HEXAGONAL TEMPLE, KIOTO, JAPAN - Kioto is called the City of Temples, and it well deserves the name. The traveller sees so many, that it is ever after difficult for him to recall them separately. They are of various shapes and sizes. One of them alone contains 30,000 idols, most of which are rude images carved out of solid blocks of wood and heavily gilded. They are about three feet high, and some possess many arms and hands, symbols of power and plenty. In many of these temples priests are continually writing on slips of paper the prayers of worshippers, who request that these petitions be pinned or pasted up in the sanctuary. In many Japanese shrines there are gongs, which are beaten vigorously by any one who comes to pray, to arouse the attention of the Deities, and notify them of the prayer about to be offered. Bronze bells of great purity of sound are also to be seen there, and they are rung at stated intervals by the priest with a strangely beautiful effect. Kioto has to-day a population of more than 300,000; but it no longer has the proud position it once occupied, when it was the capital of Japan and the sole residence of the Mikados. At present the seat of sovereignty has been transferred to Tokio, and there is now the palace of the Japanese Emperor. Perhaps no country in the world offers so much to interest the thoughtful traveller to-day as does Japan. Intelligent, progressive, assimilating with wonderful rapidity the ideas, customs and inventions of European and American civilization, the Japanese are, nevertheless, a race having a national record and a regular succession of Mikados for more than 2,000 years. In them the past and present strangely meet and blend. The interesting question is, out of this union what future is to be evolved? |
