le gardens throw a brightness into
the life of the people which it is impossible to estimate.

In the chapter which I have devoted to the religions of the Japanese
people, I have remarked that religion appears to be losing its
influence upon the educated classes of the country, who are quickly
developing into agnostics. No such remark can, however, be made in
reference to the great mass of the Japanese people. For them religion
is an actuality. Take it out of their lives and you will take much
that makes their lives not only enjoyable but endurable. As a writer
on Japan has somewhat irreverently observed, the Japanese "is very
chummy with heaven. He just as readily invokes the aid of his
household gods in the pursuit of his amours as in less illegitimate
aspirations. He regards them as kind friends who will help, rather
than as severe censors who have to be propitiated." The spiritual
aspect of the Deity has not, I think, entered at all into the
conceptions of the ordinary Japanese. His ideas in regard to God or
the gods--his pantheon is a large and a comprehensive one--are
altogether anthropomorphic. Every action of his life, however small,
is in some way or other connected with an unseen world. In this
matter, Buddhism and Shintoism have got rather mixed, and, as I have
elsewhere said, if the founder of Buddhism were reincarnated in Japan
to-day, he would find it difficult to recognise his religion in some
of the developments of Buddhism as it exists in Japan. Nevertheless,
this anthropomorphic idea of God, however it may fit the Japanese for
the next world, undoubtedly comforts him in this. The religious
festivals, which are numerous, are gala days in his life, and the
services of religion bring him undoubtedly much consolation. But he
does not of necessity go to a temple to conduct that uplifting of the
heart which is, after all, the best service of man to the Creator.
Every house has its little shrine, and although some superior persons
may laugh at the act of burning a joss-stick, or some other trivial
act of worship, as merely ignorant superstition, I think the
unprejudiced man would look rather at the motive which inspired the
act. If this poor ignorant native burns his joss-stick, makes his
offering of a cake, lights a lamp in front of an image, or takes part
in any other act which in effect means the lifting up of his soul to
something higher and greater than himself that he can now only see
through a glass d