SACRED STRAW ROPES

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 74, 29 March 1938, Page 4

SACRED STRAW ROPES

hundred ropes, each forty-eight feet long, made of straw gleaned from the rice-fields in the neighbourhood of the Grand Shrine of Ise, which is devoted to the memory of the Imperial Ancestors, and is considered the most sacred place in Japan, have been despatched to the Japanese troops in China with a view to stimulating their morale. These ropes will be hung at the gates of towns and barracks.

The ropes were treated with the greatest reverence. They were brought to Tokio in a special railway car and were the object of ceremonial prayers i

at the Meiji Shrine and on the plaza before the Imperial Palace. They were then kept for a time in the Meiji Shrine, before being sent to Kobe, from whence they have been shipped to North China. Domei, the leading Japanese news agency, states that the ropes were despatched “to enhance the soldiers* spirit during the New Year holiday, to help in clarifying the significance of the mission of the troops in the campaign and to eradicate evils, thereby exhibiting to the Chinese the virtues of the spirit of • the Sun Goddess in preserving calm.”