mokugyo

The mokugyo ceases its dull echoing, the impressive chant ends, and the leading officiants, one by one, high priests of famed temples, approach the ihai.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

The tapping is the tapping of the mokugyo -- a huge wooden fish-head, lacquered and gilded, like the head of a dolphin grotesquely idealised -- marking the time; and the chant is the chant of the Chapter of Kwannon in the Hokkekyo, with its magnificent invocation:

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

Then a sound of sobbing is suddenly whelmed by the resonant booming of the great fish's-head, as the high-pitched voices of the leaders of the chant begin the grand Nehan-gyo, the Sutra of Nirvana, the song of passage triumphant over the Sea of Death and Birth; and deep below those high tones and the hollow echoing of the mokugyo, the surging bass of a century of voices reciting the sonorous words, sounds like the breaking of a sea:

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877