In old Japan people were sometimes buried alive—or, oftener, allowed themselves to be buried alive—at the inauguration of any difficult piece of engineering work, in order to impart strength and life to the undertaking. The victims of this horrible superstition were Imown under the name of "human pillars," and many quaint and weird stories have been woven around this custom and are re counted to this day over the "hibachi" in winter time by Japanese grandmothers to their children.
But no-one would imagine that any grown-up Japanese of the present day would seriously believe in these tales, much
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.