The worship consists in prayers and prostrations. Works of religious merit are, casting a contribution into the alms-chest, and avoiding or expiating the impurities supposed to be the consequence of being touched by blood, of eating of the flesh of any quadruped except the deer, and to a less extent even that of any bird, of killing any animal, of coming in contact with a dead person, or even, among the more scrupulous, of seeing, hearing of, or speaking of any such impurities. To these may be added, as works of religious merit, the celebration of festivals, of which there are two principal ones in each month, being the first and fifteenth day of it, besides five greater ones distributed through the year, and lasting, some of them, for several days, in which concerts, spectacles, and theatrical exhibitions form a leading part. We must add the going on pilgrimages, to which, indeed, all the religious of Japan are greatly addicted. The pilgrimage esteemed by the adherents of Shintō as the most meritorious, and which all are bound to make once a year, or, at least, once in their life, is that of _Ise_, the name of a central province on the south coast of Nippon, in which Tenshō-daijin was reported to have been born and to have died, and which contains a Miya, exceedingly venerated, and already mentioned as the model after which all the others are built. Though it is not at all easy to distinguish what, either of ceremony or doctrine, was peculiar or original in the system of Shintō,[33] yet in general that system seems to have been much less austere than the rival doctrine of Buddha, which teaches that sorrow is inseparable from existence, the only escape from it being in annihilation. The adherents of Shintō were, on the other hand, much more disposed to look upon the bright side of things, turning their religious festivals into holidays, and regarding people in sorrow and distress as unfit for the worship of the gods, whose felicity ought not to be disturbed by the sight of pain and misery. And this, perhaps, was one of the causes that enabled the religion of Buddha, which addresses itself more to the sorrowing hearts of which the world is so full, to obtain that predominance of which the Portuguese missionaries found it in possession. [Illustration: A SHINTŌ PRIEST]