Before the Nara period of Japanese history it was the custom on the death of a sovereign to remove the capital to a fresh site, no doubt for the sake of purity. The Ainus of Yezo destroy huts in which a death has taken place. The modern Japanese custom of turning upside down the screen which is placed round a corpse is perhaps a much attenuated survival of the same idea. In 801 a Great Purification ceremony was performed, because a dead dog had been discovered under one of the palace buildings. The same ritual was celebrated in times of pestilence, when a death took place close to the palace and on the Mikado's putting off mourning. If any one died within the precincts of a shrine, no festival could be held there for thirty days. A disability of five days was prescribed in the case of a dog or other beast dying there. At the present day lucifer matches are advertised as "fit for sacred purposes"; that is, they contain no phosphorus which is made of bones, and therefore unclean. Leprosy, owing to its reputed contagious character, is specially mentioned as a cause of uncleanness.[204] Wounds, whether inflicted or received, were objectionable, not so much on grounds of humanity, as because of their offensiveness. The _Nihongi_ relates that in A.D. 404 the God Izanagi expressed by the mouth of one of his priests his dislike for the stench of blood caused by branding some of the Mikado's escort. The striking of a Shinto priest while on duty was a cause of uncleanness. In grave cases, however, the offender was handed over to the civil authorities. According to the strict Shinto of a later period, a man must abstain from worship at a shrine for thirty days if he has wounded somebody, or, if he has accidentally hurt himself, so that more than three drops of blood have flowed, for that day. If he has vomited or passed blood, he must not worship for two days, if he has an abscess, until it is cured, for seven days after moxa is applied, and for three days in the case of the operator. At the present day the common word for wound is _kega_, that is to say, defilement. Baldness and emaciation were regarded as disqualifications for the position of Imperial Princess consecrated to the service of the Gods.[205] It was no doubt the fear of contagion and an instinctive feeling of horror and repulsion which inspired this class of taboos. Contact with death, disease, and wounds are displeasing to living human beings, and therefore to the Gods. In ancient Greece it was not _themis_ for the Gods to look on death. There is an obvious absurdity in referring such incidents of religious ritual to the principle that we must seek for the origin of forms of divine worship in observances towards the dead.