[Illustration:  Relatives collecting ashes.]

All the members of the family attend the funeral, either on foot or in norimons.  If the wife and the heir be absent in Yeddo, they are represented by the nearest relations.  In this instance both are present, from which it may be inferred that the sacrificial act has taken place in the neighbourhood of Yeddo.

Although the Japanese sometimes bury their dead, they generally practise cremation.  Repulsive as this custom is to European ideas, it must be remembered that the Japanese are not singular in preferring it, as several of the most civilised nations of antiquity considered it the most honourable mode of disposing of the bodies of the dead.  While the body is being reduced to ashes the priests tell their beads and chant prayers for the soul of the departed, as the followers of almost every religious sect in Japan believe in a state of purgatory.

The last scene shows the wife and son of the victim of the ‘Hara Kiru’ collecting his ashes and depositing them in an earthenware jar.  This is afterwards sealed down and conveyed to the cemetery, or temple, which contains the remains of his ancestors.

Some of the Japanese cemeteries are very extensive; and they are generally situated in secluded, picturesque spots, in the neighbourhood of the towns and villages.

The graves are small, round, cemented receptacles; just large enough to receive the jar containing the ashes.  If the body is buried (which only happens when the deceased is friendless, or too poor to pay the expenses of cremation), the head is always placed pointing to the north.  The tombstones are ordinarily about three feet high; and are either square or circular in shape, resting on square pedestals, in which small holes are cut to contain rice and water.  The supplies of these are replenished from time to time, generally by the women of the family, lest the spirit of the deceased should revisit its grave and imagine itself neglected.  Sometimes flowers are placed before the graves, and flowering sprigs of peach and plum are stuck in the ground about them.

Like the Chinese, the Japanese burn joss-sticks to propitiate the deities in favour of their departed relatives; and the neighbourhood of a graveyard may generally he detected by the peculiar aromatic odour emitted during the burning of these.  For some time after a funeral the relatives daily visit the tomb and intercede for the dead, holding their hands up in the attitude of prayer, and rubbing the palms together as they mutter their monotonous orisons.

CHAPTER VII.

National games and amusements.

Notwithstanding the industrious habits of the Japanese, they are great lovers of pleasure, and much addicted to sight-seeing; theatres and wax-work exhibitions are very numerous, and jugglers, top-spinners, and tumblers, are regular habitues of the streets.