Buddhist ceremony at Tamon-in Temple

This morning I attended services at a Buddhist temple at the foot of Hijiyama. It lasted roughly half an hour, and only about nine people were in attendance. The ceremony was in honor of a sort of proto-deity representing music, and throughout the chanting--Japanese transliteration of the Sanskrit text--the worshippers shook wooden sticks with metal rings, the clanging sounds representing music.
The monk promptly departed after the conclusion of the service, and an elderly woman served o-cha (tradiational green tea) and kumquat gelatin to all in attendance--myself, my coworker Teramoto-san, and about six ladies in their 40s and 50s. This temple is not particularly noteworthy to the passerby and eludes most travel books, but the elaborate graveyard houses the descendants of Rai Sanyo, one of the most renown Japanese Confucianists, painters, and calligraphers. Buddhist scholars' graves are frequently marked by short conic headstones; note them in the photograph below.




All Buddhist temples have a large bell near the temple itself. The significance of Tamon-in's bell is that it was obliterated in the A-bomb blast, but the wooden housing survived with minor structural damage. Note the splintered wood--still in tact--as well as the replaced bell's nascent inscription, "No More Hiroshimas." A near by concrete tower was also damaged (slightly twisted, below).