The chief ceremony was performed in the capital twice yearly, on the last days of the sixth and twelfth months. These dates are not chosen arbitrarily. There is a natural impulse at the close of the year to wipe out old scores and to make a fresh start with good resolutions. The tsuina,[250] or demon-expelling ceremonies, of the last day of the year, described below, are prompted by a similar motive. Tennyson gives expression to this feeling in his 'In Memoriam':--
"The year is dying in the night, Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. * * * * Ring out the false, ring in the true, * * * * Ring out the want, the care, the sin, * * * * Ring out old shapes of foul disease."
The summer celebration of the Oho-harahi is analogous to the custom of lustration, or bathing on St. John's Eve, formerly practised in Germany, Italy, and other countries.
The Chinese had an Oho-harahi, defined by Mr. Giles in his 'Chinese Dictionary' as "a religious ceremony of purification performed in spring and autumn, with a view to secure divine protection for agricultural interests." The Ainus of Yezo have a similar ceremony.[251]
The Oho-harahi was not confined to the last days of the sixth and twelfth months. It was performed as a preliminary to several of the great Shinto ceremonies, notably the Ohonihe, and on other emergencies, such as an outbreak of pestilence,[252] the finding of a dead body in the Palace (865), the officiating of a Nakatomi who had performed Buddhist rites (816), &c.
We learn from the regulations of the period Jōgwan (859-876) that at that time the ceremony was performed at the southern gate of the Kioto Palace, in front of which there was a canal. The purification offerings were set out before this gate. The officials took their seats in due order, the women being separated off by a curtain. The officials of the Jingikwan then distributed kiri-nusa[253] among the audience, upon which the Nakatomi took his place and recited the ritual, the officials responding Ô after every paragraph. When the purification was finished, the Oho-nusa ceremony was performed. It had also a purifying influence, and consisted, according to Dr. Florenz, in brandishing the Oho-nusa over the assembly, first to left, then to right, and then again to left.
The norito (No. 10 of the Yengishiki) is as follows:--
"He[254] says: 'Give ear, all ye Imperial Princes, Princes, Ministers of State, and functionaries who are here assembled, and hearken every one to the Great Purification by which at this year's interlune of the sixth (or twelfth) month he deigns to purge and absolve all manner of faults and transgressions which may have been committed by those who serve in the Imperial Court, whether they wear the scarf or the shoulder-strap, whether they bear on their back the quiver or gird on them the sword, the eighty attendants of the attendants, including, moreover, all those who do duty in the various offices of State.'"
"He says: 'Hearken, all of you. The Sovran dear ancestors,[255] who divinely dwell in the Plain of High Heaven, having summoned to an assembly the eight hundred myriads of deities, held divine counsel with them, and then gave command, saying: "Let our August Grandchild[256] hold serene rule over the fertile reed-plain, the region of fair rice-ears,[257] as a land of peace."
"'But in the realm thus assigned to him there were savage deities. These were called to a divine account and expelled with a divine expulsion. Moreover, the rocks, trees, and smallest leaves of grass which had power of speech were put to silence. Then they despatched him downward from his celestial everlasting throne, cleaving as he went with an awful way-cleaving the many-piled clouds of Heaven, and delivered to him the Land. At the middle point of the lands of the four quarters thus entrusted to him, Yamato, the High-Sun-Land, was established as a peaceful land, and there was built here for the Sovran Grandchild a fair Palace wherewithal to shelter him from sun and sky,[258] with massy pillars based deep on the nethermost rocks and upraising to the Plain of High Heaven the cross-timbers of its roof.