Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/109

 belfry are seldom omitted, but a pagoda is often wanting (these will be presently spoken of). The principal building, called the Honden, contains in some cases a large bronze image, and in some cases statuettes of wood or metal encased in small shrines, and revealed only on special occasions. In many temples there exist two Honden side by side, one for the founder and one for the deity, or one for each of two separately adored deities. This principal sanctuary is generally an oblong building raised some four feet from the ground. In some cases there are an inner and an outer sanctuary, separated by an interval room; in others the two sanctuaries are separated only by a screen or blind, the separation being sometimes emphasised by a different treatment of the ceilings of the two. These buildings vary greatly in size, there being in the larger temples an interior peristyle—or other arrangement of columns, often of great size, to support the roof—forming an ambulatory or aisle round the oratory, or sometimes round three sides of it, leaving the fourth to be occupied by the sanctuary and secondary temples on either side. The temple Tōdai-ji at Nara, which contains a celebrated bronze image of Buddha fifty-three feet high, measures two hundred and ninety feet long, one hundred and seventy feet wide, and one hundred and fifty-six feet high, being a two-storeyed building. The temple of Miyo-jin in Tōkyō measures sixty-six feet by twenty-seven feet high by forty feet to the ridge.

The building is invariably surrounded by a raised gallery, reached by a flight of steps in the centre of the approach front, the balustrade of which is a continuation of the gallery railing. This gallery is sometimes supported upon a deep system of bracketing, corbelled out from the feet of the main pillars. Within this raised gallery, which is sheltered by the over-sailing