Gleanings in Buddha-Fields

plain wood 1 soon turns, under the action of rain and sun, to a natural gray, varying according to surface exposure from the silvery tone of birch bark to the somber gray of basalt. So shaped and so tinted, the isolated country yashiro may seem less like a work of joinery than a feature of the scenery—a rural form related to nature as closely as rocks and trees—something that came into existence only as a manifestation of Ohotsuchi-no-Kami, the Earth-god, the primeval divinity of the land.

Why certain architectural forms produce a feeling of weirdness in the beholder is a question I would like to theorize about someday; for now, I will venture only to say that Shintō shrines evoke such a feeling. It grows with familiarity instead of weakening, and a knowledge of popular beliefs is likely to intensify it. We have no English words by which these strange shapes can be sufficiently described—much less any language able to communicate the peculiar impression which they make. Those Shintō terms which we loosely translate as “temple” and “shrine” are really untrans-

1 Usually hinoki (Chamæcyparis obtusa).