Note 99 — Chapter XXII

Of another festival, on the 23d of October, Cocks gives the following account: “The kings with all the rest of the nobility, accompanied with divers strangers, met together at a summer-house, set up before the great pagoda, to see a horse-race. Every nobleman went on horseback to the place, accompanied with a rout of slaves, some with pikes, some with small shot, and others with bows and arrows. The pikemen were placed on one side of the street, and the shot and archers on the other, the middest of the street being left void to run the race; and right before the summer-house, where the king and nobles sat, was a round buckler of straw hanging against the wall, at which the archers on horseback, running a full career, discharged their arrows, both in the street and summer-house where the nobles sat.” This, from the date, would seem to be the festival of Tenshō Daijin. See p. 359. Caron, “Relation du Japon,” gives a similar description.