The great tongueless bell is another striking accessory to the temple services.  Near at hand stands the belfry out of which boom forth tidings of the hours.  In the flow of time and years, the note of the bell becomes more significant, and in old age solemn, making in the lapse of centuries an educating power in seriousness.  “As sad as a temple bell” is the coinage of popular speech.  Many of the inscriptions, though with less of sunny hope and joy than even Christian grave-stones bear, are yet mournfully beautiful.[33] They preach Buddhism in its reality.  Whereas, the general associations of the Christian spire and belfry, apart from the note of time, are those of joy, invitation and good news, those of the tongueless and log-struck bells of Buddhism are sombre and saddening.  “As merry as a marriage bell,” could never be said of the boom from a Buddhist temple, even though it pour waves of sound through sunny leagues.  There is a vast difference between the peal and play of the chimes of Europe and the liquid melody which floods the landscape of Chinese Asia.  The one music, high in air, seems ever to tell of faith, triumph and aspiration; the other in minor notes, from bells hung low on yokes, perpetually echoes the pessimism of despair, the folly of living and the joy that anticipates its end.

Above all, the temple holds and governs the cemetery[34] as well as the cradle; while from it emanate influences that enwrap and surround the villager, from birth to death.  Since the outlawry of Christianity, and especially since the division of the empire into Buddhist parishes, the bonzes have had the oversight of birth, death, marriage and divorce.  Particularly tenacious, in common with priestcraft all over the world, is their clutch upon what they call “consecrated ground.”  In a large sense Japan is still, what China has always been, a country governed by the graveyard.  These cities of the dead are usually kept in attractive order and made beautiful with flowers in memoriam.  The study of epitaphs and mortuary architecture, though not without elements bordering on the ludicrous, is enjoyed by the thoughtful student.[35]

In every community the inhabitants are enrolled at birth at the local temple, whose priests are the authorized religious teachers, and are always expected to take charge of the funerals of those whose names are thus enrolled.  So long as an individual remains in the region of the family temple, the tie which binds him to it is exceedingly difficult to break; but if he moves away he is no longer bound by this tie.  This explains the fact, so often observed by missionaries, that the membership of Christian churches is made up almost entirely of people who have come from other localities.  In the city of Osaka, for instance, it is a very rare thing to find a native Osakan in any of the churches.  The same is true in all parts of the country.  So long as a Japanese remains in the neighborhood of his family temple it is almost impossible to get him to break the temple tie and join a Christian church; but when he moves to another place he is free to do as he likes.[36]

This statement of a resident in modern Japan will long remain true for a large part of the empire.