Jinrikisha Days in Japan
and force, holding his lance and miniature pagoda; and Benten Sama, goddess of grace and beauty, playing the flute.
Takara Buné, the good-luck ship, the New-year’s junk, with dragon beak and silken sail, bearing rich gifts from the unknown land, is another favorite subject. To sleep with takara buné’s image under one’s wooden pillow on New-year’s night insures good-luck and good dreams for the rest of the year. Quite as significant are the takara mono, the ancient and classic good-luck symbols, which are the hat, hammer, key, straw coat, bag or purse, sacred gem or pearl, the scrolls, the clove, the shippo, or seven precious things, and the weights. These emblems, introduced everywhere, fill flower-circles, or the spaces and groundwork of geometrical designs, and are always received with favor. The shojo, who have drunk saké until their hair has turned red, the rats and the radish, the cock on the temple drum, poems in superb lettering, all ornament the fukusa, and there the mysterious manji, or hook-cross, and the mitsu tomoyé, or three commas curved within a circle, are continually reproduced.
This manji is the Svastika, or Buddhist cross of India, which appears in the frescos of the Pyramids and the Catacombs, in Greek art, in Etruscan tombs, in the embroideries and missals of mediæval Europe, in the Scandinavian design known as Thor's hammer, in old English heraldry, in the Chinese symbol called the “tablet of honor,” and on innumerable temple ornaments. Five of the old daimio families had the manji as their crest, and it came to Japan from China and India, along with the Buddhist religion. On old armor, flags, and war fans it is constantly found, and it is the sign of life, of the four elements, of eternity; the portent of good-luck, the talisman of safety from evil spirits, and an amulet against
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