“I am very much inclined to believe that there is a significance which allies itself to ‘The Threshold Covenant’ in the _ye-bumi_ or ‘trampling on the cross,’ observed during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in Japan in order to eradicate all traces of Christianity. The pagan authorities made a copper engraving of the crucifix, and putting it on the ground, between a structure that was evidently meant for the doorway with a threshold under it, they compelled every one–man, woman, and child–to step upon the figure of Christ and the cross in token of their rejection of everything belonging to Christianity. “In ancient Japan, and all through her history, great care was taken with boundaries and boundary marks, the latter being sometimes masses of charcoal buried in the earth, or inscribed pillars, the bases of which were charred. Mr. Ernest Satow, the first authority on things Japanese, believes that these boundary pillars, which, in some cases (as in Corea today), were carved to represent certain gods, afterwards became phallic emblems. Before most of the Buddhist temples of importance are to be found the two guardian deities Ni-ō (two kings), and before many thousands of shrines of both Shintō and Buddhism is the _ama-inu_ (heavenly dogs), which are the guardians of the entrance to the temple. “Time would fail me to tell of the various fetiches placed over and beside the doorways and gates. Beside the very elaborate New Year’s symbolism signifying prosperity, longevity, congratulations, etc., there is always, on the last night of the year, a sort of ‘purging out of the old leaven,’ cleaning up of the house, and exorcism, by means of beans as projectiles, of all evil and evil spirits. Then bunches of thorny leaves, like holly, are affixed outside on the door lintel. Over the doorway of almost every house of country folk and many of the townspeople, one can see the wooden charms nailed up. These are bought in the temples of the priests as well as the packages of sacred paper with Sanskrit letters or monograms for the better class of houses. “Besides the red cord with which almost every present in Japan is tied, the stamp of the red hand on or at the side of the door, either on the wood itself or on a sheet of paper, nailed up beside the door, is very common at particular times. “The Mecca of Japanese Shintō is at Isé, where the temples have had from time immemorial ‘only one foundation.’ The buildings are renewed every twenty years on the same spot. For many centuries it has been the custom to rebuild Buddhist temples on the same foundation when destroyed by fire, or when ‘captured’ from Shintoist to Buddhist ownership....