NIKKO, one of the chief religious centres of Japan, is beautifully sittfated on the Nikko Zan (Mountains of the Sun’s Brightness) in Tochigi ken (province of Shimotsuke), about 92 miles north-north-west of Tokio (Yedo) by the ordinary route via Utsunomiya. The town is properly called Hachi-ishi, but this name is very little used in comparison with that of the shrines. A Shinto temple seems to have existed at Nikko from time immemorial, and in 767 its first Buddhist temple was founded by Shô-dô Shô-nin (the subject of many strange legendary adventures); but the main celebrity of the place is due to the sepulchres and sanctuaries of Iyeyasu and Iyemitsu, the first and third shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty. Iyeyasu was buried with amazing pomp in 1617, and Iyemitsu, his grandson, was slain in 1650 while visiting his tomb. From 1644 to 1868 the “abbots” of Nikko were always princes of the imperial blood; thirteen of them are buried within the sacred grounds. Though the magnificent abbots’ residence was destroyed by fire in 1871, and the temples have lost most of their ritual and much of their material splendour, enough remains to astonish by excellence and bewilder by variety of decorative detail. Of the numerous structures which cluster round the shrine of Iyeyasu, it is sufficient to mention the cylindrical copper column, 42 feet high, adorned at the top with a series of six lotus flowers, from the petals of which hang small bells; a five-storied pagoda, 104 feet high, with the animals of the duodenary cycle running round the base; the gate of the Two Kings, with its figures of unicorns, tapirs, elephants, and tree-paeonies; the vermilion-coloured timber enclosure to which this gate gives entrance, with three great storehouses, a sumptuous stable for the sacred ...