[Illustration: RELATIVES COLLECTING ASHES.]

All the members of the family attend the funeral, either on foot or
in norimons. If the wife and the heir be absent in Yeddo, they are
represented by the nearest relations. In this instance both are
present, from which it may be inferred that the sacrificial act has
taken place in the neighbourhood of Yeddo.

Although the Japanese sometimes bury their dead, they generally
practise cremation. Repulsive as this custom is to European ideas, it
must be remembered that the Japanese are not singular in preferring
it, as several of the most civilised nations of antiquity considered
it the most honourable mode of disposing of the bodies of the dead.
While the body is being reduced to ashes the priests tell their beads
and chant prayers for the soul of the departed, as the followers of
almost every religious sect in Japan believe in a state of purgatory.

The last scene shows the wife and son of the victim of the 'Hara Kiru'
collecting his ashes and depositing them in an earthenware jar. This
is afterwards sealed down and conveyed to the cemetery, or temple,
which contains the remains of his ancestors.

Some of the Japanese cemeteries are very extensive; and they are
generally situated in secluded, picturesque spots, in the
neighbourhood of the towns and villages.

The graves are small, round, cemented receptacles; just large enough
to receive the jar containing the ashes. If the body is buried (which
only happens when the deceased is friendless, or too poor to pay the
expenses of cremation), the head is always placed pointing to the
north. The tombstones are ordinarily about three feet high; and are
either square or circular in shape, resting on square pedestals, in
which small holes are cut to contain rice and water. The supplies of
these are replenished from time to time, generally by the women of the
family, lest the spirit of the deceased should revisit its grave and
imagine itself neglected. Sometimes flowers are placed before the
graves, and flowering sprigs of peach and plum are stuck in the ground
about them.

Like the Chinese, the Japanese burn joss-sticks to propitiate the
deities in favour of their departed relatives; and the neighbourhood
of a graveyard may generally he detected by the peculiar aromatic
odour emitted during the burning of these. For some time after a
funeral the relatives daily visit the tomb and intercede for the dead,
holding their hands up in