deity; on asking as to the proportion of the worshipers, we were told that there are about ten of the former to one of the latter, a significant indication of the unhappiness of many a home.  Prof.  Edmund Buckley has made a special study of the subject of phallic worship in Japan; in his thesis on the topic he gives a list of thirteen places where these symbols of phallic worship might be seen a few years since.  It is significant that at Uji, not a stone’s throw from the phallic shrine, is a temple to the God Agata, whose special function is the cure of venereal diseases.

But though phallic worship and its accompanying immorality have been extirpated, immorality in connection with religion is still rampant in certain quarters.  Not far from the great temples at Ise, the center of Shintoism and the goal for half a million pilgrims yearly, are large and prosperous brothels patronized by and existing for the sake of the pilgrims.  A still more popular resort for pilgrims is that at Kompira, whither, as we have seen, some 900,000 come each year; here the best hotels, and presumably the others also, are provided with prostitutes who also serve as waiting girls; on the arrival of a guest he is customarily asked whether or not the use of a prostitute shall be included in his hotel bill.  It seems strange, indeed, that the government should take such pains to suppress phallicism, and allow such immorality to go on under the eaves of the greatest national shrines; for these shrines are not private affairs; the government takes possession of the gifts, and pays the regular salaries of the attending priests.  It would appear from its success in the extermination of distinctly phallic worship that the government could put a stop to all public prostitution in connection with religion if it cared to do so.

One point of interest in connection with the above facts is that the old religions, however much of force, beauty, and truth we may concede to them, have never made warfare against these obscene forms of worship, nor against the notorious immorality of their devotees.  Whatever may be said of the profound philosophy of life involved in phallic worship, for many hundreds of years it has been a source of outrageous immorality.  Nevertheless, there has never been any continued and effective effort on the part of the higher types of religion to exterminate the lower.  But Japan is not peculiar in this respect.  India is even now amazingly immoral in certain forms of her worship.

Another point of interest in this connection is that the change of the nation in its attitude to this form of religion was due largely, probably wholly, to contact with the nations of the West.  The uprooting of phallic worship was due, not to a moral reformation, but to a political ambition.  It was carried out, not in deference to public opinion, but wholly by government command, though without doubt the nobler opinion of the land approved of the government action.  But even this nobler public sentiment was aroused by the Occidental stimulus.  The success of the effort must be attributed not a little to the age-long national custom of submitting absolutely to governmental initiative and command.