Introduction

A city of temples reminds one of some lost vision of a moral order—where the manlike god lives in his holy house and all is eternity. Seen from a distance, these temple-cities—Benares, the Katmandu valley towns, Kyoto—still offer this view. The stupa or the to against the new winter dawn seems to hold out a vision of some holy metropolis from where we have come and toward which we returning.

Yet these celestial-seeming cities are nonetheless the work of man and they are of the same common earth that we are—that dappled soil of hopes and fears, of a self never wholly outside, yet never entirely in.

Such holy cities, like all the others, are thus also worldly, venal: as elsewhere the making of the money accommodates the lust for power. Unlike the prosaic secular city, however, these municipalities of temples have their saving concern. No matter how religion is perverted in its politicization, it still rests upon an individual vision, a need, a hope. In the grandest of the imperial temples where all is tradition, ritual, the accumulation of land and the avoidance of taxes, there is still somewhere, in some corner, a man kneeling, trying to both lose and find himself.

Buddhism came to Japan on October 13, in the thirteenth year of the reign of the emperor Kimmei—that is, 552. This is recorded in the Nihongi, that government-commissioned chronological history which appeared two hundred years later in 720 but was still accepted as accurate.

The reason that the date is so precisely known is that this is the day that a Korean envoy presented to the Japanese court a gold-plated Buddha, a gift from his king, Song-myong of the Paekche. Along with it came a letter in which Buddhism was highly praised, something of its history was imparted—its beginnings in India and its travels through China—the missal concluding with the information that the Buddha himself had said that his teachings would travel east.

Kimmei, emperor of this land furthest east, is said to have been both pleased and impressed" stating that he had never seen anything more beautiful than the face on this statue of the Buddha. Of a mind to import the religion into his own land, the emperor held a council. One minister said that since it had been accepted elsewhere it ought to be accepted here as well. Another, however, said that this would be dangerous. From times past it was the native gods—those later to be identified as Shinto—who had protected the land. Introducing such competition would make them angry.

Since neither of the ministers would back down and since no agreement seemed possible, Kimmei then did something we would now find very Japanese. He decided that both religions would be observed—that of the native gods and that of the new one. This pragmatic solution caused some initial difficulty but it has worn well. Shinto and Buddhism remain the two religions of the Japanese. The first is observed by the newly born, by those reaching the ages of three, five, and seven, and those getting married; the second is officially the province of the dying and the dead.

Buddhism was already at least a thousand years old when it came to Japan. During this time the religion had much changed shape. It had become a complex set of doctrinal beliefs far from the tenets of its founder.

Originally the Buddha had taught that the release from this period of suffering called life could be achieved through enlightenment—by following the prescribed commandments making up the eightfold path. These were of a simplicity and universality that remind of Jesus later advice. One was to follow the right view with the right intention as expressed in right speech and demonstrated in the right action, which would lead to the right livelihood, as achieved through right effort, right mindedness, and right concentration.

Prescriptions this artless call for interpretation and over the years the eightfold path became littered with them. They multiplied until eventually, five hundred years after the death of the historical Buddha, the overburdened belief broke into two—a major schism had occurred.

A large number of priests began to preach that traditional teachings had left behind the true intentions of the Buddha. The religion had come to imply that only those with special capacities—such as intelligence and perseverance—could hope to correctly follow the eightfold path. Actually, they said, the Buddha did not intend anything like this. On his deathbed, these priests maintained, he had revealed that anyone—and this included everyone—had the potential for Buddhahood.

Those who claimed this called their Buddhism the Greater Vehicle (Mahayana). They could then call their conservative rivals the Lesser Vehicle (Hinayana). This schism—still observed—provided endless fuel for quarrels and much complicated the role of the religion in Japan.

Buddhism was exclusively of neither camp. Then as now, the recent import was carefully sorted over and only those elements attractive to the new believers were incorporated. Early Japanese Buddhism is thus a pragmatic amalgam of both Mahayanan and Hinayanan Buddhism.

Nonetheless, much of the spirit of strife occasioned by the original schism remained to trouble the Buddhist church in Japan, though many of the benefits of a much larger number of aristocratic and moneyed believers continued to ornament and enrich the church.

A Mahayanan idea which took deep root in Japan was that the Buddha was a transcendent being. Leaving behind his mortal form, he ascended to the heavens and there reigned, welcoming all true believers. If he was deity, and no longer of this world, however, then someone to intercede was necessary.

Christianity at this point found Jesus Christ. Buddhism discovered the bodhisattva, the Buddha-to-be, a kind of messenger, though of much greater standing, a being who, though meeting all the requirements for Buddhahood, in great compassion postponed entry in order to help those left behind also achieve this desired state.

This Buddha himself took three bodhisattva-like forms. He was to be seen as the healing Buddha (called Yakushi in Japan), the Buddha of enlightenment (Amida) and the Buddha of the future (Miroku). In this way, also, Mahayana believers could begin to account for the entire pantheon of Buddhas and other supernatural beings it had appropriated from Hinayanan belief as well as from Hinduism and other local religions. These could be attached to appropriate forms of the Buddha-bodhisattva and thus create a semblance of order.

It was order which appealed to the seventh-century rulers of Japan. The government was but loosely organized, the religion was an uneasy amalgam of beliefs both native and important. Already the example of civilized China was inspiring the Japanese, and thus the fact that Buddhism was perceived as Chinese made it all the more welcome in Japan.

Just as Japan was to so spectacularly learn later from Europe and America, it now begin to practice that combination of appropriation and internalization common to all countries but perhaps perfected in this one. Pursuing its new aims, Japan sent four missions to Sui China (859-618) from 600 to 614, and from 630 to 838 many more to the Tang—that great Chinese dynasty (618-907) the influence of which was to have such a decisive effect on Japan.

These missions brought back not only Buddhist but also Confucian ideas. In 604 when the regent, Prince Shotoku, formulated his famous constitution—five years earlier than the like-minded Mohammed who, on the other side of the world, was also to proclaim a new state: Islam—he not only called for reverence for Buddhism but also insisted upon Confucian principles: ministers should obey imperial commands, harmony should be prized, and so on.

By 645 when the Taika (Great Change) Reforms were instituted, it was the Tang pattern which was utilized and the Japanese state was recast in the Chinese model. Just as the country was to later revolutionize itself in its nineteenth-century efforts to "catch up with the West," so it now remade its institutions as it caught up with the Tang. The ideal was a centralized and bureaucratic state. There was, even a redistribution of land—something which would not again occur until 1945. In theory everyone got the same amount. Actually, some got more than others and within a century Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, and aristocratic families had all accumulated private estates.

The Tang pattern was secured when the Taiho (Great Treasure) Code was promulgated in 702. It gave Japan a symmetrical and elaborate bureaucratic structure—one which, in one form or another, still works today. With this as a base, bit by bit anything deemed useful was imported from the Tang and its Korean conduit into Japan: the language, the architecture, new ways of drawing, sculpting, and under it all, an accepted and basic Buddhist system of beliefs.

This was mainly of the Mahayana persuasion, though an animosity toward the Hinayana belief was not at first apparent. Rather some sort of powerful amalgam was sought, found, and referred to as the "highest absolute." United, this expansive version of Buddhist doctrine saw to it that temples and priests proliferated, and that the influence of the Buddhist church grew.

The city of Kyoto was the capital of Japan and home of the imperial court from 794 to 1868. It was consequently not only the cradle of this newly Sinoized civilization but also the keeper of its culture.

The city remains a treasure house—literally: it possesses a total of 202 National Treasures (20 percent of the country's total) and 1,596 Important Cultural Assets (15 percent of that total). It also contains many of the finest examples of Buddhist architecture in the country, well over 1500 temples.

Odd, this last, because the city was originally built to get away from Buddhist influence.

The reason for the intended avoidance was that ever since this religion had been introduced into the country its influence had been growing—some thought unduly. This was because Buddhism, like most religions, offered an array of class opportunities which proved amenable to the already Sinoized imperial court.

Just as the Chinese propensity for hierarchical order had provided a model to the Japanese government—a system of court ranks suitable to an aristocratic society was already built into it—so, too, the Buddhist religion proved itself friendly to a similar stratification and could further be used to support the newly consolidated power, centered as it was upon an imperial house and a regent family.

What became known as Nara Buddhism consisted of six schools: Sanron, Hosso, Kegon, Jojitsu, Kusha, and Ritsu. The first three belonged to the Mahayana tradition, the last three to the Hinayana and they thus offered the priests a survey of contemporary Buddhist thought. (Three of them still exist: Hosso at Kofuku-ji and Yakushi-ji, Kegon at Todai-ji, and Ritsu at Toshodai-ji.) Besides learned study the priests' only other duty was to perform rituals for the government—these were to assure the security of the state and to offer aristocratic patrons efficacious prayers

It was the court which was Buddhist. The imperial family and the influential noble houses were the true believers and held the monopoly on the new religion—it was not until much later (around 1200) that Buddhism became in any sense a popular religion.

This is different from the pattern observed in other major religions: Christianity began among what we would now call the underprivileged and then spread upward; the Muslim religion too was initially a popular belief. But in Japan most new institutions follow a different pattern: they are initially appropriated by whatever passes for aristocracy and are only then passed on to the lower echelons.

One of the attributes of Japanese Buddhism (in contrast with Buddhism elsewhere) is this tie with the state. The government patronized and thus controlled Buddhist organizations, while they—in return as it were—gave it spiritual and moral support, even though this often meant a compromise of churchly principles.

The ruling house took early to Buddhism. Just a generation after the death of Prince Shotoku, who had introduced the religion, the emperor Kotoku became so Buddhist that he ordered the destruction of the groves belonging to the Ikukunitama Shrine and is remembered in the Nihongi as having honored Buddhism and despised Shinto.

The later emperor Shomu was already early endorsing the fashionable new belief. He had by 742 piously announced a system of national temples, the Kokubun-ji, which linked the propagation of faith with the consolidation of state power. This he established in 752 with ceremonies at Todai-ji in Nara—then capital of the country.

The event was the inauguration of the Great Buddha, a bronze statue fifty-three feet in height—the cosmic Buddha Vairocana (Daibutsu or "Great Buddha" in Japanese)—an undertaking so extreme that it used up all the copper in the country and required eight attempts before it was successfully cast.

Housed in the new main hall of Todai-ji, the largest wooden building in the world, the statue was the figurehead of state religious ambitions. There was nothing this big in all of Tang China and so it called for inauguration ceremonies much more lavish than usual. Priests and royal envoys from as far away as Persia attended—ten thousand in all—and a high-ranking cleric all the way from India was there to paint in the pupils of the statue's eyes and give it symbolic life. The spectacle—for it was the grandest occasion in Japan so far—was memorable.

Memorable too was the new power that this gave the church. The court thought that it would be strengthened by an affiliation with the Buddhist church. It had perhaps not occurred to it that the church would be the more strengthened by this affiliation with the civil government.

The imperial house itself was thus eventually challenged by the growing power of the church. An example was the Buddhist priest Dokyo, who boldly attempted to influence the throne. The empress Koken, daughter of the emperor Shomu, was in retirement when she came under this priestly influence. Whether due to Buddhist invigoration or not, she emerged from retirement, became the empress Shotoku, and then elevated Dokyo to a much higher position, that of dajodaijin-zenji, priest-premier.

The power of Buddhism was much deplored, earlier instances of imperial ladies falling under the spell of priests were cited, and a popular poem of the period commemorated these scandalous events with its verses about hammers of power lying beneath priestly robes.

Escaping these dangerous Buddhist influences was among several reasons, then, that the emperor Kammu in 784, only three years on the throne, had the old capital moved from Nara to Nagaoka. He then, ten years later, had it installed in its present location (then Heian-kyo, now Kyoto). He thus remedied his problem in what we now recognize as a Japanese manner—rather than remove the monks he removed the city.

He had his geomancers seek out a proper site: mountains to the north, plains to the south, a river running through it; he notified the tutelary deity of the Kamo Shrine and the Sun Goddess at Ise of the change of address; sent messengers to the tombs of all the emperors from three generations back, and then had the major buildings (the palace, the temple) knocked down and transported to the new site five miles away. There he gave his new city a hopeful new name—Capital of Peace and Tranquillity—and, as though to assure this, among its many specifications was one restricting the building of temples within the boundaries of this new capital.

Finished, Heian-kyo was by eighth-century standards enormous. It measured three miles east to west and three and a half miles north to south. The boundaries were rectangular and great avenues crossed each other at regular intervals. One such divided the city into east and west (or left and right) capitals. It was nearly three hundred feet wide making it quite the widest avenue in the world. At its head stood the palace enclosure, the northern side of which formed part of the city limits; it measured one mile by three-quarters, of a mile, and had fourteen gates.

It was a smaller version of the Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an (modern Xi'an), the same city which had also served as earlier inspiration for Nara—but, of course, now without the many temples. Kammu carefully limited both their number and the admission of their priests.

Inside the city limits only two temples were permitted. Much smaller than any in Nara, they were given small plots symmetrically left and right of the main avenue. The western temple, Sai-ji, had so little support that it shortly withered. The eastern, To-ji, survived only because it formed a main branch of the Shingon sect in 835. Even now the temple is, in more senses than one, on the wrong side of the tracks.

Yet, even as anti-Buddhist edicts were promulgated, temples were rising and priests were joining. Outside the city walls it seemed like a sudden religious revival though it was in fact a scramble to get tax-free estates—a loophole which Kammu had left unplugged. A later imperial edict, admitting the difficulty, read:"If this continues, shortly there will be no land which is not temple property."

A further problem was that the court itself was already so permeated with Buddhism that the sometimes baleful ecclesiastical influence was all but impossible to eradicate. The problem was familiar one. Two parallel systems of power always quarrel: the church and the state have never anywhere been amicable.

A partial solution lay in deciding that it was Nara Buddhism which was the enemy and not Buddhism itself. A solution should be possible if only a new kind of Buddhism could be found—one without dangerous political ambitions. An accommodation was necessary. Consequently, not one but two such examples of benign Buddhism were shortly located.

The monks Saicho (767-822) and Kukai (774-835) had joined a trading mission in 804 and gone to China. Each brought back a separate set of Buddhist tantric beliefs. Saicho returned and consolidated the Tendai (T'ient'ai) sect, and its eventual headquarters at Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei above Heian-kyo. Kukai founded the Shingon sect and set himself up at To-ji in the southern section of the capital and over at Ishiyama-dera, on the other side of Mount Hiei. He also later founded Kongobu-ji on Mount Koya. There, under his posthumous canonical name, Kobo Daishi, he lives still. Visitors are shown the moss-covered temple in which he lies, not dead, but meditating, awaiting the coming of the Buddha of the future.

This being will, among his other duties, have to purify his religion. Buddhism held that the state must reflect the order of the universe and that this is hierarchical, everything emanating from the permanent center. It could thus be used to justify the political centralization of the country. Buddhism in Japan—of the Nara variety or otherwise—had from the first been in this sense worldly. So are, to be sure, most religions, but the forms which Japanese Buddhism took made it seem even more so.

The Buddhist temple was everywhere (and at the same time more than) a place devoted to worship of the Buddha. It functioned as a residence for monks and nuns, where they studied the sutras and trained in ascetic practices, and it was in addition a place for lay worshippers to gather. There was thus—from the first, in all temples, in all Buddhist countries—a social element. It was the degree of this which differed in Japan.

The etymology of the Japanese term for temple, tera, suggests a predominance of the idea of place. The word derives from the Pali word thera, which means "elders," indicating perhaps a place where the church elders lived. The characters used are from the pre-Buddhist Han dynasty and indicate an area where bureaucratic officers stay, a reference to Confucian laws and their implementation. Thus, the predominantly social nature of later temples is suggested in the term.

This is not invariably so in other religions. The etymology of the English "temple," for example, suggests less worldly concerns. It is from the Latin templum which means a space measured out for sanctuary—thus containing a nuance missing in the Japanese.

Bruno Taut, the first serious foreign student of Japanese architecture, at once recognized that "temples constitute no clearly delimited space, as do churches, for instance, in the West..." He was puzzled by this and only began to understand when a Japanese architect friend informed him that temples were originally mostly people's houses—the statues and altars had just been added: Buddha had moved in and stayed.

This domestic Buddhism was necessary in that it supplied what the native religion, Shinto (which Taut did not consider a religion at all) did not. With Buddhism came accommodation, structure, and reason.

It followed then that Buddhist temples were patterned in part after social and political desires—-just what one might expect from a religion which was in Japan initially so close to the needs of the state.

In this Japanese temples were unlike both Shinto shrines—where a closeness to divine nature is insisted upon by the architecture itself—and Western churches, where the aspiring nature of Christianity is made visible in striving cathedral towers and lofty naves.

Japanese Buddhist architecture followed functional needs—practical, spiritual, and social. By the eighth century a temple pattern had evolved. Called the shichido garan (seven-hailed temple), it typically consisted of: the pagoda (to), a multistoried tower where relics such as nominal remains of the Buddha were enshrined; the main or "Buddha" hall (kondo, literally "golden hall") wherein was housed the principal object of worship; the lecture hall (kodo), usually the largest structure in the compound—where monks or nuns gathered for instruction, study, or ritual; the drum or bell tower (koro); the sutra repository (kyozo); the dormitories (sobo); and the dining hall (jikido).

There were other buildings as well. These included the inner sanctuary (naijin) where the priests performed their rituals, the outer sanctuary (gaijin) where laymen worshipped, bathrooms, toilets, and the various gates. These last were grouped into the outer gates (daimon) which were named after the cardinal points. The south gate (nan-daimon) was the front or main gate. The inner or middle gate {chumon) opened into the main precincts which contained the pagoda and the main hall. Later developments included the massive sanmon (triple gate) of Zen found in temples such as Tofuku-ji, Nanzen-ji, and the Chion-in. Balanced, symmetrical, speaking of order in a Chinese accent, this early architecture also displayed direct authority. It was a spatial narrative form, an architectural text which from its inception indicated a secular society and the need for a man-made order.

In this the imported Buddhist temple was as different from the local Shinto shrine as were the two religions from each other.

Buddhism in all of its forms encourages thoughts of evanescence, transience, the passing of all things, the attractions of the next world. It is also universalist and moralistic. Shinto—the native animistic religion of Japan—is vital: concerned only with the here and now. It is both pluralistic and amoral. It is also phobic about pollution and decay, while Buddhism is morbid in its reflections upon the imminence of death.

It was through fears of death and hopes of the consequent life beyond that Buddhism achieved its popularity—unlike Shinto which could threaten or promise nothing of the sort. Buddhism consequently achieved a political power which Shinto could never match.

At the same time, however, different though the two religions appeared, they were—such being the way of the country—shortly brought into a kind of harmony with each other. Indeed, the ease with which these apparently inimical beliefs were accommodated makes one wonder about the real depth of either.

Sir George Sansom has voiced these doubts. "The Japanese as a people have displayed in matters of belief a tolerance amounting almost to indifference." But there was also undoubtedly another reason for this religious alloy, one which Karel van Wolferen has indicated in speaking of the melding of Shinto with Buddhism: "An amalgamation of the two religions was clearly an official policy designed to strengthen their joint endorsement of existing worldly rule."

Of the process itself, Shuichi Kato has written that "Buddhism in Japan absorbed native gods and was simultaneously transformed by contact with them... the Japanese gods themselves were transformed by Buddhism, since gods who once were objects of worship prior to the arrival of Buddhism' did not have their own myths, doctrines, shrines, or images."

Later, "under the influence of Buddhism, consistent myths and doctrines were created, the architecture of Shinto shrines was developed, and images of gods were produced." The popular Shinto deity Hachiman is called Hachiman Daibosatsu, and his original home is described as the Pure Land in the west where he is otherwise known as Amida. Amaterasu Omikami, the Sun Goddess, is also at holy Ise known as the Kanzeon Bosatsu, that is, as the incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.

There was a name for this: honji suijaku, which means the manifestation of the Buddha incarnated in the form of the native gods. In taking over Shinto to this extent Buddhist authorities knew what they were doing since the native religion still defined the natives. It still continues to do so, for as Nicholas Palevsky has written: "Shinto is characterized not by scriptures and churches but by... a concern for purity and defilement... Shinto is not so much a matter of personal belief as it is of being Japanese."

Beneath the Chinese infatuation (as beneath later crushes on things European and American) this native inclination persists. It resisted the ethical high-mindedness which so reflected the philosophy of Confucious, it opposed the presumed universality of China with the concrete detail and the specific example; to the model conduct of the sages, it opposed the beauty and variety of the world it knew.

No matter how much the eighth-century aristocrat was convinced of China's greatness, he is unlikely to have consequently altered all of his feelings and changed all of his opinions. Just as the modern Japanese resists a complete Westernization (one does riot trod shod in the house, one does not lather in the bath), so his ancestor must have resisted a complete Sinozation.

There is an indication of this in a complaint seen in a 724 Nara report which said that the capital lacked majesty and virtue because there were so many native plank-roofed dwellings and thatched roofs. These are difficult to build and easy to destroy, yet their presence was persisting. The report advised that all high-ranking persons be required to erect tiled dwellings and to paint them red and white in the Chinese style.

Native Japanese needs and tastes continued, however, to assert themselves and often accounted for the combinations through which the foreign influence was changed into something which was both more practical and more in accord with being Japanese.

An architectural example is that important part of the temple known as the kondo, or Buddha hall. The Japanese originally saw it in the form of a scaled model brought by a Paekche mission in 588. The first such halls constructed in Japan were all careful copies. Eventually these were seen as impractical.

The completely symmetrical is something rarely seen in native Japanese art—it too often sacrifices human convenience for reasons both aesthetic and symbolic. The Chinese-style kondo symmetrically dispensed with practicality for symmetry and comfort for effect. Simple human convenience, always prized in Japan, was consequently sacrificed. So, the hall was soon after adapted to native purposes which attempted to retain something of Chinese dignity while accommodating Japanese pragmatic needs. Now the new Buddha hall could hold a lay congregation indoors where they could see and hear the service, and at the same time it had space in which to perform the tantric rites in secrecy.

In this manner an approximation of a national style was returned to religious architecture. It shared with Shinto a practicality, a directness, a humanity one might say, which the Chinese original had not originally evidenced. Now, composed of old and new, the native and the imported, the Buddha hall became Japanese.

Buddhism in Japan was influenced not only by Shinto but also by two systems of thought which, if not precisely religions, functioned remarkably like them. Temple organization and architecture in Japan were in part formed by both Confucianism and Taoism. The former allowed and excused power and the latter extended this power into the further realms of superstition.

They came together in (as seen in one example of their manifestations) geomancy (hoigaku), This originally came from China (fengshui) and entered Japan within a decade (554) of Buddhism. It is a complicated technique for the handling (and creating) of good fortune. Taoist in origin, it was taken over only in part in Japan where it became largely a preventative art, one governed by fear of misfortune.

Temporally, it concerns itself not so much with "good days" (for weddings, the beginning of businesses, etc.) as it is with "bad days" when any kind of action was impermissible. Court lady Sei Shonagon (968-1024) has left a despairing account of the exhausting detours necessary on inauspicious occasions and figuring largely in the list of things hateful in her pillow book, the Makura no Soshi, are the inconveniences of geomanistic superstition.

Spatially, in equally negative manner, hoigaku also concerned itself with things forbidden. Early Buddhist compounds were all built according to forbidding principles. Charts were drawn up with the cardinal points indicated. Here a gate could let in only melancholy; a well in this spot brings worries but a gate does no harm; here, however, a lavatory promises ruin. Such beliefs much affected the lives of the inhabitants.

There was, for example, the belief that evil comes from the northeast. Confucious had slept with his head in that direction and so, consequently did a number of Japanese emperors. Shirakawa, insisted upon it, saying that by lying on his right side with his head to the northeast he could then emulate Buddha's posture as he entered Nirvana. But was this safe, someone wondered and someone else remarked that the great Ise Shrine lay to the south and questioned whether it were proper for the imperial highness to sleep with his feet toward the great shrine. No answer is recorded, but a decision was early reached to avoid the north. Sei Shonagon had included in her listing of Things that People Despise: "The north side of the house."

These geographical ordinances are in some sense still fundamental to Japanese architecture. For example, in any domestic building, on no account should the lavatory, the entrance, or the kitchen be placed on a northeast-southwest axis. The northeast is thought the home of evil and the southwest its compliment. It might be said that there was some original practical reason for this. Southwest winds would tend to fan flames from the kitchen. Whatever—in Japan such reason was not consulted and the Chinese rules were observed.

They still are. Even in a new house, the lavatory is found next to the entryway (and the living room) because this is one way to avoid the dreaded northeast-southwest axis. Even today the home architect consults the architectural soothsayer, who has been known to later sell amulets for points not in order. Even now many buildings in Kyoto (including the imperial palace) have their northeast corners cut off to deflect evil. But before we make too merry over this exhibition of superstitious ignorance it would be well to count the number of hotels in the West which (in by far the preponderance of cases) have no thirteenth floor.

One of the results of geomancy was that the northeast became the dangerous direction in general as well as in particular. The great militant monasteries on Mount Hiei were originally built on those heights because they are northeast of the capital, the palace, and the emperor, and could thus (in theory) protect them.

It is with one of these that the story of the Japanese temple begins.