Hills or
groves are usually sites for a temple, the ascent to which is by a
long flight of steps; usually two flights give access to the shrine.
One is long, straight, and steep, for the men; the other, less steep,
but curved, is for the women. It will be remembered that it was the
great stairs at Solomon's temple that so impressed the Queen of Sheba.
Small shrines or miniature temples, called Tenno Samma, or "Heaven's
Lord," are carried on staves, like the Ark of the Covenant, at their
religious ceremonies. The inner shrine, or Holy of Holies, is small,
and a cube, or nearly so, in proportion. It is usually detached behind
the other portions of the temple, the door being closed, so that it
cannot be seen into, and it generally contains, not an image, but a
tablet, or what the Japanese call a "Gohei," or piece of paper, cut so
that it hangs down in folds on each side. In the early days of
writing, a tablet was a book, a stylus the pen. The stone on which the
law was inscribed was only a form of the book, and the Chinese
ancestral tablet, or other tablet, in a temple, is only a variety of
this book form. These "Goheis" are so common in Japan, and occupy so
important a place in all their temples, that I had a great desire to
know what they originally meant; but as on many questions of this kind
I could get no information, the only suggestion which presented itself
to me was, that it might be some form of the book, for the book was a
very sacred thing in past time, and that which is yet called the
"Ark," in a Jewish synagogue, contains now nothing but a book.
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