Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/69

 dollars on great holidays, rings and echoes well to the fall of the smallest coin. The sides of the temple are open to the air, and the visitor may retain shoes and clogs, so that the clatter of these wooden soles, the pilgrims’ clapping and mumbling, mingle in one distracting roar.

Tame pigeons fly in and out through the open walls, and children chase each other across the floor; but behind the grating candles burn, bells tinkle, priests chant, and rows of absorbed worshippers clap, toss their coppers, and pray, oblivious of ll their surroundings.

are no such holiday-makers as the Japanese. The whole twelvemonth is fête-time, and the old year held three hundred and sixty-five festivals and anniversaries. All the great days of the Chinese calendar are observed, and the death-day of past sovereigns, instead of the birthday; while each religion, each sect, each temple, and each neighborhood has its own fête or matsuri, religious in its origin. Every night different temple grounds and different streets glow with lanterns and torches, an out-door fair is in full progress, and happy, laughing, chattering men, women, and children enjoy it all. The evening flower-fairs are as characteristic and picturesque as anything in Japan. The smoke of blazing flambeaux, the smell of the women’s camellia seed hair-oil, and the mingled odors from booths and portable restaurants, are not enticing on a hot night, but at least they offend in an “artless Japanese way.”

The booths along the whole length of the Ginza offer 53