N. Nevskii recorded on the islands of Miyako, Okinawa, a folk-tale which explains the dark spots on the moon as the form of a man carrying two water-pails with a pole, as a punishment for his sin of pouring water of rejuvenescence on serpents, and water of death on men, the opposite of what the gods had ordered him to do. Although the present-day Japanese see in the moon-spots a hare pounding rice-cake, we find in the Manyoshu, compiled in the 7-8th centuries, the phrase "water or rejuvenescence in the hands of Tsukiyomi (moon, moon-man)". The above-mentioned Okinawan tale suggests that the Japanese also had at one time a belief that the moon-man carried the water of life. The author traces the distribution of the motif of the humam figure with a water-pail (or pails) in the moon from Northern Europe through Siberia (the Yakuts, the Buryats, the Tungus) and East Asia (the Goldi, the Gilyaks, the Ainu, the Okinawans) to N. W. North America (the Tlingit, the Haida, the Kwakiutl) and New Zealand. He traces the motif of a hare (or a rat) from South Africa through India, the South Seas, Tibet, China, Mongolia, Japan etc. to North America, and finds in some folk-beliefs with the latter motif the same idea of the origin of human death as in Okinawa. Both motifs must have originated in the primitive belief of seeing in the eternal repetition of waxing and waning of the moon its immortal life or rejuvenescence, and the water carried by the moon-man (or moon-woman) must originally have meant the water of life or rejuvenescence, as in the case of the Okinawan folk-tale.

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As menstruation blood was highly taboo, special huts were erected for women in order to seclude them for a definite period, whereas the girl's puberty was celebrated by her family with a large attendance after her first menstruation. In the age of adolescence both boys and girls formerly spent the night apart, at houses other than their own, and boys visited their favorite girls at night. The form of marriage was the so-called ashiire-kon (a from of "bilocal" marriage) similar to that on Toshima Island as reported previously in No.3, Vol.14, of this Journal : after the marriage contract and even when there were already several children, both husband and wife spent the night at the wife's natal house or at the mawari-yado (nuptial house). The position of women was fairly high as compared with other parts of Japan, and a document 360-380 years old tells of the existence of a matrilineal family system on this island. The mother-son incest legend, which is found frequently in the origin myths of matrilineal societies, still remains in the folk-lore of these people. There also seems to have been a custom of sexual entertainment for strangers. 1. Puberty Rite 2. Menstruation Taboo 3. Mawari-yado (Nuptial House) and Love Affairs 4. Ashiire and Marriage Ceremony 5. The Status of Woman 6. Sexual Entertainment for Strangers 7. The Legend of Tanaba 8. Terms differentiating Birth-order of Sisters

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The author was a member of a Japanese garrison from June 1944 to May 1945 on this outlying islet of the Tanimbar Islands. His note, covering the various phases of the natives' life-ways, may be of some importance, since Molu Island is one of the ethnographically least-known portions of Indonesia.

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Among the ceremonial institutions of Liao, there was one called Se-se-i, in which a ceremony of shooting willow-trees was held for the prupose of praying for rain. In the Liao-shih pen-chi we find also a record of praying for rain by shooting willows. Dr. M. Takikawa has argued, on the basis of the association of the willow with water, that the custom derived from the Chinese, and as it had become a mere sport (as it also did later during the Chin dynasty) its original meaning was forgotten. The present author, on the contrary, sees the origin of this ceremony as a shooting contest only, lacking any conceptual association of willow and water. As the time of the ceremony coincided with the dry season, the magical power of bow and arrow, which had been typical of the Ch'i-tan mind, came to be combined with the idea of preventing willow-leaves from withering, and consequently with that of praying for rain. The willow-shooting ceremony continued to be held even when no special intention was attached to it, until it became mere entertainment both in the Chi-shan-i and Se-se-i. This type of ceremony developed ultimately into the "Willow-shooting and polo sports" during the Chin dynasty.

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Kroeber insisted on man's "social" nature-a trait which distinguishes him from animals. Sapir doubted this, and thus the problem of why man is essentially "social" still remains. Here lies a psychological issue, which in recent years has given rise to emphasis on the concepts of symbol and sign. The existence of culture is necessarily connected with the symbolic faculty, as White has ponited out. But White does not explore the final implications of this. When we consider the creative development of culure by Homo sapiens and when we consider the psychological nature of the symbolic faculty, we cannot but admit the creative power of this symbolic faculty. In this faculty of using the symbol we see likewise the faculty of creating the symbol. White regards man as a constant ; culture as an independent variable. We see, however, that men are not really constant because of their unique psychological creative faculty. Enculturation into a given culture depends essentially on the exercise of this faculty. It seems we are obliged at least in principle to admit that the individual may have the power to change culture, although the cultural stream in the long view appears generally so determining that the individual seems powerless. Obviously we cannot neglect the concept of the super-individual nature of culture and deny that we are able to study culture as if it were an independent entity. For example, we must know the structure of any culture before we study the process of enculturation of an individual into that culture. The most important inquiry would seem to lie in the area of the interdependence between the individual and cultural process, especially when investigating a small community culture intensively and minutely. Thus we may conclude that culture is not entirely super-individual.

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