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JAPANESE NEW-YEAR DECORATIONS.
My brother, Mr. J. Cole Hartland, who is resident at Yokohama, has forwarded me the appended statement. In the letter enclosing it he writes:—
"I enclose a short account of the Japanese New-Year Decorations, which was written out for me by Suguki, our compradore. I hope it may interest you. The first part is, I think, a translation from some Japanese book; but the second part is Suguki's own. Dr. Hepburn, in his Dictionary (the best published), gives a rather different account of the 'Shime.' He says it is 'the straw rope which Futodama-no-mikoto stretched behind the Sun-goddess to prevent her returning to the cave after Tajikarao-no-mikoto had pulled her out.' I have questioned Suguki as to this, but he sticks to it that the shime was merely a straw decoration hung about the rocks to excite the curiosity of the Sun-god and so tempt him out. I don't know which tale is the correct one. I don't think any interest is to be attached to the dates on which the decorations are taken down, because until very recently the Japanese kept the same New Year as the Chinese, and that is in February. Mikoto in the proper names is simply a title of honour equivalent to Lord."
I have left the paragraph added by Suguki to tell its own tale. The sense is perfectly clear, and the composition is not more rugged than might have been expected from a foreigner writing in an idiom as widely different from his own as English is from Japanese. There may be readers of the Journal who can throw further light upon the shime, and account for the variation between the two versions of the tradition. The paragraph which precedes Suguki's observations bears traces, hardly to be mistaken, of European origin; but I am unable to say whence it is derived.
