or hei-min of any trade who does not wear amulet, charm or other object which he regards with more or less of reverence as having relation to the powers that help or harm.[17] In most of the Buddhist temples these amulets are sold for the benefit of the priests or of the shrine or monastery.  Not a few even of the gentry consider it best to be on the safe side and wear in pouch or purse these protectors against evil.

Of the 7,817,570 houses in the empire, enumerated in the census of 1892, it is probable that seven millions of them are subjects of insurance by fetich.[18] They are guaranteed against fire, thieves, lightning, plague and pestilence.  It is because of money paid to the priests that the wooden policies are duly nailed on the walls, and not on account of the wise application of mathematical, financial or medical science.  Examine also the paper packages carefully tied and affixed above the transom, decipher the writing in ink or the brand left by the hot iron on the little slabs of pine-wood—­there may be one or a score of them—­and what will you read?  Names of the temples with date of issue and seal of certificate from the priests, mottoes or titles from sacred books, often only a Sanskrit letter or monogram, of which the priest-pedler may long since have forgotten the meaning.  To build a house, select a cemetery or proceed to any of the ordinary events of life without making use of some sort of material fetich, is unusual, extraordinary and is voted heterodox.

Long after the brutish stage of thought is past the fetichistic instinct remains in the sacredness attached to the mere letter or paper or parchment of the sacred book or writing, when used as amulet, plaster or medicine.  The survivals, even in Buddhism, of ancient and prehistoric Fetichism are many and often with undenied approval of the religious authorities, especially in those sects which are themselves reversions to primitive and lower types of religion.

Among the Ainos of Yezo and Saghalin the medicine-man or shaman is decorated with fetichistic bric-a-brac of all sorts, and these bits of shells, metals, and other clinking substances are believed to be media of communication with mysterious influences and forces.  In Korea thousands of trees bedecked with fluttering rags, clinking scraps of tin, metal or stone signify the same thing.  In Japan these primitive tinkling scraps and clinking bunches of glass have long since become the suzu or wind-bells seen on the pagoda which tintinabulate with every passing breeze.  The whittled sticks of the Aino, non-conductors of evil and protectors of those who make and rear them, stuck up in every place of awe or supposed danger, have in the slow evolution of centuries become the innumerable flag-poles, banners and streamers which one sees at their matsuris or temple festivals.  Millions of towels and handkerchiefs still flutter over wells and on sacred trees.  In old Japan the banners of an army almost outnumbered the men who fought beneath them.  Today, at times they nearly conceal the temples from view.