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You find the picturesque and shrewd old fortune-teller sitting outside one of the many small buildings in the courtyard of the temple. There are a good many such accessories to actual worship at the shrines of the Goddess of Rice. The patron who lingers here pays this old man a few small copper coins and then chooses a marked rod from that jar at your left. Just what the choice of the rod has to do with the revealing of the fortune is not quite clear, but apparently it has something to do with it; the seer scrutinizes the patron with shrewd judgement born of long experience in dealing with credulous human nature, then he opens that book of Fate lying under his hand or one of the others in that pile on the end of the table, and reads the message belonging to the case before him. You notice that, on the book pages, the characters run in parallel vertical rows; this is the established custom in Japanese books. The page is read, beginning at the bottom and proceeding to the top, the right hand column being read first and then the others towards the left.
You notice, of course, that the fortune-teller has in his hand not a pencil nor a pen, but a brush--similar brushes fill the jar before him and a receptacle for ink (made by rubbing off a bit from a dry cake of "India ink" and dissolving it in water) stands beside his book of auguries. All Japanese writing is done with such brushes and ink and it is no small task to learn to write in Japan, for the beautiful characters stand not simply for letters but for entire words. In order to acquire a needed vocabulary it is necessary to practice the exact forms of an enormous number of slightly varying characters-- from one thousand to ten thousand, according to the range of vocabulary desired.
(See Chamberlain's "Things Japanese"; Scidmore's "Jinrikisha Days in Japan," etc.)
From Notes of Travel, No. 8, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.
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A Fortune-Teller at Inari Temple, Kyoto, Japan.
Un Diseur de Bonne Aventure au Temple d'Inari, Kioto, Japon.
Ein Wahriager beim Inari-Tempel, Kioto, Japan.
Sortílego en el Templo de Inari, Kioto, Japon.
En spåman i Inaritemplet, Kyoto, Japan.
Гадальщица въ храмѣ Инари, имеет Кіото, Японія.