Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/254

 touch themselves, and use the rosary in prayer; and high mass at the Hongwanji might almost be high mass at St. Mark’s. Mass is celebrated at five o’clock on every morning of the year, and all day worshippers may come to kneel and pray before the altars. On the first and fifteenth days of each month special services are held at two o’clock in the afternoon, and every January recurs a week of prayer in honor of the founder of the Shin sect, when priests come from all parts of the empire to the mother-temple. The fortnightly afternoon services consist of readings from the sacred scriptures, and the chanting of Japanese and Chinese sacred poems by some twenty priests in black gauze stoles; a larger chorus, hidden behind the central shrine and altar, joining in and responding. The high-priest, in a cardinal and gold brocade kesa, sits directly facing the shrine, and at intervals touches the swinging plate of bronze used as a gong in the order of worship. The golden shrine, in a great gilded alcove, or chancel, bears countless gilded lotus flowers and candelabra, and slender columns of incense rise from the priests’ low reading-desk. At the conclusion of the chanted service the doors of the shrine are opened, and the sacred image displayed in a silence broken only by low strokes on the gong. Then the priests file away, and the faithful, flocking into the vacant place behind the rail, and kneeling where the priests have knelt, prostrate themselves, rub their rosaries in their palms, and repeat with ecstatic fervor the invocation: “Namu Amida Butsu” (Hail, Great Lord Buddha).

Every year, on the temple steps, the contributions of rice from distant provinces are stacked high in their cylindrical straw bales, themselves emblems of abundance. This rice is sent as an annual tribute from different parts of the empire to the head-temple of the sect at Kioto, to be used for offerings in the sanctuaries, for the priests’ food, and for alms to the poor. 238