Shinto shrine, with a torii before it like a great ideograph shaped in
stone or wood. But Buddhism still dominates; every hilltop has its tera;
and the statues of Buddhas or of Bodhisattvas appear by the roadside, as
we travel on, with the regularity of milestones. Often a village tera is
so large that the cottages of the rustic folk about it seem like little
out-houses; and the traveller wonders how so costly an edifice of prayer
can be supported by a community so humble. And everywhere the signs of
the gentle faith appear: its ideographs and symbols are chiselled upon
the faces of the rocks; its icons smile upon you from every shadowy
recess by the way; even the very landscape betimes would seem to have
been moulded by the soul of it, where hills rise softly as a prayer. And
the summits of some are domed like the head of Shaka, and the dark bossy
frondage that clothes them might seem the clustering of his curls.

But gradually, with the passing of the days, as we journey into the
loftier west, I see fewer and fewer tera. Such Buddhist temples as we
pass appear small and poor; and the wayside images become rarer and
rarer. But the symbols of Shinto are more numerous, and the structure of
its miya larger and loftier. And the torii are visible everywhere, and
tower higher, before the approaches to villages, before the entrances of
courts guarded by strangely grotesque lions and foxes of stone, and
before stairways of old mossed rock, upsloping, between dense growths of
ancient cedar and pine, to shrines that moulder in the twilight of holy
groves.

At one little village I see, just beyond, the torii leading to a great
Shinto temple, a particularly odd small shrine, and feel impelled by
curiosity to examine it. Leaning against its closed doors are many short
gnarled sticks in a row, miniature clubs. Irreverently removing these,
and opening the little doors, Akira bids me look within. I see only a