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Updated: May 24, 2025
And while the voices of the leaders chant clear and high in vibrant unison, the multitude of the priestly choir recite in profoundest undertone the mighty verses; and the sound of their recitation is like the muttering of surf. The mokugyo ceases its dull echoing, the impressive chant ends, and the leading officiants, one by one, high priests of famed temples, approach the ihai.
Of the more personal part of the young mother, her name, age, and the date of her "divine retirement," these were recorded in the household shrine of the Kano cottage, where her "ihai" stood, just behind a little lamp of pure vegetable oil whose light had never yet been suffered to die.
Then ceremonies of purification are performed; candles are lighted and incense is kindled before the ihai; and prayers or parts of sutras are recited; and offerings of flowers and of rice are made. But, in this case, the rice must not be cooked.
They returned, some hours later, and were busied all the afternoon with the placing and decorations of an exquisite "butsu-dan," or Buddhist shelf, on which the ihai of the dead are placed. Kano, visiting it, unperceived, next day, noted with the same curious, half-quizzical, half-pathetic look that no Buddhist kaimyo or after-name had been given to his daughter.
The two finest stone lanterns there are given in the name of my master's dead young wife. Her ihai is in this house, and an altar, and they are well tended, I assure you! My master is a true believer, poor man, and what has his belief brought him? Ma-a-a! all this mummery and service and what has come of it?" "I perceive with regret that you are not of the Shingon sect," remarked the priest. "Me?
One day she thought of a weird consolation, that rite the people name Toritsu-banashi, the evocation of the dead. Could she not call back her boy for one brief minute only? It would trouble the little soul; but would he not gladly bear a moment's pain for her dear sake? Surely! And the mortuary tablet, or ihai, of the dead must be brought to that priest.
'And they understood only when they found beneath the coverings which had covered the mother and child, something which they remembered having left years before in the temple of Myokoji a little mortuary tablet, the ihai of their buried daughter.
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