A year later, in Meiji Two, I turned thirteen. The Emperor went to Edo again, and for a third time we lay prostrate in the street. When I looked, I gasped. Yukako kicked me, and gasped herself. In the year between these two processions, we had heard that Buddhism was illegal; all priests and nuns were to leave their temples and go back to lay life. All Buddhist images were ordered out of Shinto shrines; all Shinto images were ordered out of Buddhist temples. The priests and statues had
