hen broken and her
timbers being employed as firewood for roasting salt, the latter was
given to the various provinces, which, in return, were caused to
build ships for the State, the result being a fleet of five hundred
vessels.

*Aston's Nihongi.

It would seem that there was always an abundance of fishing-boats,
for fishing by traps, hooks, and nets was industriously carried on. A
passage in the Records speaks of a thousand-fathom rope of
paper-mulberry which was used to draw the net in perch fishing.
Spearing was also practised by fishermen, and in the rivers
cormorants were used just as they are to-day.

MARRIAGE

It does not appear that the marriage tie possessed any grave
significance in ancient Japan, or that any wedding ceremony was
performed; unless, indeed, the three circuits made by Izanagi and
Izanami prior to cohabitation round a "heavenly august pillar" be
interpreted as the circumambulatory rite observed in certain
primitive societies. Pouring water over a bride seems, however, to
have been practised and is still customary in some provinces, though
as to its antiquity nothing can be said. An exchange of presents is
the only fact made clear by the annals. There did not exist in Japan,
as in China, a veto on marriages between people of the same tribe,
but this difference does not signify any reproach to Japan: the
interdict was purely political in China's case, and corresponding
conditions did not exist in Japan.

On the other hand, the Japanese system permitted a degree of licence
which in the Occident is called incest: brothers and sisters might
intermarry provided that they had not been brought up together. To
understand this condition it is necessary to observe that a bride
generally continued to live in her family dwelling where she received
her husband's visits, and since there was nothing to prevent a
husband from contracting many such alliances, it was possible for him
to have several groups of children, the members of each group being
altogether unknown to the members of all the rest. In a later, but
not definitely ascertained era, it became customary for a husband to
take his wife to his own home, and thereafter the veto upon such
unions soon became imperative, so that a Prince Imperial in the fifth
century who cohabited with his sister forfeited the succession and
had to commit suicide, his conduct being described in the Chronicles
as "a barbarous outrage."

In all eras sisters might m