life has become extinct the
first proceeding is to light an enormous fire in the house. The corpse
is then dressed in its best clothes and laid beside the fire, where
are also placed dishes, a drinking-cup, and the implements of the
chase. In the case of a woman, instead of these, her beads and other
ornaments are laid alongside of her; for both sexes a pipe and a
tobacco-box, so greatly used during life, are considered essentials
when dead. Cakes made of rice or millet and a cup of sake, are also
put upon the floor. A kind of wake or funeral feast follows, at which
the mourners throw some sake on the corpse as a libation to its
departed spirit, break off pieces of the cake and bury it in the
ashes. The body is covered with a mat slung upon a pole and carried to
the grave, followed by the mourners, each of whom places something in
the grave, which, it is believed, will be carried to the next world
with the spirit of the deceased person. At the conclusion of the
ceremony the mourners wash their hands in water which has been brought
for the purpose. This is then thrown on the grave and the vessel which
conveyed it is broken in pieces and also thrown on the grave. The
widow of the deceased shaves her head, while the man cuts his beard
and hair, as outward symbols of grief. Many of these ceremonies, it
will be seen, are such as are more or less common to all primitive
races. There is, indeed, a marked resemblance between the habit of the
Ainos in burying articles with the deceased for his use in the next
world and that of the North American Indians. But I am not inclined to
deduce any theory in reference to the origin of the Ainos from the
existence of these customs. Mankind, in every part of the world, seems
to have evolved his religious beliefs in very much the same way. His
conception of the hereafter appears to have proceeded on precisely
similar lines. The higher his scale in civilisation the more spiritual
and the less material his conception of the future. The lower his
scale precisely the reverse is the fact. The savage, which of course
the Aino really is, cannot imagine a future state where there is no
eating and drinking and hunting, and he, accordingly, thinks it
incumbent on him, in order to show his respect for the dead, to
provide the corpse with those articles which he deems essential in
that unknown world where, according to his conception, eating and
drinking and hunting will be as prevalent as in this.