JAPAN. 487 



strikes the gong, to notify the deity that he is about to say his 

 prayers. 



The temples of the Holy City are thronged with devout 

 worshippers, and the floors of the shrines strewn with offered 

 cash thrown into them. The receptacles for offerings are not 

 small boxes with a slit, as in England, but large manger-like 

 troughs with mouths many feet long and more than a foot in 

 width, and when a grand service is in progress, I have watched 

 a perpetual rain of cash thrown into such a money-box from the 

 crowd in front. 



There is no lack of money-boxes in Japan, every holy tree 

 and holy stone, in however apparently remote a spot, is garnished 

 with one, and even the holy white horse at Kobe solicited offer- 

 ings, with a box of his own. At one of the temples, we saw a 

 row of country pilgrims who had just arrived, and were having 

 a special service performed for themselves. They evidently 

 knew nothing of the ritual, and a clerk stood by and told them 

 the proper moments in the service at which they were to bow 

 their heads to the ground. But the pilgrims could not fall in 

 with the thing, and were perpetually bowing out of time, much 

 to the excitement of the clerk and their own apparent annoyance. 



Mendicant friars sat by the roadsides in groups, perpetually 

 hammering small round flat gongs, and bawling out the oft- 

 repeated prayer, "Namu amida butsu," "Holy Lord Buddha," 

 whilst passers-by threw them coppers. These mendicant priests, 

 with their uplifted hammers and open mouths, are common 

 subjects for caricature in Japanese picture-books. 



Other priests perambulate the town with large square- 

 shaped wallets covered with silk hangings, suspended over 

 their chests by a broad band passed round their necks. In 

 these wallets they collect offerings of food. There can be no 

 doubt in the traveller's mind as to the activity and reality of 

 religion in the Holy City, it is impressed on him in some form 

 at every turn. 



Very few English travelled along the Tokaido about the 

 time of our journey, because of the existence of the far cheaper 

 and quicker route by sea, by means of a regular line of mail 

 steamers. I was surprised to find that we afforded, towards the 



