The tsuina is only a special form of a world-wide ceremony. We may compare with it the Roman Lemuria, a festival for the souls of the dead, in which the celebrators threw black beans nine times behind their backs, believing by this ceremony to secure themselves against the Lemures. Some of my readers may have witnessed the Scotch Hogmanay, when the house is thrice circumambulated on the last day of the year in order to frighten away devils. In Lady Burton's life of her husband she tells us that at Trieste on St. Sylvester's Eve, the servants went through a very usual ceremony of forming procession and chevying the evil spirits with sticks and brooms out of the house, inviting the good spirits and good luck to come and dwell there. This is curiously like the Japanese formula just quoted. At Chæronea, in Bœotia, the chief magistrate at the town hall and every householder in his own house, as we learn from Plutarch, had on a certain day to beat a slave with rods of agnus castus, and turn him out of doors, with the formula, "Out hunger! in health and wealth." The "expulsion of winter" of Teutonic and Slavonic folklore belongs to the same class of customs. It should be remembered that the Japanese New Year was later than our own, and was recognized as the beginning of spring.
I must not quote further from the extensive literature of this subject. The reader is referred to 'The Golden Bough,' second edition, vol. iii. pp. 39 et seqq., for a rich collection of evidence relating to it.
New Year in Modern Japan.--Although most of the New Year's observances in modern Japan belong to the province of popular magic rather than of Shinto, some general account of them may not be out of place here. The preparations begin on the thirteenth day of the last month, which is therefore called koto-hajime (beginning of things). On this day people eat okotojiru, a kind of stew, whose ingredients are generally red beans, potatoes, mushrooms, sliced fish, and a root called konnyaku. Presents of money are made to servants at this time. About the same date there is a partly real, partly ceremonial house-cleaning called susu-harahi (soot-sweeping). The other preparations for the New Year consist in decorating the front entrance by planting at each side of it small fir-trees, with which bamboos are frequently joined. Both of these symbolize an ever-green prosperity. A shimenaha is hung over the door or gate, attached to which are fern leaves, and yudzuri-ha (Daphniphyllum macropodum) with daidai (a kind of bitter orange). Daidai also means ages, generations, so that this is a sort of punning prayer for long life and the continuance of the family. The prawn, which forms part of the decorations, is supposed by its curved back to suggest old age. Sometimes holly leaves, of which the prickles are thought, as in Europe, obnoxious to demons, bean pods, and a head of a salt sardine (ihashi) are added. On the domestic shrine is placed an offering of unleavened cakes of glutinous pounded rice, the preparation of which is a matter for much fun and excitement. These cakes are called kagami-mochi, or mirror-cakes, on account of their shape, which is that of a flattened sphere. There are two of them. One is said to represent the sun, the yō, or male principle of Chinese philosophy, the parent and the husband, while the other is put for the moon, the female principle, the child and the wife. The kagami-mochi is also called the ha-gatame mochi (tooth-hardening cake) because it fortifies the constitution. The explanation given is that the Chinese character for ha, "tooth," also means "age."
The tsuina on the last day of the year is described above.
The first act of the New Year is for the toshi-otoko to proceed at dawn to the well or stream whence the household water is supplied. He throws into it a small offering of rice, and draws water in a new pail crowned with shime-naha. To drink this water, called waka-midzu or young water, brings luck and exemption from disease during the year.
On New Year's day zōni, a stew of various kinds of vegetables is eaten and a spiced sake called toso is drunk and offered to visitors. No work is done. Visits are exchanged between friends, and formal calls made on superiors. The phrase Shinnen o medetô gozarimasu (New Year's congratulations to you) is in everybody's mouth. The ujigami are visited and also the Shinto temples which lie in the direction (ehô) indicated by the cyclic name of the year. Thus the year of the Hare is associated with the East. The Gods who preside over this particular year are called the Toshi-toku-jin (year-virtue-Gods).
In some places a lamp, consisting of a coarse earthenware saucer with a wick, is lighted at the New Year in honour of the God of the Privy. Sick people at this time throw away their stockings or drawers on a frequented road, and if any one picks them up they expect to recover. Samurai boys receive presents of hamayumi (devil-quelling bows).
The seventh of the first month is called Nanakusa, or seven herbs, because in ancient times people went out into the country to gather wild pot-herbs which were made into a mess with rice and eaten on this day.
The New Year's celebrations end with the Sahe no Kami festival (now called dondo or sagichô) on the fourteenth or fifteenth of the first month, when the decorations above described are made the material for a bonfire.[281]
Tatari-gami wo utsushi-tatematsuru norito (service for the respectful removal of deities who send a curse).--This norito (No. 25) is long, but it contains nothing worthy of special notice. The mischievous deities are reminded of the divine right of the Mikado, and of the quelling by Futsunushi and Takemika-dzuchi of the evil beings who plagued Japan before the descent of Ninigi. Offerings of cloth, a mirror, jewels, bows and arrows, swords, a horse, sake, rice in ear and in grain, and various kinds of flesh and vegetables, are set before them, with the request that they should retire to enjoy these good things in some pure spot among the hills and streams and remain there, rather than work curses and violence in the Palace.