Robert C. Sibley - The Way of the 88 Temples: Journeys on the Shikoku Pilgrimage

University of Virginia Press

2013 by Robert C. Sibley

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2013

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Sibley, Robert C. (Robert Cameron), 1951

The way of the 88 temples : journeys on the Shikoku pilgrimage / Robert C. Sibley.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8139-3472-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8139-3473-0 (e-book)

1. Sibley, Robert C. (Robert Cameron), 1951TravelJapanShikoku Region. 2. Buddhist pilgrims and pilgrimagesJapanShikoku Region. 3. Buddhist templesJapanShikoku Region. 4. Shikoku Region (Japan)Description and travel. 5. Spiritual biography. I. Title. II. Title: Way of the eighty-eight temples.

BQ 6450. J 32 S 486724 2013

294.3 43509523dc23

2013008668

This book is dedicated to Yukuo Tanaka.

Dgy ninin.

I want to thank the editors, past and present, at the Ottawa Citizenin particular, Gerry Nott, Neil Reynolds, Scott Anderson, Lynn McAuley, Christina Spencer, Derek Shelly, Rob Warner, Julius Majerczyk, Kurt Johnson, Sue Allen, Peter Robb, and Mike Gillespiewho, in their various capacities, contributed to this work, which first appeared in a shorter and different form in the Citizen. Gerry Nott, the current Citizen Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, has been generous in giving permission to turn that series into this book. I am also grateful to Post-media Network (formerly Canwest Publications) for supporting my pilgrimages.

I would also like to thank Ikuko Niwano and Kazuko Tanaka for their gracious hospitality in inviting me into their homes. I am grateful to Emiko Miyashita and Michael Dylan Welch for translating Shji Niwanos haiku so I could read some of them at the Haiku Society of Americas annual convention where I was a keynote speaker in 2009. I must also thank Fumiyo Fuji for her Japanese lessons and Yumiko Tsunakawa and Sam Toma for their friendship and translation services. I am also indebted to David Moreton and David Turkington for their generous help and advice. My greatest gratitude is, as always, to my wife and fellow writer, Margret Kopala, for making my pilgrimages possible.

A holy person

met so soon

on this pilgrimage.

SHJI NIWANO

I stumbled up the bell tower steps, grasped the rope, and hauled the long wooden pole back as far as possible in its cradle. Then I swung the rope forward and slammed the pole against the bronze bell. A loud bong echoed through the courtyard of Shsanji temple and across the mountain valley. It was, I thought, a satisfying way to announce my presence to the presiding deities and, presumably, scare away any evil spirits lurking in the surrounding forest. As it was, I flushed a flock of pigeons from the temple roof, sending them flapping into the drizzling sky. The bells echoes faded and the birds returned to their roost, but I lingered in the shelter of the towers gabled roof.

Across the gravel expanse of the courtyard, a flagstone walkway cut between two rows of tall cedars to the main hall of the temple. The gray-tile roof shone in the rain. Tendrils of incense smoke curled from the urn in front of the hall. Even at this distance the sweet odor permeated the damp air. Nearby, half a dozen bus pilgrims, dressed in traditional white robes and wide-brimmed straw hats, prayed in the small hall dedicated to the Buddhist saint Kb Daishi, their heads bowed as they chanted.

I caught snatches of the Hannya Shingy, or Heart Sutrathe short prayer that is said to articulate the essence of Buddhism: Gyate, gyate, hara gyate, hara so gyate, boji sowaka. I didnt understand the language, but Id heard the prayer so often during the past three days that the words were beginning to stick in my head. And so they should. As a henro, or pilgrim, I wore the hakui, a white robe or vest, carried the kong-tsue, a walking staff, and possessed the nkych, the book in which every henro has a temple seal stamped as a testament to their visit. I even had my pack of osamefuda, or name slips, on which to write my name and address before depositing them in special bins at the temples. And I, too, intended to complete the Henro Michi, the oldest and most famous Buddhist pilgrimage route in Japan.

What set me apart from most other henro was that, unlike the majority who take buses or drive cars, I was going to walk 1,400 kilometers, visiting each of the eighty-eight temples that are strung out like beads on a rosary around the perimeter of Shikoku, the smallest of Japans four main islands. The route supposedly follows the footsteps of Kb Daishi, the ninth-century ascetic who founded the Shingon Buddhist sect. The saint, according to tradition, accompanies all pilgrims as a spiritual companion.

The Shikoku pilgrimage is probably the best known of Japans many hundreds of pilgrimage routes. Its certainly popular among the Japanese. An estimated 15,000 henro a year performed the pilgrimage in the 1960s, whether on foot or by car or bus. By the late 1980s that number had increased to 80,000. These days, however, an estimated 150,000 engage in the pilgrimageon foot, by bicycle, or by vehicle thanks in part to three huge bridges built in recent decades linking Shikoku to the larger island of Honshu across the Inland Sea. The Shikoku pilgrimage, with its white-robed henro and picturesque temples, has also become popular with the Japanese media. Television reports, news paper articles, and magazine features, as well as documentaries and plays, have embedded the pilgrimage in Japans popular culture.

Arguably, though, this popularity reflects something deeper. Ian Reader, a British scholar of Japanese religion, writes that for many Shikoku pilgrims, the pilgrimage provides a reaffirmation of their social and cultural identity and a way of consolidating the religious outlooks that underpin their existence. That said, some of the major temples in, say, Nara and Kyoto no longer seem to reflect or sustain a living religion. While they remain beautiful, they have become tourist sites or, at most, nostalgic reminders of Japans past. I had visited some of Kyotos famous temples before my pilgrimage. Shuffling along with the other tourists, I felt I was seeing beautiful shells, forms without substance.

It was different on Shikoku. The temples have a decidedly lived-in look, perhaps because, as one of my guidebooks put it, the 88 temples are still alive for the pilgrims themselves. I had decided that if I was to undertake a two-month religious pilgrimage, I would at least participate in the formalities even if I didnt understand their meaning or significance or, for that matter, wasnt very good at being religious. Perhaps not surprisingly, I found that by going through the motions visiting the sacred sites, trying to recite the Heart Sutra, following in the steps that thousands of others have taken for hundreds of yearsI was absorbed by the pilgrimage. The spirit of Kb Daishi, it seemed, laid a claim on my psyche.