Having set a few stones on his pedestal, I followed the rest to a small temple, which was surrounded by women and children. On a raised platform, which formed the temple-floor, about a dozen priests, resplendently robed, were moving in rotatory procession and chanting passages of the Buddhist canon. The babies were gazing open-eyed on the bright embroideries of instruments and vestments, while as many people as could be accommodated were allowed to occupy mats at one extremity of the platform. Among them a place was obligingly made for me, and soon after I had taken my seat the priests also sat down to listen to a discourse from a young and eloquent preacher. I had been in many temples, and watched the crowds making prostration, buying holy knick-knacks, and flinging copper coins into the broad-barred money-boxes, but this was the first sermon I had the good fortune to hear. Continually reverting to the theme, “Mina sekai no hito kiodai”--all beings in the universe are brothers--the orator spoke long and earnestly of the unseen ties which bind the living and the dead, of the infinite chords and scales of existence, of the love and goodwill which no creature was too humble to show or too lofty to accept. Sometimes an old man groaned, and sometimes an urchin was removed screaming, but most of the listeners remained passive and stolid till the end. Then babies were hoisted, farewell bows were exchanged, and the congregation melted away. If you ask me why so many children were present, I can only suppose that they were attracted by the excitement of novelty. There was none of the bustle and glare which make a _matsuri_, the ordinary temple _fête_, one glorious saturnalia of piety and merriment, when theatres and booths, covered with wonderful paper toys and every known variety of sweetmeat, block the approaches to the sacred building. In this the Buddhists greatly outshine their more austere Shintōist rivals. Probably nine-tenths of the peasants are in agreement with an old man with whom I conversed after an impressive service at Hommonji, the chief temple of the Nichiren sect. As we descended the temple-steps I asked him why he preferred Buddhism to other forms of faith. “Because,” he answered, “it is more amusing.”