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106 The shinshū call the temples of their gods miya, which means as much as “houses of remembrance ,” or the fana1 of the Romans. They also use the words yashiro and sha, or jinja, which, however, properly speaking means the whole surroundings of the miya with all its appendages. They call their gods shin and kami, which, properly speaking means as much as a soul or spirit. To show greater reverence, they add the words myōshin, meaning “august and holy,” or gongen, meaning “just,” “stern.” But their fellow clerics in other religions call their monasteries prayer houses and temples of their gods jisha, or tera, meaning temple, and the gods themselves, hotoke, while another kind of foreign secondary god tends to be called with the foreign name of bosatsu or butsu. Their miya, like the temples of other religions, are situated in the most pleasant spots of the country. They are rarely within settled communities, towns, and cities and mostly situated outside. A straight, level, and wide avenue, often planted with native cypress trees, runs from the highway up to the miya proper, or its precinct, which frequently has several temples and buildings. But the road always leads up to the front of the most important miya. This miya, or the precincts of a number of miya, is situated either in a shaded park or on the slopes of a mountain with luxurious vegetation, reached by climbing a stately flight of stone steps. An impressive, uniform gate of honor, referred to specifically as torii, marks the beginning of such an avenue and distinguishes it from common roads along the highways. It is built of bare rock or wooden posts, with two crossbeams of the same material at the top; the uppermost is curved as embellishment and protrudes on both sides. Between the crossbeams is a stone tablet with the name of the temple, mostly in golden characters. Similar gates of stone are also often in front of the miya or wall of the temple precinct. Near the miya there is sometimes a washstand of stone for worshippers to clean themselves. And next to the miya is a large wooden alms box. The miya itself is not at all a splendid structure, but poor and wooden, and frequently consists only of a small, square little house. But it is built of beautiful, strong posts, with the house being slightly higher than the height of two or three men. It is two or more fathoms square and one ell or more off the ground, mostly with a raised, wooden, narrow veranda running around. The house sits on stilts, with one or several flights of steps leading up. The front consists of two lattice doors, through which people can look and pay their respects. The doors are always locked, and frequently there are no custodians or attendants. Other miya consist of larger structures, sometimes with an antechamber and two secondary chambers, where the custodians of the temple sit dressed up in their sacred habit in honor of the kami. The building has a lot of lattice and is transChapter 2 The Temples, Beliefs, and Worship of the Shinto Sect parent; the floor is covered with mats. The back and the sides are mostly closed off with wooden planks at the outside. The roof is made of tiles or wood chips and protrudes over the veranda running around the house. It differs from that of other houses with regard to the variety of bracketing and duplication of attractive, protruding beams. Generally this is the most decorative part of all temples in this country. At times the roof is finished off at the top with a beam running the full length, and on each side of the house are two protruding thick beams fastened to form a cross, behind which there are others running crossways. This is in memory of the early structures of the temples at Ise, which were only poor buildings, but constructed so ingeniously and uniquely that the weight of those beams kept the whole structure together. At times there is a flat, wide bell suspended above the door of the temple, which worshippers ring with a wide, knotted string hanging nearby. But this is a new custom, adopted from the butsu dō, and was not done in the past. Cut-up paper hangs around inside the temple to express the purity of the site. In the middle there is often a round mirror to show visitors their own blemishes and...

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