[1. Nono-San (or Sama) is the child-word for the Spirits of the dead, for the Buddhas, and for the Shinto Gods,--Kami. Nono-San wo ogamu,--"to pray to the Nono-San," is the child-phrase for praying to the gods. The spirits of the ancestors become Nono-San,--Kami,--according to Shinto thought.

2 The reference here to Ontake Sama has a particular interest, but will need some considerable explanation.

Ontake, or Mitake, is the name of a celebrated holy peak in the province of Shinano--a great resort for pilgrims, During the Tokugawa Shogunate, a priest called Isshin, of the Risshu Buddhists, made a pilgrimage to that mountain. Returning to his native place (Sakamoto-cho, Shitaya, Yedo), he began to preach certain new doctrines, and to make for himself a reputation as a miracle-worker, by virtue of powers said to have been gained during his pilgrimage to Ontake. The Shogunate considered him a dangerous person, and banished him to the island of Hachijo, where he remained for some years. Afterwards he was allowed to return to Yedo, and there to preach his new faith,--to which he gave the name of Azuma-Kyo. It was Buddhist teaching in a Shinto disguise,--the deities especially adored by its followers being Okuni-nushi and Sukuna-hikona as Buddhist avatars. In the prayer of the sect called Kaibyaku-Norito it is said:--"The divine nature is immovable (fudo); yet it moves. It is formless, yet manifests itself in forms. This is the Incomprehensible Divine Body. In Heaven and Earth it is called Kami; in all things it is called Spirit; in Man it is called Mind. . . . From this only reality came the heavens, the four oceans, the great whole of the three thousand universes;--from the One Mind emanate three thousands of great thousands of forms." . . .

In the eleventh year of Bunkwa (1814) a man called Shimoyama Osuke, originally an oil-merchant in Heiyemon-cho, Asakusa, Yedo, organized, on the basis of Isshin's teaching, a religious association named Tomoye-Ko. It flourished until the overthrow of the Shogunate, when a law was issued forbidding the teaching of mixed doctrines, and the blending of Shinto with Buddhist religion. Shimoyama Osuke then applied for permission to establish a new Shinto sect, under the name of Mitake-Kyo,--popularly called Onfake-Kyo; and the permission was given in the sixth year of Meiji [1873]. Osuke then remodeled the Buddhist sutra Fudo Kyo into a Shinto prayer-book, under the title, Shinto-Fudo-Norito. The sect still flourishes; and one of its chief temples is situated about a mile from my present residence in Tokyo.