* * * * *

For the inside of a week the Fujinami dwelt in one of a row of stalls, like loose-boxes, within the temple precincts.  The festival might have some affinity with the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when the devout left their city dwellings to live in booths outside the walls.

  Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o].

(Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)

The famous formula of the priests of the Nichiren sect was being repeated over and over again to the accompaniment of drums; for in the sacred text itself lies the only authentic Way of Salvation.  With exemplary insistence Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke was beating out the rhythm of the prayer with a wooden clapper on the mokugy[=o], a wooden drum, shaped like a fish’s head.

  Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o].

From every corner of the temple enclave the invocation was droning like a threshing machine.  Asako’s Catholic conscience, now awakening from the spell which Japan had cast upon it, became uneasy about its share in these pagan rites.  In order to drive the echo of the litany out of her ears, she tried to concentrate her attention upon watching the crowd.

  Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o].

Around her was a dense multitude of pilgrims, in their hundreds of thousands, shuffling, chaffering and staring.  Some, like the Fujinami, had hired temporary lodgings, and had cooks and servants in attendance.  Some were camping in the open.  Others were merely visiting the temple for the inside of the day.  The crowds kept on shifting and mingling like ants on an ant-hill.

Enjoyment, rather than piety, was the prevailing spirit; for this was one of the few annual holidays of the industrious Tokyo artisan.

In the central buildings, five feet above this noisy confluence of people, where the golden images of the Buddhas are enthroned, the mitred priests with their copes of gold-embroidered brown were performing the rituals of their order.  To right and left of the high altar, the canons squatting at their red-lacquered praying-desks, were reciting the sutras in strophe and antistrophe.  Clouds of incense rose.

In the adjoining building an earnest young preacher was exhorting a congregation of elderly and somnolent ladies to eschew the lusts of the flesh and to renounce the world and its gauds, marking each point in his discourse with raps of his fan.  Foxy-faced satellites of the abbey were doing a roaring trade in charms against various accidents, and in sacred scrolls printed with prayers or figures of Nichiren.