These offerings consist of the foods called somen, resembling our
vermicelli, gozen, which is boiled rice, dango, a sort of tiny dumpling,
eggplant, and fruits according to season--frequently uri and saikwa,
slices of melon and watermelon, and plums and peaches. Often sweet cakes
and dainties are added. Sometimes the offering is only O-sho-jin-gu
(honourable uncooked food); more usually it is O-rio-gu (honourable
boiled food); but it never includes, of course, fish, meats, or wine.
Clear water is given to the shadowy guest, and is sprinkled from time to
time upon the altar or within the shrine with a branch of misohagi; tea
is poured out every hour for the viewless visitors, and everything is
daintily served up in little plates and cups and bowls, as for living
guests, with hashi (chopsticks) laid beside the offering. So for three
days the dead are feasted.

At sunset, pine torches, fixed in the ground before each home, are
kindled to guide the spirit-visitors. Sometimes, also, on the first
evening of the Bommatsuri, welcome-fires (mukaebi) are lighted along the
shore of the sea or lake or river by which the village or city is
situated--neither more nor less than one hundred and eight fires; this
number having some mystic signification in the philosophy of Buddhism.
And charming lanterns are suspended each night at the entrances of homes
-the Lanterns of the Festival of the Dead--lanterns of special forms
and colours, beautifully painted with suggestions of landscape and
shapes of flowers, and always decorated with a peculiar fringe of paper
streamers.

Also, on the same night, those who have dead friends go to the
cemeteries and make offerings there, and pray, and burn incense, and
pour out water for the ghosts. Flowers are placed there in the bamboo
vases set beside each haka, and lanterns are lighted and hung up before