Much more interesting to me than the ofuda of the Miojinja are the
yoraku, the pendent ex-votos in the Hojinji, a temple of the Zen sect
which stands on the summit of the beautiful hill above the great
Shinto shrine. Before an altar on which are ranged the images of the
Thirty-three Kwannons, the thirty-three forms of that Goddess of Mercy
who represents the ideal of all that is sweet and pure in the Japanese
maiden, a strange, brightly coloured mass of curious things may be
seen, suspended from the carven ceiling. There are hundreds of balls of
worsted and balls of cotton thread of all colours; there are skeins
of silk and patterns of silk weaving and of cotton weaving; there are
broidered purses in the shape of sparrows and other living creatures;
there are samples of bamboo plaiting and countless specimens of
needlework. All these are the votive offerings of school children,
little girls only, to the Maid-mother of all grace and sweetness and
pity. So soon as a baby girl learns something in the way of woman's
work--sewing, or weaving, or knitting, or broidering, she brings her
first successful effort to the temple as an offering to the gentle
divinity, 'whose eyes are beautiful,' she 'who looketh down above the
sound of prayer.' Even the infants of the Japanese kindergarten bring
their first work here--pretty paper-cuttings, scissored out and plaited
into divers patterns by their own tiny flower-soft hands.