THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

561

Early in the morning there will be a tremendous racket, caused by opening the rain-doors. This lasts only a few moments, but long enough to get one wide awake. As soon as you rise the quilts are removed, the hibachi brought in, and the room swept and dusted. Meanwhile you make your toilet out on the veranda or down-stairs; you must wash in the open air even in winter.

The people marry very young, being usually betrothed while in childhood by their parents. Divorce is quite common and granted for what we would consider most trivial reasons; for instance, a husband can divorce his wife if she talks too much.

Several modes of burial have prevailed in Japan at different periods. First was the burial in artificial caves, next in simple mounds of earth, then followed burial in mounds with rock chambers or dolmens, later in double mounds or imperial tumili surrounded by moats, and lastly, burial in coffins shaped like round tubs, into which the body is placed in a sitting position. Cremation is also now a very prevalent method of disposing of the body. An ancient custom was to bury the retainers of a prince and his family alive, standing upright like a hedge around the grave. This custom is said to have come from China. Wives suffered themselves to be buried alive around their deceased husbands. But this was all too terrible, and when, in the last century before Christ, the Empress Hibatsuhime no Mikoto died, the Mikado asked that some other way might be devised. One of his court, Nomi no Sukine, advised making figures of clay to represent men and horses, and to bury them as substitutes. This was done, and the Mikado, well pleased with the plan, ordered that henceforth the old custom should not be followed, but that clay images should be set up around the grave instead.

The making of these clay images is said to be the beginning of Ceramic art in Japan.