picture at least, a torii. How describe a torii to those who have never
looked at one even in a photograph or engraving? Two lofty columns, like
gate-pillars, supporting horizontally two cross-beams, the lower and
lighter beam having its ends fitted into the columns a little distance
below their summits; the uppermost and larger beam supported upon the
tops of the columns, and projecting well beyond them to right and left.
That is a torii: the construction varying little in design, whether made
of stone, wood, or metal. But this description can give no correct idea
of the appearance of a torii, of its majestic aspect, of its mystical
suggestiveness as a gateway. The first time you see a noble one, you
will imagine, perhaps, that you see the colossal model of some beautiful
Chinese letter towering against the sky; for all the lines of the thing
have the grace of an animated ideograph,--have the bold angles and
curves of characters made with four sweeps of a master-brush. [2]

Passing the torii I ascend a flight of perhaps one hundred stone steps,
and find at their summit a second torii, from whose lower cross-beam
hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is in this case a hempen rope
of perhaps two inches in diameter through its greater length, but
tapering off at either end like a snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is made
of bronze, when the torii itself is of bronze; but according to
tradition it should be made of straw, and most commonly is. For it
represents the straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto stretched
behind the Sun-goddess, Ama-terasu-oho-mi-Kami, after Ame-no-ta-jikara-
wo-no-Kami, the Heavenly-hand-strength-god, had pulled her out, as is
told in that ancient myth of Shinto which Professor Chamberlain has
translated. [3] And the shimenawa, in its commoner and simpler form,
has pendent tufts of straw along its entire length, at regular
intervals, because originally made, tradition declares, of grass pulled
up by the roots which protruded from the twist of it.