Japanese artists are still occasionally inspired by the legends
of the Hangon-ho. Only last year, in Tokyo, at an exhibition of
new kakemono, I saw a picture of a young wife kneeling before an
alcove wherein the smoke of the magical incense was shaping the
shadow of the absent husband.(1)

Although the power of making visible the forms of the dead has
been claimed for one sort of incense only, the burning of any
kind of incense is supposed to summon viewless spirits in
multitude. These come to devour the smoke. They are called Jiki-
ko-ki, or "incense-eating goblins;" and they belong to the
fourteenth of the thirty-six classes of Gaki (pretas) recognized
by Japanese Buddhism. They are the ghosts of men who anciently,
for the sake of gain, made or sold bad incense; and by the evil
karma of that action they now find themselves in the state of
hunger-suffering spirits, and compelled to seek their only food
in the smoke of incense.

1 Among the curious Tokyo inventions of 1898 was a new variety of
cigarettes called Hangon-so, or "Herb of Hangon,"--a name
suggesting that their smoke operated like the spirit-summoning
incense. As a matter of fact, the chemical action of the tobacco-
smoke would define, upon a paper fitted into the mouth-piece of
each cigarette, the photographic image of a dancing-girl.



A Story of Divination