Chap, xix.] RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. 42 1 



houses and to watch their strange habits, and guide-books were 

 pubHshed for the use of the sight-seers, in which all articles of 

 furniture, all implements and utensils and articles of dress of 

 the Englishmen were figured. 



Early every morning in Kioto there is a tremendous clanging 

 and booming of bells from the monasteries, mingled with 

 beating of gongs, to call the monks to matins, and arouse 

 Buddha and Kanon to listen to their prayers. There is a big 

 gong in front of every shrine with a large heavy cord in front 

 of it. As each private worshipper arrives he swings the rope 

 and 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 offerings, 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 per- 

 formed 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 

 silk-covered wallets hanging 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 



