Kompira was Buddhist and is now Shintō, having been made so by order of government during the present reign. But the pilgrims flock there all the same, the sanctity of the name of the shrine overbalancing any lapses in the theology of the priests. Nor need this be matter for wonderment, seeing that the pilgrim ranks are recruited almost exclusively from the peasant and artisan classes, whose members scarcely realise that Buddhism and Shintō are two separate cults, and are prepared to pay equal respect to all the superhuman powers that be. When tradesmen of any standing join a pilgrim association, they mostly do so in order to extend their business connection, and to see new places cheaply and sociably.
People who remember the "good old times," assert that pilgrimages are on the wane. Probably this is true. The influence of religion has been weakened by the infiltration of Western ideas of "progress" and material civilisation. Then, too, taxation weighs far more heavily than of yore, so that there is less money to spend on non-essentials. Still many thousands of persons, mostly pilgrims, annually ascend Fuji; over 8,000 pilgrims went up Nantai-zan this summer, and the concourse of worshippers at the temple of Ikegami near Tōkyō is so great that on the last annual festival for which we have statistics, over 51,000 persons passed through the wicket at the suburban railway station, where the daily average is only some 2,000. Many, doubtless, were mere holiday-makers, and the scene in the grounds was that of a great holiday-making. The happy crowds trot off to amuse themselves, and just do a little bit of praying incidentally, give a tap at the gong, and fling a copper into the box, so as to be sure of being on the right side. They are ten thousand miles away from Benares, and from Mecca, and from the Scotch Kirk.
The holy objects which Japanese pilgims go out for to see and to bow down before, belong exactly to the same category as the holy objects of Christian devotion, modified only by local colouring. Minute fragments of the cremated body of a Buddha (these are called shari}, footprints of a Buddha, images and
