meeting with a
foreigner sweeps away the cobwebs of prejudice, and they are ashamed
of their former ignorance. In extorting from Japanese friends their
first ideas about foreigners, I have been forcibly reminded of some
popular ideas concerning the people of China and Japan which are still
entertained at home, especially by the queens of the kitchen and the
lords of the hod.

After the fashion in Japan, I inquire of the pilgrims whence they came
and whither they are going. Leaning upon their staves and unslinging
their huge round, conical hats, they give me to know that they have
come on foot from Muja, nearly one hundred and fifty miles distant,
and that they will finish their pilgrimage at Kominato--where the
great founder of the Nichiren sect (one of the last developments of
Booddhism in Japan) was born--twenty-seven miles beyond the point
at which we met. I inform them that I have come over seven thousand
miles, and will also visit Nichiren's birthplace. "_Sayo de gozarimos!
Naru hodo?_" ("Indeed, is it possible?")

I have reached their hearts through the gates of surprise. A foreigner
visiting Nichiren's birthplace! And coming seven thousand miles too!
The old ladies become loquacious. They pour out their questions
by dozens. Do you have Booddhist temples in America? Of course the
Nichiren sect flourishes there? When I politely answer No to both
questions, a look of disappointed surprise and pity steals over both
the ruddy and the wrinkled faces. "Then he is a heathen!" says the
expression on their faces. How strange that no Booddhist temples exist
in the foreigner's country! Ah, perhaps, then, the Shintoo religion is
the religion of the foreigner's country? "No? _Naru hodo!_ Then what
_do_ you believe in?"

It did not take long to answer that question. There is no country in
the world in which Christianity has been more publicly and universally
advertised. For three centuries, in every city, village and hamlet and
on every highway, the names of Christianity and its Founder have been
proclaimed on the edict-boards and in the public law-books of the
empire as belonging to a corrupt and hateful doctrine; which should
a man believe, he would be punished on earth by fines, imprisonment,
perhaps death, and in _jigoku_ (hell) by torments eternal. "Whosoever
believeth in Christ shall be damned--whosoever believeth not shall be
saved," was the formula taught by the priests for centuries. I pointed
to the board on which