ABSTRACT
The wife of the priest of the Soga shrine was apt to complain of the financial embarrassment which the apathy of post-war parishioners brought to her family. On one occasion she remarked wryly, that the Buddhist temples had less to complain about; 'They look after the hotoke-sama.' The implication that it is their stake in the hotoke-sama (the spirits of the dead) which keeps the temples on their feet is probably a just one. The religious rites and beliefs with which the Buddhist temples are chiefly concerned are those which centre around the worship of the spirits of the dead. They are, that is, rites in which either the family is the worshipping unit, or, at least, consciousness of membership of the family is an important constituent of the worshippers' attitudes.
