Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/218

184 are conjectured, but between them and the crawling train push masses of impenetrable forest. Passing Arai, with its petroleum springs, we reach flatter ground and enter Takata, once the castle town of the Sakakibara family, which shared with three others the privilege of providing a regent during the minority of a Tokugawa Shōgun. Traces of its old magnificence and of the Tokugawa patronage exist in a whole suburb of Buddhist temples, adorned in many cases with the Shōgun's crest. They are large, richly ornamented with good carving, and approached by avenues of cryptomeria. Since the Restoration and the Shintōist reaction the fame of the Takata temples has decreased, but their splendour is only to be eclipsed in that part of the country by the celebrated Zenkōji at Nagano. At the back of one row of these temples runs a stream, spanned by as many little bridges. I never expected to see the college "backs" of Cambridge so admirably parodied.

The railway line is here the dividing-line between sacred and profane. To the left of it the Buddhist monks traffic in holy wares; to the right cotton and cotton-cloth and a species of muslin peculiar to the place compose the stock-in-trade of half the shopkeepers. The latter reside in homogeneous batches, as in feudal times: all the mercers in one part, all the curio-dealers in another, and so on. But the most curious feature in the town is the wooden projecting roof conterminous with the street on either side, which enables the pedestrian to perambulate the main thoroughfare under shelter of an arcade. These are not found in the eastern or central provinces, and have been adopted on account of heavy snow-drifts, which in winter render the roads impassable. We had