Kobé and Arima
headsman used to bind mutilated bodies or ghastly heads to high poles and set them up at the corners, after immemorial usage. The park, or recreation-grounds for the foreign colony, lies, beside the long embankment of another elevated river-bed on the opposite side from the Minatogawa.
Every gap in the Kobé hills leads to some lovely little valley, and orange groves dot the hill-sides. In one green ravine are the falls of Nunobiki, where a clear mountain stream takes two long plunges down sheer granite walls, drops in foaming cascades past old rice-mills, and courses on over the sloping plain to the sea. The Moon temple shines, a white spot, far up towards the summit of the steep, green mountain, and, with the more accessible falls, offers the two favorite points for visitors’ excursions. Farther along the brow of the hill stands the Gold Ball temple, a whitewashed structure, looking like an exaggerated country meeting-house, with its roof surmounted by a gilded sphere, and with nothing even suggesting Buddhism in its appearance. While it is an eyesore to every one else, the natives, who contributed the money to build this monstrosity of what they consider foreign architecture, are delighted with its unique and bizarre appearance. Around it lies a populous graveyard, many of the stones gray with the mosses of centuries. Others, newly erected, are family memorials, bearing the names of those members already buried there written in black characters, and the names of the living in red. It is a curious custom; but to the Japanese, who even point with pride to the red letters of their own names on these family monuments, it is rational and right. Cremation is the funeral rite preferred, and up a narrow valley behind the temple is the crematory, much used both by rich and poor. The process is simple and inexpensive, and the visitor always encounters some funeral train accompanying a body to that little white temple of fire,
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