The Red Cloud Chief

DEMON MADE IN JAPAN

SUPERSTITIOUS ORIENTALS DECEIVED.

Became Rich In Three Months—Cranial Bones of Horses and Oxen, Horses Teeth and Steer's Horns Used To Make the Skull.

The skeleton of a "demon" was recently placed on exhibition in Japan. It was exhibited over half of the empire, and caused an immense sensation wherever it was shown. The "demon" is the great bugaboo of the Japanese. In the olden times in which, according to native tradition, the demon existed, it was possessed of enormous strength, a voracious appetite and a pestilential breath, devastating a district with even greater dispatch than the plague. It is supposed to have had a real existence and to be extinct only in the sense that we know the dodo to be extinct. Hence there are many natives of Japan who believe that there is a possibility that one remaining specimen of the demon may be discovered in some remote place where it has been concealed for many years.

Therefore, the skeleton, fabricated by an ingenious Japanese fakir, oused great curiosity, and thousands of Japanese flocked to see it. Its owner grew rich, and his specimen might have continued to furnish evidence of the truth of some of the astonishing folklore tales of the masses had not the fact that it was a swindle been proved by the authorities. As it was, the excitement over it was immense. Here is what the Japan Weekly Mail says of it:

"A most ingenious swindler recently met with well-merited punishment at the hands of the Kumamoto police authorities, after having for more than three months done a roaring business by imposing on the credulity of the Kyusha people. He exhibited what he was pleased to call the skeleton of a demon, and has been convicted of most daring duplicity and sent up for a long term to a place where flesh and blood demons are of not infrequent occurrence.

"His name is Michigami Kataro, his native village Bingo, his real profession that of a paper-hanger. Being dissatisfied with the profits derived from honest trade, he conceived the idea of manufacturing a demon of the good old-fashioned Shutendoji type, believing with justice that he would make a fortune by exhibiting so rare and noteworthy an object. His professional skill stood him in good stead in carrying out this plan, the ingenuity displayed being well worthy a better scheme.

"In manufacturing the huge skull he used the cranial bones of horses and oxen. These he joined together most deftly by covering them on the inner side with skin taken from the stomach of an ox. Horse teeth inserted the wrong way were placed in the demon's mouth, giving the skull a most ferocious expression. Two horns remained to be soldered on in strict accordance with the received traditions of demons in Japan, and here again the horns of an ox were put in requisition.

"The thorough preparations being completed, he set out on a swindling tour and earned a substantial sum by exhibiting his handiwork. But fate was lying in wait for him at Kumamoto. The fraud was detected and the swindling three—the skeleton, the document and the man—were impounded and imprisoned. The man made a clean breast of it, giving a minute description of the manner in which he had made the skeleton, to the delight of the Kumamoto police."