ABSTRACT
The Ikegami temple group is uncommonly interesting, because it includes nearly all the different buildings which belong to a typical Buddhist establishment –the Founder’s hall and main hall, the bell tower and drum tower, pagoda, revolving library and holy water cistern, besides the treasury, reception rooms and priests’ apartments. High up on the wall are pictures of Buddhist angels, and all the half-Hindu appointments of Buddhist ritual are in place–the lamps and embroidered hangings, the drums and gongs and low reading stands for the priests, set before the altar on the matted floor. In the drum tower near the entrance a priest is almost constantly beating the drum, and reciting the sacred formula of the sect, the invocation to the Lotus Book. A small roofed gate at the back of the temple enclosure leads to the priests’ apartments, students’ dormitories, reception rooms, etc., which make a considerable group of buildings.
