_Horses_.--Presents of horses to shrines are often mentioned. They were let loose in the precinct. At the present day albinos are selected for this purpose, white being considered an auspicious colour. Wooden figures might be substituted by those who could not afford real horses. At the festivals of Gion and Hachiman men riding on hobby-horses (_koma-gata_) or with a wooden horse's head attached to their breasts formed part of the procession. They no doubt represented riding-horses for the deity. In more recent times the further step was taken of offering pictures of horses. This practice became so common that special buildings, called _emadō_ (horse-picture-gallery) were erected for their accommodation. But they contained many other pictures as well. The _emadō_ of Kiyomidzu in Kiōto and of Itsukushima in the Inland Sea are very curious collections of this kind. They correspond to the _ex-voto_ churches of Roman Catholic countries.
_Carriages_.--The Mikoshi, or carriage of the God (pp. 224, 225), in which his _shintai_ is promenaded on festival occasions, is usually a very elaborate and costly construction. It is carried on men's shoulders to a _tabi no miya_ (travel-shrine) or _reposoir_ and back again to the shrine. The confusion in many minds between the _shintai_ and the _mitama_ is illustrated by the fact that a standard modern dictionary speaks of the Mikoshi as containing the God's _mitama_.
_Shrines_.--A shrine is a species of offering. Whatever may be the case in other countries, in Japan the shrine is not a development of the tomb. They have no resemblance to each other. The tomb is a partly subterranean megalithic vault enclosed in a huge mound of earth, while the shrine is a wooden structure raised on posts some feet above the ground. The Japanese words for shrine indicate that it is intended as a house for the God. _Miya_, august house, is used equally of a shrine and of a palace, but not of a tomb, except poetically, as when the _Manyōshiu_ speaks of one as a _toko no miya_, or "long home." _Araka_, another word for shrine, probably means "dwelling-place." In _yashiro_, a very common word for shrine, _ya_ means house and _shiro_ representative or equivalent. There is evidence[186] that this word comes to us from a time when the _yashiro_ was a plot of ground consecrated for the occasion to represent a place of abode for the deity. The analogy of the Roman _templum_ will occur to the classical scholar. The _himorogi_ (p. 226), a term which has been the subject of some controversy, was probably, as Hirata suggests, at first an enclosure of _sakaki_ twigs stuck in the ground so as to represent a house. It is probable that in all these cases the make-believe preceded any actual edifice, and was not a substitute for it.