Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/164

 before Kobo Daishi induced the Shinto priests to believe that their god of the mountain was but a manifestation of Buddha. Everything proclaims a hoary past—trees, moss-grown stones, battered images, crumbling tombs, overgrown and forgotten graveyards.

Each summer half the Tokio legations move bodily to Nikko, and temples, monastery wings, priests’ houses, and the homes of the dwellers in the upper village are rented to foreigners in ever-increasing numbers. Nikko habitations do not yet bring the prices of Newport cottages, but the extravagant rate of three and even five hundred yens for a season of three months is a Japanese equivalent. Besides the foreigners, there are many Japanese residents and tourists—little men in hot, uncomfortable foreign clothes, with field-glasses strapped across one shoulder, and the freshest and tightest of gloves. The white-clad pilgrims throng hither by thousands during July and early August, march picturesquely to the jingle of their staffs and bells round the great temples, and trudge on to the sanctuary on Chiuzenji's shores within the shadow of holy Nantaisan.

Two bridges cross the Daiyagawa, and lead to the groves and temples that make Nikko’s fame. One bridge is an every-day affair of plain, unpainted timbers, across which jinrikishas rumble noisily, and figures pass and re-pass. The other is the sacred bridge, over which only the Emperor may pass, in lieu of the Shoguns of old, for whom it was reserved. It is built of wood, covered with red lacquer, with many brass plates and tips, and rests on foundation piles of Titanic stone columns, joined by cross-pieces of stone, carefully fitted and mortised in. Tradition maintains that the gods sent down this rainbow bridge from the clouds in answer to saintly prayer. Its sanctity is so carefully preserved, that when the Emperor wished to pay the highest conceivable honor to General Grant, he ordered the barrier to the bridge to 148