the ceremony called Suigiyo; that is to say, praying under the waterfall that his soul may be purified through his body.  In winter it requires no small pluck to go through this penance, yet I have seen a penitent submit to it for more than a quarter of an hour on a bitterly cold day in January.  In summer, on the other hand, the religious exercise called Hiyakudo, or “the hundred times,” which may also be seen here to advantage, is no small trial of patience.  It consists in walking backwards and forwards a hundred times between two points within the sacred precincts, repeating a prayer each time.  The count is kept either upon the fingers or by depositing a length of twisted straw each time that the goal is reached; at this temple the place allotted for the ceremony is between a grotesque bronze figure of Tengu Sama ("the Dog of Heaven"), the terror of children, a most hideous monster with a gigantic nose, which it is beneficial to rub with a finger afterwards to be applied to one’s own nose, and a large brown box inscribed with the characters Hiyaku Do in high relief, which may generally be seen full of straw tallies.  It is no sinecure to be a good Buddhist, for the gods are not lightly to be propitiated.  Prayer and fasting, mortification of the flesh, abstinence from wine, from women, and from favourite dishes, are the only passports to rising in office, prosperity in trade, recovery from sickness, or a happy marriage with a beloved maiden.  Nor will mere faith without works be efficient.  A votive tablet of proportionate value to the favour prayed for, or a sum of money for the repairs of the shrine or temple, is necessary to win the favour of the gods.  Poorer persons will cut off the queue of their hair and offer that up; and at Horinouchi, a temple in great renown some eight or nine miles from Yedo, there is a rope about two inches and a half in diameter and about six fathoms long, entirely made of human hair so given to the gods; it lies coiled up, dirty, moth-eaten, and uncared for, at one end of a long shed full of tablets and pictures, by the side of a rude native fire-engine.  The taking of life being displeasing to Buddha, outside many of the temples old women and children earn a livelihood by selling sparrows, small eels, carp, and tortoises, which the worshipper sets free in honour of the deity, within whose territory cocks and hens and doves, tame and unharmed, perch on every jutty, frieze, buttress, and coigne of vantage.

But of all the marvellous customs that I wot of in connection with Japanese religious exercises, none appears to me so strange as that of spitting at the images of the gods, more especially at the statues of the Ni-o, the two huge red or red and green statues which, like Gog and Magog, emblems of strength, stand as guardians of the chief Buddhist temples.  The figures are protected by a network of iron wire, through which the votaries, praying the while, spit pieces of paper, which they had chewed up into a pulp.  If the pellet sticks to the statue, the omen is favourable; if it falls, the prayer is not accepted.  The inside of the great bell at the Tycoon’s burial-ground, and almost every holy statue throughout the country, are all covered with these outspittings from pious mouths.[11]