The first religious duty of the morning in a Buddhist household is to
set before the tablets of the dead a little cup of tea, made with the
first hot water prepared--O-Hotoke-San-nio-cha-to-ageru. [17] Daily
offerings of boiled rice are also made; and fresh flowers are put in the
shrine vases; and incense--although not allowed by Shinto--is burned
before the tablets. At night, and also during the day upon certain
festivals, both candles and a small oil-lamp are lighted in the butsuma
--a lamp somewhat differently shaped from the lamp of the miya and called
rinto On the day of each month corresponding to the date of death a
little repast is served before the tablets, consisting of shojin-ryori
only, the vegetarian food of the. Buddhists. But as Shinto family
worship has its special annual festival, which endures from the first to
the third day of the new year, so Buddhist ancestor-worship has its
yearly Bonku, or Bommatsuri, lasting from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth day of the seventh month. This is the Buddhist Feast of Souls.
Then the butsuma is decorated to the utmost, special offerings of food
and of flowers are made, and all the house is made beautiful to welcome
the coming of the ghostly visitors.

Now Shinto, like Buddhism, has its ihai; but these are of the simplest
possible shape and material--mere slips of plain white wood. The average
height is only about eight inches. These tablets are either placed in a
special miya kept in a different room from that in which the shrine of
the Kami is erected, or else simply arranged on a small shelf called by
the people Mitama-San-no-tana,--'the Shelf of the August Spirits.' The
shelf or the shrine of the ancestors and household dead is placed always
at a considerable height in the mitamaya or soreisha (as the Spirit
Chamber is sometimes called), just as is the miya of the Kami in the
other apartment. Sometimes no tablets are used, the name being simply
painted upon the woodwork of the Spirit Shrine. But Shinto has no