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You are just outside the city. This road leads off behind you to Sakai, six or seven miles distant on the shore of the Inland Sea. The metal rail you see is part of a street-car track - tramways are being introduced into the large cities. 

A rich merchant in Osaka has just died and this is part of the half-mile long procession which accompanies his body to the temple and then to the cemetery. 

As soon as the man died his body was robed with a kimono folded across the chest from right to left, and laid upon the floor before the household shrine, where candles were burned before the memorials of the family ancestors. Previous to the temple services the relatives and friends have been praying beside the still body - there are special litanies or combinations of prayers for such occasions, and these are often counted off on rosaries. 


At the temple the coffin will be set down before the door while the priests recite invocations and prayers inherited from ritual usage centuries and centuries old. 

Lafcadio Hearn in his "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" gives translations of some of the Buddhist prayers that enter into such a service:-

"O, Thou Pure One, whose luminosity is without spot, whose knowledge is without shadow, - O Thou forever shining like that Sun whose glory no power may repel - Thou, Sun-like in the course of Thy mercy, pourest light upon the world:- Transient are all. They, being born, must die. And being born, are dead. And being dead, are glad to be at rest."

(See Davidson's "Present Day Japan," etc.)

From Notes of Travel, No. 9, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood. 


Funeral procession of a Buddhist, Osaka, Japan. 
Funérailes d'un Buddhiste, Osaka, Japon. 
Leichenzug eines Buddhisten, Osaka, Japan. 
Funerales de un budhista, Oaska[[Osaka]], Japón. 
Buddhistisk begrafningsprocession, Osaka, Japan. 
Похоронная процессія Буддиста, Осака, Японія.