Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

it is carried and received by a person of distinction. Close by the
entrance-door a fire is lighted on the right hand and on the left. These
fires are called garden-torches. In front of the corridor along which the
litter passes, on the right hand and on the left, two men and two women,
in pairs, place two mortars, right and left, in which they pound rice; as
the litter passes, the pounded rice from the left-hand side is moved
across to the right, and the two are mixed together into one. This is called
the blending of the rice-meal. 126 Two candles are lighted, the one on the
right hand and the other on the left of the corridor; and after the litter has
passed, the candle on the left is passed over to the right, and, the two
wicks being brought together, the candles are extinguished. These last
three ceremonies are only performed at the weddings of persons of high
rank; they are not observed at the weddings of ordinary persons. The
bride takes with her to her husband's house, as presents, two silken
robes sewed together in a peculiar manner, a dress of ceremony with
wings of hempen cloth, an upper girdle and an under girdle, a fan, either
five or seven pocket-books, and a sword: these seven presents are placed
on a long tray, and their value must depend upon the means of the
family.
The dress of the bride is a white silk robe with a lozenge pattern, over
an under-robe, also of white silk. Over her head she wears a veil of white
silk, which, when she sits down, she allows to fall about her as a mantle.
The bride's furniture and effects are all arranged for her by female attendants
from her own house on a day previous to the wedding; and the
bridegroom's effects are in like manner arranged by the women of his
own house.
When the bride meets her husband in the room where the relations are
assembled, she takes her seat for this once in the place of honour, her
husband sitting in a lower place, not directly opposite to her, but diagonally,
and discreetly avoiding her glance.
On the raised part of the floor are laid out beforehand two trays, the
preparations for a feast, a table on which are two wagtails, 127 a second
table with a representation of Elysium, fowls, fish, two wine-bottles,
three wine-cups, and two sorts of kettles for warming wine. The ladies
go out to meet the bride, and invite her into a dressing-room, and, when
she has smoothed her dress, bring her into the room, and she and the
126.Cf. Gibbon on Roman Marriages, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iv. p.
345: "The contracting parties were seated on the same sheepskin; they tasted a salt
cake of far, or rice; and this confarreation, which denoted the ancient food of Italy,
served as an emblem of their mystic union of mind and body."
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