MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
to Kyōtō is a long distance, yet it is extremely difficult to deny a common origin to two forms so exactly similar.
Many of the badges of mediæval Japan were designed to recall incidents in the history of the family or individual carrying them. Thus a badge in the form of a cross saltere was adopted by a warrior who found that by wiping his sword-blade again and again on the knee of his trousers during a battle, two blood-stains in the shape of a cross were produced. Another badge, consisting of two wood-doves and a bunch of mistletoe, commemorated the fact that Yoritomo, hiding from his enemies in the hollow trunk of a tree, would have been discovered had not two doves, flying out of the trunk as the pursuers were about to search it, convinced them that no one could be concealed there. Yet another—a circle and two bars—represented a cup and a pair of chopsticks, and recalled the fact that a famished soldier recovered his strength by eating the rice laid before a sacred shrine. Numerous legends are thus connected with the cognisances of great families, but many badges, on the other hand, were the inventions of purely decorative fancy. Indeed the Japanese badge was originally nothing more than an ornamental design, and the term applied to it (mon) has primarily that meaning. Afterwards it derived importance from its usefulness as an aid to identification, and soldiers blazoned it on their banners, on the front
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