Japan and the Japanese

TEMPLES AT MIAKO. 381
and chief principles of nature, the active and passive, the giving
and taking, the opening and shutting, generation and corruption.
Within the gateway were sixteen stone pillars on each side for
lamps, a water basin, &c. ;
and on the inside of the enclosing wall
was a spacious walk or gallery, open towards the interior space,
but covered with a roof which was supported by two rows of pillars,
about eighteen feet high and twelve feet distant from each
other.
" Directly opposite the entrance, in the middle of the court, stood
the temple, much the loftiest structure which Kampfer had seen in
Japan, with a double roof supported by ninety-four immense wooden
pillars, of at least nine feet diameter, some of them of a single piece,
but others of several trunks put together as in the case of the masts
of our large ships, and all painted red."
Within, the floor was paved with square flags of free-stone,
thing not seen elsewhere. There were many small, narrow doors
running up to the first roof, but the interior, on account of its great
height, the whole up to the second roof forming but one room, was
very badly lighted. Nothing was to be seen within except an
immense idol, sitting (not after the Japanese, but after the Indian
manner, with the legs crossed before it) on a terete flower, sup-
ported by another flower, of which the leaves were turned upwards,
the two being raised about twelve feet from the floor. The idol
which was gilt all over, had long ears, curled hair, a crown on the
head, which appeared through the window over the first roof, with
a large spot not gilt on the forehead. The shoulders, so broad as
to reach from one pillar to another, a distance of thirty feet, were
naked. The breast and body were covered with a loose piece of
drapery.
It held the right hand up, the left rested edgewise on the
belly.
The Quanwon temple was a structure very long in proportion to
its breadth. In the midst was a gigantic image of Quanwon, with
thirty-six arms. Sixteen black images, bigger than life, stood round
it, and on each side two rows of gilt idols with twenty arms each.
On either side of the temple, running from end to end, were teia
platforms rising like steps one behind the other, on each of which
stood fifty images of Quanwon, as large as life, a thousand in all,
each on its separate pedestal, so arranged as to stand in rows of
a