owever, till the introduction of calendars from
China that anything like an accurate system of estimating and recording
time was introduced.

The food of the primitive Japanese was much more largely animal than it
became in later times. To the early Japanese there was no restriction in
the use of animal food, such as the Buddhists introduced. Fish and
shell-fish have always been, and doubtless from the first were, principal
articles of food. The five grains, so called, are often referred to, and
are specially mentioned in the Shinto rituals, whose origin goes back to
prehistoric times. These grains(71) are rice, millet, barley, and two
kinds of beans. Silkworms and their food plant, the mulberry, are likewise
spoken of. The only kind of drink referred to is _sake_. It will be
remembered that in the myth concerning the Impetuous Male Deity in Izumo,
the old man and old woman were directed to prepare eight tubs of _sake_,
by drinking which the eight-headed serpent was intoxicated. In the
traditional history of the emperors, they are represented as drinking
_sake_, sometimes even to intoxication. And in the rituals recited when
offerings are made to their deities, the jars of _sake_ are enumerated
among the things offered. The Japanese writers claim that _sake_ was a
native discovery, but there is a well supported belief that in very early
times they borrowed the art of manufacturing it from the Chinese. There is
at least a difficulty in believing that this liquor should have been
invented independently in the two countries. Chopsticks are mentioned in
early Japanese times, and clay vessels for food, and cups for drinking
made of oak leaves. On the whole, the conclusions to be drawn from the
earliest traditions concerning the Japanese lead us to regard them as
having attained a material degree of civilization in all matters
pertaining to food and drink. Yet it cannot be regarded as other than
strange that milk, cheese and butter are nowhere mentioned, and had never
been used.

In the matter of clothing we have little except hints to guide us in
forming inferences. The rituals enumerate(72) "bright cloth, soft cloth,
and coarse cloth." Mr. Satow remarks(73) on this enumeration that "in the
earliest ages the materials used were the bark of the paper-mulberry
(_broussonetia papyrifera_), wistaria tendrils and hemp, but when the
silkworm was introduced the finer fabric naturally took the place of the
humbler in the offerings