The inhabitants are mostly merchants, shop-keepers, tradesmen, handicraftsmen, artificers, brewers, besides the numerous retinue of the governors, and the people employed in the Dutch and Chinese trade, by which, in fact, the town is mainly supported. There are many poor people and beggars, most of them religious mendicants. “The town,” says Kämpfer, “is never without a great deal of noise. In the day, victuals and other merchandise are cried up and down the streets. Day-laborers and the seamen in the harbor encourage one another to work with a certain sound. In the night the watchmen and soldiers upon duty, both in the streets and harbor, show their vigilance, and at the same time indicate the hours of the night, by beating two pieces of wood against each other. The Chinese contribute their share chiefly in the evening, when they burn some pieces of gilt paper, and throw them into the sea, as an offering to their idol, or when they carry their idol about its temple; both which they do with beating of drums and cymbals. But all this is little compared with the clamor and bawling of the priests and the relations of dying or dead persons, who, either in the house where the corpse lies, or else upon certain days sacred to the deceased’s memory, sing a _Namida_ [Namu-amida-butsu], that is, a prayer, to their god _Amida_[150], with a loud voice, for the relief of his soul. The like is done by certain fraternities or societies of devout neighbors, friends, or relations, who meet by turns in their houses, every day, in the morning or evening, in order to sing the Namida by way of precaution for the future relief of their own souls.”