customer frowning and anxious, he adds, "Alas! in seven or eight
months you must beware of great misfortune. But I cannot tell you all
about it for a slight fee:" with a long sigh he lays down the
divining-sticks on the desk, and the frightened boor pays a further
fee to hear the sum of the misfortune which threatens him, until, with
three feet of bamboo slips and three inches of tongue, the clever
rascal has made the poor fool turn his purse inside out.

The class of diviners called _Ichiko_ profess to give tidings of the
dead, or of those who have gone to distant countries. The Ichiko
exactly corresponds to the spirit medium of the West. The trade is
followed by women, of from fifteen or sixteen to some fifty years of
age, who walk about the streets, carrying on their backs a
divining-box about a foot square; they have no shop or stall, but
wander about, and are invited into their customers' houses. The
ceremony of divination is very simple. A porcelain bowl filled with
water is placed upon a tray, and the customer, having written the name
of the person with whom he wishes to hold communion on a long slip of
paper, rolls it into a spill, which he dips into the water, and thrice
sprinkles the Ichiko, or medium. She, resting her elbow upon her
divining-box, and leaning her head upon her hand, mutters prayers and
incantations until she has summoned the soul of the dead or absent
person, which takes possession of her, and answers questions through
her mouth. The prophecies which the Ichiko utters during her trance
are held in high esteem by the superstitious and vulgar.

Hard by Asakusa is the theatre street. The theatres are called
_Shiba-i_,[35] "turf places," from the fact that the first theatrical
performances were held on a turf plot. The origin of the drama in
Japan, as elsewhere, was religious. In the reign of the Emperor Heijô