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Updated: August 15, 2024
Hotei drinks wine out of a shallow red cup as wide as a dinner plate. Daikoku and Fukuroku Jin begin to wrestle, and when Daikoku gets his man down, he pounds his big head with an empty gourd while Toshitoku and Ebisu begin to eat tai fish. When this fun is over, Benten and Fukuroku Jin play a game of checkers, while the others look on and bet; except Hotei the fat fellow, who is asleep.
He stands in the big shop windows in Tokyo as in London, with his red cloak, his long white beard and his sack full of toys. Sometimes he is to be seen chatting with Buddhist deities, with the hammer-bearing Daikoku, with Ebisu the fisherman, with fat naked Hotei, and with Benten, the fair but frail.
Then they laugh heartily and try it again. Ebisu is the patron of daily food, which is rice and fish, and in old times was chiefly fish. He is nearly as fat as Daikoku, but wears a court noble's high cap. He is always fishing or enjoying his game. When very happy, he sits on a rock by the sea, with his right leg bent under him, and a big red fish, called the tai, under his left arm.
These deities are usually pictured together: Daikoku seated upon bales of rice, holding the Red Sun against his breast with one hand, and in the other grasping the magical mallet of which a single stroke gives wealth; and Ebisu bearing a fishing-rod, and holding under his arm a great tai-fish.
So here we have images of the gods and saints for toys Tenjin, the Deity of Beautiful Writing and Uzume, the laughter-loving -and Fukusuke, like a happy schoolboy and the Seven Divinities of Good Luck, in a group and Fukurojin, the God of Longevity, with head so elongated that only by the aid of a ladder can his barber shave the top of it and Hotei, with a belly round and huge as a balloon and Ebisu, the Deity of Markets and of fishermen, with a tai-fish under his arm and Daruma, ancient disciple of Buddha, whose legs were worn off by uninterrupted meditation.
The undertaking did not escape severe local criticism, but it seems to have proved successful. Daikoku is the popular God of Wealth. Ebisu is the patron of labor. Transactions of the Asiatic Society. See, also, for an account of their place in Shinto worship, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, vol. 1.
'There are many deities enshrined at Kitzuki, are there not? I ask. 'Yes; but the great deity of Kitzuki is Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, whom the people more commonly call Daikoku. Here also is worshipped his son, whom many call Ebisu.
Those bearing the hammer and fan were the Daikoku band: they were to sing the ballads Those with the castanets were the Ebisu party and formed the chorus.
Originally the Fox was sacred to Inari only as the Tortoise is still sacred to Kompira; the Deer to the Great Deity of Kasuga; the Rat to Daikoku; the Tai-fish to Ebisu; the White Serpent to Benten; or the Centipede to Bishamon, God of Battles. But in the course of centuries the Fox usurped divinity. And the stone images of him are not the only outward evidences of his cult.
The fact, however, that few of those peculiarities which give so strange a charm to the old peasant-chants are noticeable in the Izumo manner of singing the Daikoku-mai would perhaps indicate that the latter are comparatively modern. Ara! Joyfully young Daikoko and Ebisu enter dancing Shall we tell a tale, or shall we utter felicitations? A tale: then of what is it best that we should tell?
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