other vessels,--for the dead must have water. Flowers also must be
offered to them; and before every tomb you will find a pair of bamboo
cups, or other flower-vessels; and these, of course, contain water.
There is a well in the cemetery to supply water for the graves.
Whenever the tombs are visited by relatives and friends of the dead,
fresh water is poured into the tanks and cups. But as an old cemetery
of this kind contains thousands of mizutame, and tens of thousands of
flower-vessels the water in all of these cannot be renewed every day.
It becomes stagnant and populous. The deeper tanks seldom get dry;--the
rainfall at Tokyo being heavy enough to keep them partly filled during
nine months out of the twelve.

Well, it is in these tanks and flower-vessels that mine enemies are
born: they rise by millions from the water of the dead;--and, according
to Buddhist doctrine, some of them may be reincarnations of those very
dead, condemned by the error of former lives to the condition of
Jiki-ketsu-gaki, or blood-drinking pretas... Anyhow the malevolence of
the Culex fasciatus would justify the suspicion that some wicked human
soul had been compressed into that wailing speck of a body...

Now, to return to the subject of kerosene-oil, you can exterminate the
mosquitoes of any locality by covering with a film of kerosene all
stagnant water surfaces therein. The larvae die on rising to breathe;
and the adult females perish when they approach the water to launch
their rafts of eggs. And I read, in Dr. Howard's book, that the actual
cost of freeing from mosquitoes one American town of fifty thousand
inhabitants, does not exceed three hundred dollars!...

I wonder what would be said if the city-government of Tokyo--which is
aggressively scientific and progressive--were suddenly to command that
all water-surfaces in the Buddhist cemeteries should be covered, at
regular intervals, with a film of kerosene oil! How could the religion
which prohibits the taking of any life--even of invisible life--yield
to such a mandate? Would filial piety even dream of consenting to obey
such an order? And then to think of the cost, in labor and time, of
putting kerosene oil, every seven days, into the millions of mizutame,
and the tens of millions of bamboo flower-cups, in the Tokyo
graveyards!... Impossible! To free the city from mosquitoes it would be
necessary to demolish the ancient graveyards;--and that would signify
the ruin of the Bud