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