Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/258

 circles of the capital, his system of higher philosophy appealing strongly to those cultivated thinkers and men of letters.

The common people, like the ignorant of other races, do not at all comprehend the religion they do profess, observing its forms as a habit or a matter of blind convention, and celebrating its events with ceremonies and decorations, festivals and anniversaries, whose significance they cannot explain. Japanese streets suddenly blossom out with flags and lanterns at every door-way and along miles of eaves, and if you ask a shopkeeper what this rejoicing means, he will reply, “Wakarimasen,” or “Shirimasen” (I do not know). Then some learned man tells you that it is the anniversary of the death of Jimmu Tenno, or the autumn festival, when the first rice of the garnered crop is offered to the gods by the Emperor in the palace chapel, by the priests at every Shinto shrine, and at every household altar in pious homes, or some other traditional occasion kept as a Government holiday. Closing the Government offices on Sunday, and making that a day of rest, was a matter of practical convenience merely, and the result of the adoption of a uniform calendar with the rest of the world, and a modern military establishment on foreign models.

One of the festivals of a religious character which is understood by the people, and is, perhaps, the most remarkable of all Kioto’s great summer illuminations, is that of the Daimonji, at the end of the Bon Matsuri, or Festival of the Dead. According to Buddhist belief, the spirits of the departed return to earth for three days in mid-August, visiting their families and earthly haunts, and flitting back to their graves on the night of the third day. During the continuance of the Bon Matsuri, lanterns and paper strips are hung in front of those houses in which a death has occurred during the year, and 242