Kioto Temples
shade, when the opposite mountain-wall wears a veil of rose and lilac, and the air above the plain of gray roofs is full of filmy mists and tiny smoke-wreaths.
All travellers are abroad at sunrise or in the early morning, for by ten o’clock the sun blazes down with fury, and humane people keep their jinrikisha coolies and themselves in-doors. With the cooling dusk mosquitoes swarm from all these gardens and hill-side groves, and the victim fans and slaps until he creeps for safety under his mosquito-net, which, unhappily, does not exclude the nimble flea, whose ravages test both his endurance and his temper. At sunrise all the temples in Kioto open their gates for the first mass, and at dawn pilgrimages to these sacred spots may begin, the odor and silence of that dewy hour adding to their peace and sanctity.
All the way from Yaami's to the Yasaka pagoda and the Kiomidzu temple the hill-side is covered with temple and monastery grounds, the way leading through broad, tree-shaded avenues and narrow paths by bamboo groves or evergreen thickets. Wide, flagged walks and grand stair-ways follow the terraces to temples and bell-towers, screened by open-work walls and approached through monumental gate-ways made beautiful by carving, gilding and painting, inlaid metals, and fine tiles. Crossing from one temple enclosure to another, the walk extends for two miles along the brow of the hill through beautiful grounds. The park-like demesne of Higashi Otani, with its imperial tombs, adjoins Yaami’s, and next it is the Kotaiji, with its noble avenues. At the end of one broad path-way, traversing the upper part of the Kotaiji grounds, the Yasaka pagoda, with its five stories of curving roofs and gables hung with old bronze bells, stands like a picture in the arching frame of green. These venerable pagodas, their walls covered with wondrous carvings and bracketings, faded to dim red and tarnished
227
