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Updated: June 22, 2025
Henceforth, in the domain of imagination the Japanese intellect busied itself with assimilating or re-working the abundant material imported by Buddhism. Ancient Customs and Usages. In the ancient god-way the temple or shrine was called a miya. After the advent of Buddhism the keepers of the shrine were called kannushi, that is, shrine keepers or wardens of the god.
Moreover, for people accustomed only to such simple architecture as that of the Shinto miya, the new temples erected by the Buddhist priests must have been astonishments.
It is plain, however, that they accepted a subordinate position without active protest, for nothing like a revolt on their part is alluded to, directly or indirectly, in the Records or the Chronicles. The term for all subjects was tomobe. The palace of the sovereign called miya or odono corresponded in appearance and construction with the shrines of the deities.
And there was no fire. There is also a well-authenticated story about another wealthy shopkeeper of Matsue who easily became the prey of another pretended Inari This Inari told him that whatever sum of money he should leave at a certain miya by night, he would find it doubled in the morning as the reward of his lifelong piety.
The shrine of the emperor is at the top of a hill called Kurokizan, at one end of the bay. The hill is covered with tall pines, and the path is very steep, so that I thought it prudent to put on straw sandals, in which one never slips. I found the shrine to be a small wooden miya, scarcely three feet high, and black with age.
But this role of veterinarian is not commonly attributed to Koshin; and it appears that something in the fantastic form of the tree suggested the idea. 6 KITZUKI, July 24th Within the first court of the Oho-yashiro, and to the left of the chief gate, stands a small timber structure, ashen-coloured with age, shaped like a common miya or shrine.
But there may be a dozen, or a score, or several hundred, in which case most of the images are very small. And in more than one of the larger towns you may see in the court of some great miya a countless host of stone foxes, of all dimensions, from toy-figures but a few inches high to the colossi whose pedestals tower above your head, all squatting around the temple in tiered ranks of thousands.
Then you come to some great flight of steps ascending through green gloom to a terrace umbraged by older and vaster trees; and other steps from thence lead to other terraces, all in shadow. And you climb and climb and climb, till at last, beyond a gray torii, the goal appears: a small, void, colorless wooden shrine, a Shinto miya.
An arrow is fixed upright in the ground, and the Veddah dances slowly round it, chanting this invocation, which is almost musical in its rhythm:" "Mâ miya, mâ miy, mâ deyâ, Topang koyihetti mittigan yandâh?" "My departed one, my departed one, my God! Where art thou wandering?"
A particular feature of Matsue are the miya-shops establishments not, indeed, peculiar to the old Izumo town, but much more interesting than those to be found in larger cities of other provinces. There are miya of a hundred varieties and sizes, from the child's toy miya which sells for less than one sen, to the large shrine destined for some rich home, and costing perhaps ten yen or more.
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