Japan and the Japanese

PILGRIM BEGGARS. 319
\ng people's eyes upon them, as well as getting their money. They
form themselves into companies, generally of four persons, clad in
white linen, after the fashion of the Kuge, or persons of the holy
ecclesiastical court of the Dairi. Two of them walking a grave,
slow, deliberate pace, and standing often still, carry a large barrow,
adorned and hung about with fir-branches and cut white paper, on
which they place a resemblance of a large bell, made of light sub-
stance, or a kettle, or something else, alluding to some old romantic
history of their gods and ancestors; whilst a third, with a commander's
staff" in his hand, adorned, out of respect to his office, with
a bunch of white paper, walks, or rather dances, before the barrow,
singing with a dull, heavy voice, a song relating to the subject
they are about to represent. Meanwhile, the fourth goes begging
before the houses, or addresses himself to charitable travellers, and
receives and keeps the money which is given them. Their day's
journeys are so short, that they can easily spend the whole summer
upon such an expedition.
" The Siunse, another remarkable sight travellers meet with upon
the roads, are people, who go to visit in pilgrimage the thirty-three
chief Quanwon temples, which lie dispersed throughout the empire.
They commonly travel two or three together, singing
a miserable
Quanwon-song from house to house, and sometimes playing upon a
fiddle, or upon a guitar, as vagabond beggars do in Germany.
However, they do not importune travellers for their charity. They
have the names of such Quanwon temples as they have not yet
visited writ upon a small board hanging about their necks. They
are clad in white, after a very singular fashion, peculiar only to this
sect. Some people like so well to ramble about the country after
this manner that they will apply themselves to no other trade and
profession, but choose to end their days in this perpetual pil-
grimage.
" Sometimes one meets with very odd sights ; as, for instance,
people running naked along the roads in the hardest frosts, wear-
ing only a little straw about their waists. These people generally
undertake so extraordinary and troublesome a journey to visit cer-
tain temples, pursuant to religious vows, which they promised to ful-
fil in case they should obtain, from the bounty of their gods, deliver-
ance from some fatal distemper, they themselves, their parents or