BULLET CHARMS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 54, 26 November 1937, Page 17

BULLET CHARMS

Thousand-Stitch Talismans

While Japan' b soldiers go into batble in North China with tho most modrttn weapons, including aeroplanes, tanks, and armoured cars, many, of them are being supposedly prptected from harm by thousaild-stitch talismans, in ihe shape of stomach-clothB, to which a thousand women have eacb contributed a stitch l - . Un tho hottost days one can see groups of women, standing bareheadea in the broiling sun, at railway stations. parks^ busy .8treet corners, holding up the cloths and asking each woman passer-by to contribute another stitch. The places for the stitches are indicated by dots ori the cloth; and the Stitches are made with red thread. As a general rule oue woman is supposed to add One, stitch. An excepbion is made, however, for

/women who have been born under th# astrological combinations of the number tive, the yellow col$ur,and the zodiacal sign.Tiger. Such women are regarded as very strong and determined; and they are given the privilege of contributing thirty stitches in succession. The carefully stitched' cloths ar# known as Sennin-Bari, and are considered able? to ward off the perils of modern warfare. A variation of th# same idea is to be found in the socalled Sennin— Riki, cloths on which «t thousand characters symbolising strength are written. Men are' asked to write these characters. In this combinfitiOn of highiy modern warships and weapons with medieval beliefs in the potency of charms one ha» a new practical example of the constant contrast and co-existence, in Japan, of the very old and the very new.