messengers returned, the body was drawn up again through the floor and
placed on the bed; and all the retainers, from the least unto the
greatest, were summoned into the room to congratulate their master upon
his restoration to favor. One by one they entered the darkened room,
prostrated themselves before the corpse, and uttered the formal words of
congratulation. Then when all, even to the little girl who, grown to
womanhood, told me the story, had been through the horrible ceremony, it
was announced that the master was dead,--that he had died immediately
after the return of the messenger with the good tidings of pardon. All
obstacles being thus removed, the funeral was celebrated with due pomp
and circumstance; and the tombstone of the daimi[=o] to-day gives no
hint of the disgrace from which he so narrowly escaped.

Another instance very similar, throwing some light on the custom of
adoption or _y[=o]shi_, referred to in a previous chapter, was the case of
a nobleman who died without children, and without an heir appointed to
inherit his title. It would never have done, in sending in the official
notice of death, to be unable to name the legal head of the house and
the successor to the title. There was also no male relative to perform
the office of chief mourner at the funeral; and so the death of the
nobleman was kept secret, and his house showed no signs of mourning
during a long period, until a son satisfactory to all the members of the
household had been adopted. When the legal notice of the adoption had
been sent in, and the son received into the family as heir, then, and
only then, was the death of the lord announced, the period of mourning
begun, and the funeral ceremony performed.

Upon one occasion I was visiting a Japanese lady, who knew the interest
that I took in seeing and procuring the old-fashioned embroidered
_kimonos_, which are now entirely out of style in Japan, and which can
only be obtained at second-hand clothing stores, or at private sale. My
friend said that she had just been shown an assortment of old garments
which were offered at private sale by the heirs of a lady, recently
deceased, who had once been a maid of honor in a daimi[=o]'s house. The
clothes were still in the house, and were brought in, in a great basket,
for my inspection. Very beautiful garments they were, of silk, crepe,
and linen, embroidered elaborately, and in extremely good order. Many of
them seemed not to have been wor