In prehistoric and medieval Japan, as among the Ainos to-day, trees and serpents as well as rocks, rivers and other inanimate objects were worshipped, because such of them as were supposed for reasons known and felt to be awe-inspiring or wonderful were “kami,” that is, above the common, wonderful.[21] This word kami is usually translated god or deity, but the term does not conform to our ideas, by a great gulf of difference.  It is more than probable that the Japanese term kami is the same as the Aino word kamui, and that the despised and conquered aboriginal savage has furnished the mould of the ordinary Japanese idea of god—­which even to-day with them means anything wonderful or extraordinary.[22] From the days before history the people have worshipped trees, and do so yet, considering them as the abodes of and as means of communication with supernatural powers.  On them the people hang their votive offerings, twist on the branches their prayers written on paper, avoid cutting down, breaking or in any way injuring certain trees.  The sakaki tree is especially sacred, even to this day, in funeral or Shint[=o] services.  To wound or defile a tree sacred to a particular god was to call forth the vengeance of the insulted deity upon the insulter, or as the hearer of prayer upon another to whom guilt was imputed and punishment was due.

Thus, in the days older than this present generation, but still within this century, as the writer has witnessed, it was the custom of women betrayed by their lovers to perform the religious act of vengeance called Ushi toki mairi, or going to the temple at the hour of the ox, that is at 2 A.M.  First making an image or manikin of straw, she set out on her errand of revenge, with nails held in her mouth and with hammer in one hand and straw figure in the other, sometimes also having on her head a reversed tripod in which were stuck three lighted candles.  Arriving at the shrine she selected a tree dedicated to a god, and then nailed the straw simulacrum of her betrayer to the trunk, invoking the kami to curse and annihilate the destroyer of her peace.  She adjures the god to save his tree, impute the guilt of desecration to the traitor and visit him with deadly vengeance.  The visit is repeated and nails are driven until the object of the incantation sickens and dies, or is at least supposed to do so.  I have more than once seen such trees and straw images upon them, and have observed others in which the large number of rusted nails and fragments of straw showed how tenaciously the superstition lingered.[23]

In instances more pleasant to witness, may be seen trees festooned with the symbolical rice-straw in cords and fringes.  With these the people honor the trees as the abode of the kami, or as evidence of their faith in the renown accredited in the past.