient calendar. And on the sixteenth day, after the shoryobune, which are the Ships of Souls, have been launched, no one dares to enter it: no boats can then be hired; all the fishermen remain at home. For on that day the sea is the highway of the dead, who must pass back over its waters to their mysterious home; and therefore upon that day is it called Hotoke-umi—the Buddha-Flood—the Tide of the Returning Ghosts. And ever upon the night of that sixteenth day—whether the sea be calm or tumultuous—all its surface shimmers with faint lights gliding out to the open,—the dim fires of the dead; and there is heard a murmuring of voices, like the murmur of a city far-off,—the indistinguishable speech of souls.
Sec. 2