A large proportion of these teahouses would have great difficulty in establishing a claim to respectability.  Numbers of lamps which crowded the space before the shrine were the gifts of women of bad character and the inscriptions on these gifts bore the addresses and profession of the donors.  The final irony was the provision of a tram service for the convenience of those who wished to worship at another altar than that of the fox god.  Although most of the visitors found the chief attraction of the place in the teahouses,[221] they were none the less devout.  Every visitor to the teahouses worshipped at the shrine.

What do those who bow their heads and throw their Coppers in the treasury pray for?  “Well-being to my family and prosperity to my business” was, I was told, a common form of invocation.  Even among not a few reasonably well educated people there is a conviction that prayers made at the altar of the fox god are peculiarly efficacious.  Kanzo Uchimura, who accompanied me on this trip, improved the occasion by saying in his vigorous English:  “You in the West have some difficulty, no doubt, in understanding the fierceness of the indignation with which Old Testament prophets denounce heathen gods.  When you behold such an exhibition as this you may be helped to understand.  Here is impurity under divine protection, and this place may fairly be called a fashionable shrine.  The visitor to Japan often vaunts himself on being broadminded.  He regards heathendom as only another sect and he desires to be respectful to it.  But I want to show you that it is not a case of only another sect but often a case of gross and demoralising superstition and priestly countenancing of immorality.  Heaven forbid that I should deny the beauty of the idea of the foxes being the messengers of divinity or that I should suggest that some religious feelings may not inspire and some religious feeling may not reward the sincere devotion of the countryman to his fox god, but how much does it amount to in sum?”

I thought of what Uchimura had said when one day, in the course of a walk with his critic, Yanagi (Chapter XI), I was shown a shrine pitifully bedizened by the waraji (straw sandals) and ema[222] of a thousand or more pilgrims who were suffering or had recovered from syphilis.[223]

During our conversation Yanagi said:  “Shintoism is not of course a religion at all.  It draws great strength from the national instinct for cleanliness manifested by people living in a hot climate.  The religion of poor people is largely custom; I complain of educated people not that they are sceptical but that they are not sceptical enough.  They simply don’t care.  According to Mr. Uchimura, there is only one way to God and that is through Christianity.  But there are many ways.  A personal religion like Christianity is more effective than Buddhism, but it does not follow that Christianity is better than Buddhism.  I find I get to like Mr. Uchimura