Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/119

Rh better than other folk in the eyes of the god. A divinopathist's earthly trade may be anything under heaven. Plastering and clerking in a wine-shop are among the latest specimen occupations I have met with of men thus engaged in business both with this world and the next.

These doctors of divinity receive regular diplomas, without which they are not allowed to practice. Nominally they are not allowed to practice with them, for in the certificates no mention is made of the special object for which the certificates are issued, permission being granted merely to perform prayer, which comprehensive phrase covers a multitude of saintly acts.

The reason the certificates read so beautifully vague is not that religion conceives her esoteric cults to be profoundly secret, but that the government imagines them to be barbarous because not in keeping with foreign manners and customs. At the same time, the paternal powers-that-be dare not proscribe them. The fact is, they are both too Japanese to be countenanced and too Japanese to be suppressed; so the authorities wink at their practice. The Japanese