What you tell me about those Shint[=o] rituals and their suspicious origin seems to me quite certainly true. So the _kara-shishi_ and the _mon_ and the dragon-carvings and the _t[=o]r[=o]s_,--all stare me in the face as pillage of Buddhism. But the funeral rite which I saw and took part in, on the anniversary of the death of Prince Sanj[=o], struck me as immemorially primitive. The weird simplicity of it--the banquet to the ghost, the covering of the faces with white paper, the moaning song, the barbarian music, all seemed to me traditions and echoes of the very childhood of the race. I shall try to discover the genesis of the book you speak of as dubious in character. The Shint[=o] christening ceremony is strictly observed here, and there are curious facts about the funeral ceremonies--totally at variance with and hostile to Buddhism.
By the way, when I visited a _tera_ in Mionoseki after having bought _o fuda_ at the Miojinja, I was told I must not carry the _o fuda_ into the court of the _tera_. The Kami would be displeased.
DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... My household relations have turned out to be extremely happy, and to bind me very fast here at the very time that I was beginning to feel like going away. It does not now seem possible for me ever to go away. To take the little woman to another country would be to make her extremely unhappy; for no kindness or comfort could compensate for the loss of her own social atmosphere--in which all thoughts and feelings are so totally different from our own.
I find literary work extremely difficult here. The mental air about one has a totally disintegrating effect upon Western habits of thinking;--no strong emotion, no thrills or inspirations ever come to me, so I am still in doubt how to work. Whether I shall ever be able to make a really good book on Japan is still a question; but if I do, it will require years of steady dry work, without one real flash in it. The least fact in this Oriental life is so different from ours, and so complex in its relationship to other facts, that to explain it requires enormous time and patience.
I was made a little homesick by your letter about New Orleans, mentioning so many familiar names. It brought back many pleasant memories.