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On the right side of the main court, as you enter, another broad flight of steps leads up to a loftier court, where another fine group of Shinto buildings stands a haiden and a miya; but these are much smaller, like miniatures of those below. Their woodwork also appears to be quite new. The upper miya is the shrine of the god Susano- o, brother of Amaterasu-oho-mi-Kami.
Beyond all this the walls and gate of the outer temple court appear, and beyond them, the roofs of the great haiden, and the pierced projecting cross- beams of the loftier Go-Miojin, the holy shrine itself, relieved against the green of the wooded hills. Picturesque junks are lying in ranks at anchor; there are two deep-sea vessels likewise, of modern build, ships from Osaka.
The entire structure of the smaller temple and its haiden, with the exception of the shrine-room, has just been rebuilt in fact, the work is not yet quite done so that the emblem of the deity is not at present in the sanctuary. The shrines proper are never repaired, but simply reinclosed in the new buildings when reconstruction becomes a necessity.
And, without waiting for the response which was sure to come, he crossed the room to the piano. He sang Schubert's Haiden Röslein and an American song or two. The hush over the room deepened, as the last words fell on the stillness, "Oh barren gain! Oh bitter loss! I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross "
But the landlord tells us this is not the temple, but only the Haiden or Hall of Prayer, before which the people make their orisons, By day, through the open doors, the temple can be seen But we cannot see it to-night, and but few visitors are permitted to go in. 'The people do not enter even the court of the great shrine, for the most part, interprets Akira; 'they pray before it at a distance.
Passing by the multitude of worshippers to the other side of the Haiden, we find ourselves at the foot of a broad flight of iron-bound steps leading to the great sanctuary steps which I am told no European before me was ever permitted to approach. On the lower steps the priests of the temple, in full ceremonial costume, are waiting to receive us.
There is, however, a little haiden, or place of prayer, with nothing in it but a money-box and a bell, before the fence, and facing the temple steps. Here the pilgrims make their offerings and pray. Only a small raised platform covered with a Chinese roof supported upon four plain posts, the back of the structure being closed by a lattice about breast high.
From the court gate a broad paved walk leads to the haiden and shamusho at the opposite end of the court spacious and dignified structures above whose roofs appears the quaint and massive gable of the main temple, with its fantastic cross-beams. This temple, standing with its back to the sea, is the shrine of the Goddess of the Sun.
The great carven dragon which writhes above the entrance of the Kitzuki haiden used, I am told, to crawl about the roofs at night until a carpenter was summoned to cut its wooden throat with a chisel, after which it ceased its perambulations. You can see for yourself the mark of the chisel on its throat!
They may watch from the Schlossgarten at Heidelberg the sun go down beyond the Rhine over Alsace, then again united to France; they may wander again in friendly talk with some forester under the pines of the Schwarzwald and listen to the singing of the familiar Volkslieder Tannenbaum or Haiden Röslein by a people who have a natural gift for song; they may in Nuremberg again look with delight on the marvels in stone wrought by its craftsmen or seek out the hidden meanings in the mystic art of Albrecht Dürer; perhaps be whirled along in the Isar "rolling rapidly" through the baths of Munich or plunge in the crystal depths of the König See; from the highlands of Bavaria they may lift up their eyes to the long ranges of the snowy Alps of Tyrol, and, as the decennial cycle comes round and the reverent peasants re-enact the sacred drama, may make their pilgrimage to Ammergau and share the thrill passing along the crowded benches when the children's voices are heard, and they enter, waving their palm branches, that those who watch their beautiful counterfeit may recall, with imagination vivid like a child's, another procession of joyous children, nineteen hundred years ago.
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