the gods, or amalgamated theology. Henceforth the Japanese could
enter Nirvana or Paradise through a two-leaved gate. As for the people,
they also were pleased, as they usually are when change or reform does
not mean abolition of the old festivals, or of the washings, sousings,
and fun at the tombs of their ancestors in the graveyards, or the
merry-makings, or the pilgrimages,[31] which are usually only other
names for social recreation, and often for sensual debauch. The Yoga had
become a _kubiki_, for Shint[=o] and Buddhism were now harnessed
together, not indeed as true yoke-fellows, but yet joined as inseparably
as two oxen making the same furrow.

Many a miya now became a tera. At first in many edifices, the rites of
Shint[=o] and Buddhism were alternately performed. The Buddhist symbols
might be in the front, and the Shint[=o]ist in the rear of the sacred
hall, or _vice versa_, with a bamboo curtain between; but gradually the
two blended. Instead of austere simplicity, the Shint[=o] interior
contained a museum of idols.

Image carvers had now plenty to do in making, out of camphor or _hinoki_
wood, effigies of such of the eight million or so of kamis as were given
places in the new and enlarged pantheon. The multiplication was always
on the side of Buddhism. Soon, also, the architecture was altered from
the type of the primitive hut, to that of the low Chinese temple with
great sweeping roof, re-curved eaves, many-columned auditorium and
imposing gateway, with lacquer, paint, gilding and ceilings, on which,
in blazing gold and color, were depicted the emblems of the Buddhist
paradise. Many of these still remain even after the national purgation
of 1870, just as the Christian inscriptions survive in the marble
palimpsests of Mahometan mosques, converted from basilicas, at Damascus
or Constantinople. The torii was no longer raised in plain hinoki wood,
but was now constructed of hewn stone, rounded or polished. Sometimes it
was even of bronze with gilded crests and Sanskrit monograms,
surmounted, it may be, with tablets of painted or stained wood, on which
were Chinese letters glittering with gold. This departure from the
primitive idea of using only the natural trunks of trees, "somewhat on
the principle of Exodus, 20:25,"[32] was a radical one in the ninth
century. The elongated barrels with iron hoops, or the riveted
boiler-plate and stove-pipe pattern, in this era of Meiji is a still
more radical and even scand