[Footnote 8: The repetition of the Buddhist invocation _Namu Amida Butsu_! is thus named. The _nembutsu_ is repeated by many Buddhist sects besides the sect of Amida proper,--the Shinshū.]
[Footnote 9: Botamochi, a kind of sugared rice-cake.]
[Footnote 10: Such advice is a commonplace in Japanese Buddhist literature. By Hotokė Sama here the boy means, not the Buddhas proper, but the spirits of the dead, hopefully termed Buddhas by those who loved them,--much as in the West we sometimes speak of our dead as "angels."]
[Footnote 11: The cooking-place in a Japanese kitchen. Sometimes the word is translated "kitchen-range," but the _kamado_ is something very different from a Western kitchen-range.]
[Footnote 12: Here I think it better to omit a couple of sentences in the original rather too plain for Western taste, yet not without interest. The meaning of the omitted passages is only that even in the womb the child acted with consideration, and according to the rules of filial piety.]
[Footnote 13: _Nono-San_ (or _Sama_) is the child-word for the Spirits of the dead, for the Buddhas, and for the Shintō Gods,--Kami. _Nono-San wo ogamu_,--"to pray to the Nono-San," is the child-phrase for praying to the gods. The spirits of the ancestors become Nono-San,--_Kami_,--according to Shintō thought.]
[Footnote 14: The reference here to Ontaké Sama has a particular interest, but will need some considerable explanation.
Ontaké, or Mitaké, is the name of a celebrated holy peak in the province of Shinano--a great resort for pilgrims. During the Tokugawa Shōgunate, a priest called Isshin, of the Risshū Buddhists, made a pilgrimage to that mountain. Returning to his native place (Sakamoto-chō, Shitaya, Yedo), he began to preach certain new doctrines, and to make for himself a reputation as a miracle-worker, by virtue of powers said to have been gained during his pilgrimage to Ontaké. The Shōgunate considered him a dangerous person, and banished him to the island of Hachijō, where he remained for some years. Afterwards he was allowed to return to Yedo, and there to preach his new faith,--to which he gave the name of Azuma-Kyō. It was Buddhist teaching in a Shintō disguise,--the deities especially adored by its followers being Okuni-nushi and Sukuna-hi-kona as Buddhist avatars. In the prayer of the sect called Kaibyaku-Norito it is said:--"The divine nature is immovable (fudō); yet it moves. It is formless, yet manifests itself in forms. This is the Incomprehensible Divine Body. In Heaven and Earth it is called Kami; in all things it is called Spirit; in Man it is called Mind.... From this only reality came the heavens, the four oceans, the great whole of the three thousand universes;--from the One Mind emanate three thousands of great thousands of forms." ...