Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/37

 compradore or superintendent, through whom all contracts and payments are made. The Chinaman has the methodical, systematic brain, and no convulsion of nature or commerce makes him lose his head, as the charmingly erratic, artistic, and polite Japanese does. In many foreign households in Japan a Chinese butler, or head boy, rules the establishment; but while his silent, unvarying, clock-like service leaves nothing undone, the attendance of the bright-faced, amiable, and exuberant little natives with their smiles, their matchless courtesy, and their graceful and everlasting bowing is far more agreeable.

Homura temple, whose stone embankments and soaring roof rise just across the creek, is generally the first Buddhist sanctuary seen by the tourist coming from American shores. Every month it has its matsuri, or festival, but sparrows are always twittering in the eaves, children playing about the steps, and devout ones tossing their coppers in on the mats, clapping their hands and pressing their palms together while they pray. One of the most impressive scenes ever witnessed there was the funeral of its high-priest, when more than a hundred bonzes, or priests, came from neighboring temples to assist in the long ceremonies, and sat rigid in their precious brocade vestments, chanting the ritual and the sacred verse. The son, who succeeded to the father’s office by inheritance, had prepared for the rites by days of fasting, and, pale, hollow-eyed, but ecstatic, burned incense, chanted, and in the white robes of a mourner bore the mortuary tablets from the temple to the tomb. Homura’s commercial hum was silenced when the train of priests in glittering robes, shaded by enormous red umbrellas, wound down the long terrace steps and out between the rows of tiny shops to the distant graveyard. Yet after it the crowd closed in, barter and sale went on, jinrikishas whirled up and down, and pattering women and toddling children 21