Note 174 — Chapter XXXI

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.