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This Buddhist temple stands in a beautiful, wooded park, a short distance from Tokyo, between the capital and Yokohama. It is one of the most splendid temples in Japan. Almost everything you see before you now is covered with gold or with brilliant and costly red lacquer. The kneeling men are Buddhist priests. That shrine at the end of the room contains a specially sacred image of the founder of this sect of Buddhists — Nichiren. The altar before it, laden with those enormous jars and vases, candlesticks and incenser (see the marvellous elaboration with which the altar itself is carved), receives the offerings of the faithful, made through the priests. These boxes finished in red lacquer and gold contain precious copies of various books of Buddhist scriptures; on festival occasions a gorgeously dressed priest kneels before each one, drums are beat, clouds of fragrant incense veil the altar and the shrine, and priests repeat over and over the mystic formula of invocation bequeathed to them by the founder of the sect, seven centuries ago, — Namu  Myōhō  Renge  Kyō, — "Oh, the Scripture of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law."
Nichiren, the thirteenth century teacher in whose memory this temple stands to-day, was a priest of the orthodox Buddhist faith who led a theological reform. Just what were the particular doctrines whose championship made him hated on his time as a schismatic, it is difficult now for any western mind to comprehend; but he was persecuted and banished as so many religious leaders have been in all ages and all parts of the world. The sect of Buddhists founded by him has now a great many followers and much wealth. 
In April and October there are special festivals here, when large numbers of worshipers come from all parts of Japan. The October festival in particular often brings as many as twenty thousand people to the temple-grounds.
From Notes of Travel, No. 8, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood. 
Priests in Ikegami Temple, Omori, Japan.