“Others make this pilgrimage in a comical and merry way, drawing people’s eyes upon them as well as getting their money. They form themselves into companies, generally of four persons, clad in white linen, after the fashion of the Kuge, or persons of the holy ecclesiastical court of the Dairi. Two of them walking a grave, slow, deliberate pace, and standing often still, carry a large barrow, adorned and hung about with fir-branches and cut white paper, on which they place a resemblance of a large bell, made of light substance, or a kettle, or something else, alluding to some old romantic history of their gods and ancestors; whilst a third, with a commander’s staff in his hand, adorned, out of respect to his office, with a bunch of white paper, walks, or rather dances, before the barrow, singing with a dull, heavy voice, a song relating to the subject they are about to represent. Meanwhile, the fourth goes begging before the houses, or addresses himself to charitable travellers, and receives and keeps the money which is given them. Their day’s journeys are so short that they can easily spend the whole summer upon such an expedition. “The _Junrei_, another remarkable sight travellers meet with upon the roads, are people who go to visit in pilgrimage the thirty-three chief Kwannon temples, which lie dispersed throughout the empire. They commonly travel two or three together, singing a miserable Kwannon-song from house to house, and sometimes playing upon a fiddle, or upon a guitar, as vagabond beggars do in Germany. However, they do not importune travellers for their charity. They have the names of such Kwannon temples as they have not yet visited writ upon a small board hanging about their necks. They are clad in white, after a very singular fashion, peculiar only to this sect. Some people like so well to ramble about the country after this manner that they will apply themselves to no other trade and profession, but choose to end their days in this perpetual pilgrimage. “Sometimes one meets with very odd sights; as, for instance, people running naked along the roads in the hardest frosts, wearing only a little straw about their waists. These people generally undertake so extraordinary and troublesome a journey to visit certain temples, pursuant to religious vows, which they promised to fulfil in case they should obtain, from the bounty of their gods, deliverance from some fatal distemper, they themselves, their parents or relations, labor under, or from some other great misfortunes they were threatened with. They live very poorly and miserably upon the road, receive no charity, and proceed on their journey by themselves, almost perpetually running.