1 I do not think this explanation is correct; but it is interesting, as the first which I obtained upon the subject. Properly speaking, Buddhist worshippers should not clap their hands, but only rub them softly together. Shinto worshippers always clap their hands four times.
2 Various writers, following the opinion of the Japanologue Satow, have stated that the torii was originally a bird-perch for fowls offered up to the gods at Shinto shrines--'not as food, but to give warning of daybreak.' The etymology of the word is said to be 'bird-rest' by some authorities; but Aston, not less of an authority, derives it from words which would give simply the meaning of a gateway. See Chamberlain's Things Japanese, pp. 429, 430.
3 Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain has held the extraordinary position of Professor of Japanese in the Imperial University of Japan--no small honour to English philology!
4 These Ni-O, however, the first I saw in Japan, were very clumsy figures. There are magnificent Ni-O to be seen in some of the great temple gateways in Tokyo, Kyoto, and elsewhere. The grandest of all are those in the Ni-O Mon, or 'Two Kings' Gate,' of the huge Todaiji temple at Nara. They are eight hundred years old. It is impossible not to admire the conception of stormy dignity and hurricane-force embodied in those colossal figures. Prayers are addressed to the Ni-O, especially by pilgrims. Most of their statues are disfigured by little pellets of white paper, which people chew into a pulp and then spit at them. There is a curious superstition that if the pellet sticks to the statue the prayer is heard; if, on the other hand, it falls to the ground, the prayer will not be answered.
1 Dainagon, the title of a high officer in the ancient Imperial Court.
2 'The real origin of the custom of piling stones before the images of Jizo and other divinities is not now known to the people. The custom is founded upon a passage in the famous Sutra, "The Lotus of the Good Law."
'Even the little hoys who, in playing, erected here and there heaps of sand, with the intention of dedicating them as Stupas to the Ginas,-they have all of them reached enlightenment.'--Saddharma Pundarika, c. II. v. 81 (Kern's translation), 'Sacred Books of the East,' vol. xxi.