of the screen is hung a sword or knife to keep
off any evil spirit that may wander into the room in the shape of a cat
and disturb the dead.

Etiquette requires that relatives and intimate friends of the family
call immediately on learning of the death. To receive these calls the
mourners, in full ceremonial dress, must sit in the death chamber and
remove for each guest the covering from the face of the dead. The
visitors then offer the ceremonial bows to the corpse, as if it were
alive. During this time, too, presents to the spirit of the dead are
pouring in. The proper offerings are flowers, cake, vegetables, candles,
incense, or small gifts of money for the purchase of incense. If the
deceased is a person of rank or distinction, the house is flooded with
cumbersome and useless offerings. This custom has become so great an
addition to the trials necessarily incident to a bereavement that one
occasionally sees in the newspaper announcements of deaths a request
that no offerings to the dead be sent.

On the day after the death, often in the evening, the body must be
placed in the cask-shaped coffin that until recently was the style
commonly in use in Japan. Now, among the wealthier classes, the long
coffin has superseded the small square or round one, but the smaller
expense connected with burial in the old way makes the survival of the
old type a necessity for the majority of Japanese. At an appointed time
all the relatives assemble in the death chamber, and preparations are
made for the bathing of the corpse. Two of the _tatami_, or floor mats,
are turned over, and upon them are placed a new tub, a new pail, and a
new dipper. These utensils must have no metal of any kind about them. In
the washing of the body none but members of the family must assist, and
respect for the dead absolutely requires that all the relatives of the
deceased who are below him in rank must have a hand in these final
ablutions. In Japan, the mourning for the dead is the duty of inferiors,
never of superiors. There is no official, ceremonial mourning of parents
for their children, nor does custom require them to perform any of the
last rites, or attend the funeral. Upon the younger brothers and sisters
falls the duty of attending to all the last sad ministrations. If the
wife dies, her husband does not mourn for her, though her children do;
but if the husband dies, the wife must mourn the rest of her life,
cutting off her hair and placing it