the great yearly festivals of the Japanese, or
rather of some of them; for he says that it
would be almost endless to mention them all.
One of these is the Sanguatz Sannitz—a
day of pleasure and diversion for young girls;
for whose sake a great entertainment is
commonly prepared by their parents, to which
the nearest relations and friends are invited.

This festival is held in honour of a lady,
who, for an act of extraordinary merit, was
translated among the goddesses of the country,
under the name of Bensaitree. She
performed no less astonishing a feat than
that of laying five hundred eggs; and in the
happy regions of the gods she is waited on
by the five hundred sons, who were all hatched
out by a peasant and his wife.

But KÅ“mpfer tells the whole story: One
Symmias Dai Miosin was married to a lady
called Bundjo, who remained childless for
many years; and, as in Japan the childless
wife loses honour, and respect, and the love
of her husband, she addressed herself very
earnestly to the kamis, or gods, and that with
so much success, that she shortly after became
the mother of five hundred eggs. Terrified
at this extraordinary accident, she sat gazing
at the eggs, full of fear that if they were
hatched they would produce monstrous
animals. Under these circumstances, the
maternal instinct was undeveloped, and she
packed all her eggs in a box, wrote on it the
word Fos-joroo, and threw it into the river
Riusagava.

Soon after, an old fisherman, who lived
some distance down the river, found the box
floating, took it up, and seeing that it was
full of eggs, carried them home as a present
to his wife. She was of opinion that if all
those eggs were found in the water, they had
been thrown in for a good reason, and that
her husband had much better take them
back to where he found them. But he said:
"We are both old, my dear, and just on the
brink of the grave; it will be a matter of
very little consequence to us whatsoever may
come out of the eggs, therefore I have a
mind to hatch them and see what they will
produce." So he hatched them in an oven,
in hot sand and between cushions; and
afterwards, when he and his wife cracked the
shells, in every egg they found a child. Now
it was a very heavy burden for the old couple
to keep such a large young family.
However they made shift, and bred up the five
hundred on minced mug-wort leaves and
boiled rice. But after a time they grew so
big, and required so much, that the old
people could maintain them no longer; and
it was decided that they must manage for
themselves as well as they could. They took
to highway robbery as the profession best
suited to their numbers, and for some time it
seems to have answered very well. At last
it was proposed that they should go up the
river to the house of a man who was famous
throughout the country for his wealth. And,
as it turned out, this man's wife was the
author of the eggs.

When the five hundred made application
at the door, one of the servants asked their
names; whereupon they answered that they
were a brood of eggs, and mere want and
necessity compelled them to rob, and that
they would go about their business it anyone
would be so charitable as to give them
victuals. The servant took this message to
his lady, and she, in great trepidation, and
with joy and amazement, sent out to ask if
they had really been eggs, whether
something had not been written on the box in
which they were found?

"Yes," said the five hundred, "the word
Fos-joroo."

Upon this the lady could doubt no more:
she received and acknowledged the five
hundred for her children. She made a grand
feast for them, and invited many guests; and
every guest was presented with a dish of
sokana, cakes of mug-wort, and rice, and a
branch of the apricot-tree in blossom.

As we have said, she now ranks among the
divinities of Japan, and is worshipped as the
Goddess of Riches. The annual festival in
her honour is held in the spring; the guests
are waited on by young girls, and presented
with saki, and cakes made of rice and the
leaves of young mug-wort.

The Japanese have a pretty story as to the
origin of music. They say, that once upon a
time the Sun Goddess had been made angry
by the violence of an evil-disposed brother,
and she retired into a cave, leaving the
universe in anarchy and darkness. When all
other means of appeasing her had been tried
in vain, music was devised by the gods to
lure her forth. It was successful, and the
beautiful daylight broke again over the earth.
The Japanese are passionately fond of music,
and have a great variety of musical instruments;
and yet they have no idea of
harmony; and when there are several
performers on various instruments, they always
play in unison. They are said, also, to know
very little about melody, and to receive
contentedly, as music, a monotonous chaunt,
accompanied by the tum-tum of the Syamsie,
or national instrument, a kind of guitar with
three strings, two in octave. It is played by
touching the strings with a fiat piece of horn
held between the thumb and third finger.
Every woman in Japan—except the very
lowest born and bred—can accompany her
own singing on the syamsie; and there
are very few who cannot improvise a song
whenever they are in company and an
opportunity offers. They dance, too, keeping
the feet nearly immoveable, and concealed
beneath long robes, and moving the arms
and body only. The dance is pantomimic in
character, and represents some scene of
passion, of absurdity, or of every-day life.
The dancers are always women, and the men
gaze in rapturous admiration.