Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

to the Abbot was granted the right, on going to the castle, of sitting in his
litter as far as the entrance-hall, instead of dismounting at the usual place
and proceeding on foot through several gates and courtyards. Nor were
the privileges of the temple confined to barren honours, for it was endowed
with lands of the value of five thousand kokus of rice yearly.
When Iyéyasu died, the shrine called Antoku In was erected in his
honour to the south of the main temple. Here, on the seventeenth day of
the fourth month, the anniversary of his death, ceremonies are held in
honour of his spirit, deified as Gongen Sama, and the place is thrown
open to all who may wish to come and pray. But Iyéyasu is not buried
here; his remains lie in a gorgeous shrine among the mountains some
eighty miles north of Yedo, at Nikkô, a place so beautiful that the Japanese
have a rhyming proverb which says, that he who has not seen Nikkô
should never pronounce the word Kekkô (charming, delicious, grand,
beautiful).
Hidétada, the son and successor of Iyéyasu, together with Iyénobu,
Iyétsugu, Iyéshigé, Iyéyoshi, and Iyémochi, the sixth, seventh, ninth,
twelfth, and fourteenth Shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty, are buried in
three shrines attached to the temple; the remainder, with the exception of
Iyémitsu, the third Shogun, who lies with his grandfather at Nikkô, are
buried at Uyéno.
The shrines are of exceeding beauty, lying on one side of a splendid
avenue of Scotch firs, which border a broad, well-kept gravel walk.
Passing through a small gateway of rare design, we come into a large
stone courtyard, lined with a long array of colossal stone lanterns, the
gift of the vassals of the departed Prince. A second gateway, supported
by gilt pillars carved all round with figures of dragons, leads into another
court, in which are a bell tower, a great cistern cut out of a single block
of stone like a sarcophagus, and a smaller number of lanterns of bronze;
these are given by the Go San Ké, the three princely families in which the
succession to the office of Shogun was vested. Inside this is a third court,
partly covered like a cloister, the approach to which is a doorway of even
greater beauty and richness than the last; the ceiling is gilt, and painted
with arabesques and with heavenly angels playing on musical instruments,
and the panels of the walls are sculptured in high relief with admirable
representations of birds and flowers, life-size, life-like, all being
coloured to imitate nature. Inside this enclosure stands a shrine, before
the closed door of which a priest on one side, and a retainer of the house
of Tokugawa on the other, sit mounting guard, mute and immovable as
though they themselves were part of the carved ornaments. Passing on
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