is also illustrated by the following extract from the _Shinto Miōmoku_ (1699):-- _"At the festival of Nawoye, held at the shrine of Kokubu in the province of Owari on the 11th day of the 1st month, the Shinto priests go out to the highway with banners and seize a passer-by. They wash and purify him, and make him put on pure clothing. He is then brought before the God. A block, a wooden butcher's knife, and chopsticks for eating flesh are provided. Separately a figure is made to represent the captive. It is placed on the block with the captured man beside it, and both are offered before the God. They are left there for one night. The next morning the priests come and remove the man and the effigy. Then they take clay, and, making it into the shape of a rice-cake, place it on the captive's back, hang a string of copper cash about his neck, and drive him away. As he runs off, he is sure to fall down in a faint. But he soon comes to his senses. A mound is erected at the place where he falls down, and the clay rice-cake deposited on it with ceremonies which are kept a profound mystery by the priestly house. Of late years couriers have been caught and subjected to purification. This was put a stop to. The custom is celebrated yearly, so that nowadays everybody is aware of it, and there are no passersby. Therefore the priests go to a neighbouring village and seize a man. If they catch nobody on the 11th, they bring in a man on the 12th."_ The _Nawoye_ (rectification) festival had probably the same intention as the _Harahi_, namely, to obtain absolution from ritual impurity, and the captive is therefore apparently a scape-goat. As readers of Mr. Frazer's 'Golden Bough' need not be told, the custom has numerous parallels in European folk-lore. There is some difficulty in applying the principle of substitution for an actual human sacrifice to a custom which was in force so recently. It does not appear probable that it could have descended from such a remote antiquity as the time when real human sacrifice was known in Japan. Might not the instinct of dramatic make-believe alone account for it? Confucius condemned the practice of offering effigies of men on funeral occasions because he thought it led to the substitution of living victims. _Slaves_.--Another form of human offerings was the dedication of slaves to the service of a shrine. Such slaves were called _kami-tsu-ko_, and are to be distinguished from the _kamube_, who were freemen. The gift by the legendary Yamatodake to a shrine of a number of Yemishi (eastern savages) whom he had captured is to be understood in this sense. There is a more historical instance in the _Nihongi_, under the date A.D. 469, when a seamstress was presented to the shrine of Ohonamochi. In 562 a man was allowed to be given over to the _hafuri_ as a slave for the service of the Gods instead of being burnt alive for a criminal offence committed by his father.