Particularly is this the case in China and Korea, but the same respect, though in a somewhat less rigid form, is paid the dead in Japan.

Then at last the individual receives that recognition which was denied him in the flesh.

In Japan a mortuary tablet is set up to him in the house and duly worshipped; on the continent the ancestors are given a dwelling of their own, and even more devotedly reverenced.

But in both places the cult is anything but funereal.

For the ancestral tombs are temples and pleasure pavilions at the same time, consecrated not simply to rites and ceremonies, but to family gatherings and general jollification.