ABSTRACT
IN the furniture departments of the numerous large stores of Tokyo, built and managed according to modern American standards, you can buy side by side modern easy chairs made of steel, writing-desks, wardrobes, everything in fact which is used in normal Western households-as well as old Japanese house shrines, cupboard-like miniature temples covered with lacquer, gold and carvings. These shrines, costing from 6 to 600 yen, are used according to ancient rite for offerings of rice, flowers or water in honour of Japan’s most important deity Amaterasu-o-mikami, or of the immortal souls of the family’s ancestors.
