least. It consists of two parts. The lower part, shaped like a very
shallow, broad wineglass, with a very thick stem, has an interior as
well as an exterior rim; and the bottom of a correspondingly broad and
shallow brass cup, which is the upper part and contains the oil, fits
exactly into this inner rim. This kind of lamp is always furnished with
a small brass object in the shape of a flat ring, with a stem set at
right angles to the surface of the ring. It is used for moving the
floating wick and keeping it at any position required; and the little
perpendicular stem is long enough to prevent the fingers from touching
the oil.

The most curious objects to be seen on any ordinary kamidana are the
stoppers of the sake-vessels or o-mikidokkuri ('honourable sake-jars').
These stoppers--o-mikidokkuri-nokuchisashi--may be made of brass, or of
fine thin slips of wood jointed and bent into the singular form
required. Properly speaking, the thing is not a real stopper, in spite
of its name; its lower part does not fill the mouth of the jar at all:
it simply hangs in the orifice like a leaf put there stem downwards. I
find it difficult to learn its history; but, though there are many
designs of it--the finer ones being of brass--the shape of all seems to
hint at a Buddhist origin. Possibly the shape was borrowed from a
Buddhist symbol--the Hoshi-notama, that mystic gem whose lambent glow
(iconographically suggested as a playing of flame) is the emblem of Pure
Essence; and thus the object would be typical at once of the purity of
the wine-offering and the purity of the heart of the giver.

The little lamp may not be lighted every evening in all homes, since
there are families too poor to afford even this infinitesimal nightly
expenditure of oil. But upon the first, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth of
each month the light is always kindled; for these are Shinto holidays of