Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/202

 be invoked on every occasion and for every purpose. Perhaps the most intelligible way of differentiating the practical aspects of the two creeds is to say that the Shintō deities are invoked in connection with all the joys and successes of life; the Buddha is worshipped in connection with its sorrows and bereavements. No light is kindled nor any incense burned before the Hotoke at New Year's time or on other festive occasion, and when death or sickness visits a house, the Shintō altar, in turn, stands without worship.

It will readily be conceived that special rites have to be performed when petitions of great import are offered to heaven, — the o-komori, for example, which means twenty-one days of unceasing prayer within a shrine; the kankōri, or pouring ice-cold water over the naked body in midwinter; the hadashi-mairi, or barefooted worship; the hiyakudo-mairi, or hundred acts of devotion, and so on. But in general the pilgrimage is the greatest effort demanded of a Shintō or Buddhist believer.

Neither religion can lay claim to State protection in modern times. The Tokugawa Government added to the body politic a new class of officials called Jisha-bugyo, whose duty was to administer the secular laws in all matters relating to religion, and who were chosen from among the most influential nobles in the Empire. The Church was thus removed beyond the pale of the ordinary tribunals, and brought under the pur-