Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/210

 Sect. The ceremony, owing to the numbers that take part in it and the unvaried solemnity of their procedure, occupies a long time, but is of the simplest character.

It is significant that the chief representatives of Buddhism join in these acts of Shintō worship; but since, as already shown, the apostles of Buddhism in Japan combined their creed with the indigenous faith by declaring, in the eighth century, that the Buddha of Light (Dainichi Nyorai, the Indian Birushanabutsu) had been incarnated as Amaterasu in Japan, as Saka-muni in India, and as Confucius in China, Buddhist hierarchs of modern times merely obey the tenets of their religion when they bow before the Shintō shrine in the Hall of Reverence. Christianity, however, has made no such adaptation. Yet among the body of officials who meet in the Kashiko-dokoro there must be many Christians. It would be possible for these men to absent themselves on the ground of sickness. In no country does a conventional excuse receive more generous recognition than in Japan. The plea of "indisposition" is accepted without scrutiny, and is understood to be serviceable as an explanation no less than as a reason. But if officials that profess Christianity and attend Christian places of worship made a habit of standing aloof, on whatever plea, from the services conducted by the Emperor in honour of the Sun Goddess and the spirits of the Imperial ancestors, there cannot be any doubt