[172] The whole number of towns in the empire, great and small, is set down in the above-mentioned map at more than thirteen thousand.
[173] Kämpfer’s meaning seems to be only that the Shintō priests were not monks living together in convents, like the Buddhist clergy, but having houses and families of their own.
[174] According to a memorandum annexed to the Japanese map already mentioned, there were in Japan twenty-seven thousand seven hundred Kami temples, one hundred and twenty-two thousand five hundred and eighty Buddhist temples, in all forty-nine thousand two hundred and eighty. By the census of 1850, there were in the United States thirty-eight thousand one hundred and eighty-three buildings used for religious worship.
It would appear that though the Shintō temples did not want worshippers who freely contributed alms to the support of the priests, yet that since the abolition of the Catholic worship, and as a sort of security against it, every Japanese was required to enroll himself as belonging to some Buddhist sect or observance.
[175] These oharai, or indulgence-boxes, are little boxes made of thin boards and filled with small sticks wrapped in bits of white paper. Great virtues are ascribed to them, but a new one is necessary every year. They are manufactured and sold by the Shintō priests.