PILGRIMS
ANCIENT
AND
MODERN

On the top of a Hill was the Temple of Quanon.

Jesuit letter, 1585    

The reason why men continued doing evil rather than good was revealed to the Japanese as far back as the 8th century, which is a long time ago by any standard of comparison.

A Buddhist abbot, known as Tokudo Shonin, seemingly died, but, as his body did not grow cold, his disciples watched over him for three days and three nights. On awakening he described how, during his trance, his soul had been borne to the Underworld and there the whereabouts of the Thirty-three Holy Places especially cared for by Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, were revealed to him. As none before knew of the existence of those places, men had continued to fall into hell as plentifully as raindrops fall in a thunderstorm. Anyone, however, who makes a single pilgrimage to those Thirty-three Places would, in addition to acquiring great merit, radiate light from the soles of his feet and gain strength sufficient to crush all the one hundred and thirty-six hells into fragments. That is the legend.

About two centuries after this revelation an emperor actually set out on the pilgrimage and thus established in the minds of the people a practice which over the centuries brought a continual stream of visitors and revenue to thirty-three temples which otherwise would have been little known—an advertising feat that has rarely been matched.

Whether or not the rewards for those who complete the pilgrimage are as great as promised is a matter of belief and experience.

Many years ago I performed the pilgrimage, but modesty precludes my drawing attention to the results! At this date I will confess to having visited the last two temples on the list by proxy, a device that is commonly resorted to by many. Certainly I entered into the deception with some misgivings, yet in my simplicity I had hoped it would pass unnoticed by the gods. That however is another story.

The only other case that I have had the opportunity of examining at close range is that of my wife, who completed the pilgrimage some sixteen years ago, without cheating. I must however in all truth admit my disappointment at the results. Merit, and especially any increase in merit, is a virtue difficult to measure at all times, except in oneself! Certainly she did not radiate any light from the soles of her feet. I can only conclude that she had failed in some technicality, possibly in chatting and joking with the priests instead of a proper attention to the special hymn that should be recited at each temple.

It might too have been decided by the Eminence who grants the reward—as has also often been done on this earthly globe—that woman's place is in the home and not gadding about on mountain tops. The opinion of many Buddhist ecclesiastics seemingly coincided with that of some other mortals on this point, because the presence of women in temples had long been discouraged. Indeed their presence was deemed so defiling that near the entrance of many temples there was a rest house beyond which no women could proceed. In fact there are some mountains they were not permitted to climb at all. The times—and the constitution—have changed, and that is now all a thing of the past, but it can be recalled by many that when the ban on women climbing the sacred mountain of Omine was raised not so many years ago, some adherents of the Faith were almost as belligerent as the Tibetan lamas who a year or so ago opposed the entry of the Japanese Himalayan Expedition to Manaslu.

Although not apropos of the subject under discussion, it may be recalled here that women were not the only joys of life that were banned from the temples. Frequently the following warning was engraved in stone at the entrance:

It is forbidden to carry stinking herbs and intoxicating drinks through this holy gate.

Shallots, chives, garlic, and onions were considered as stinking herbs.

Fish was permitted in some temples but not meat. However, some priests were willing and weak enough to partake of wild boar, if served under the name of yama kujira—mountain whale!

Probably in few countries in the world is the tired—and the wayward—business man so well catered for as in Japan. He may spend a week end in a hotel room in Osaka, or some more romantic place, and yet, before returning to his waiting wife, purchase in the underground arcade near Osaka Station a specially wrapped and certified gift of the noted product of any prefecture in Japan, in proof of the deception that the week end was spent on business in that distant prefecture!

The still more wayward business man may spend two weeks in the same hotel room, if he so desires and if his body and his purse will stand the strain, and yet return with a collection of temple "chops" purchased in Osaka in proof of the fiction that the two weeks were devoted to a very tiring but highly meritorious pilgrimage to the Thirty-three Holy Places! Those Thirty-three Temples of Kwannon are scattered over an area that extends from Himeji to near Gifu and from Wakayama to Ama-no-hashi-date. They are all well worthy of a visit by those who are interested in the past. There are other pilgrim circuits also, but this is the best known.

The exceptionally devout and earnest pilgrims perform the pilgrimage on foot walking from one temple to the next along the valleys and over the mountains by the same route that others have trodden for many centuries, dressed in the traditional white clothes and with broad sloping straw hats, but they are comparatively few in number these days. They carry a wooden staff, the Buddhist bell, and a rosary. The route is marked by old stone direction posts, now lichen-covered and crumbling with age. The white clothes of these pilgrims, imprinted with the vermilion seals of the temples that have been visited, constitute proof of the pilgrimage and later may serve as burial shrouds. In addition the pilgrims may have the temple seals imprinted on scrolls and in books which they carry for that purpose.

Those early pilgrims made their way leisurely from one temple to the next, They performed the penances peculiar to each, in some cases of walking around the main building a hundred times, mumbling the "Hail Buddha" continuously. They kept count of the number of turns by dropping a small bamboo stick into a receptacle at the completion of each circuit, much in the some way as tally clerks tally cargo on board ships.

They spun the prayer-wheels—an invention of incalculable convenience to supplicants, and especially dumb mutes. One spin of the wheel is equivalent to reciting a whole prayer. The progenitor, as it were, of the tape-recorder. They turned the revolving libraries, a convenient device whereby the illiterate could with one twirl, and at no mental and little physical effort, do the equivalent of reading six thousand volumes of Buddhist lore.

The majority of pilgrims in this modern age perform the pilgrimage dressed in ordinary clothes and travel in small groups or as members of a large party, each wearing a distinguishing rosette, so that the various parties may not become scrambled. They squeeze the pilgrimage into the short space of time available to them between crops or other duties, travelling by modern transportation systems, fast electric tramways, funicular railways, and motor buses. While there is much to be said for the services that these companies render to the pilgrims, and to their shareholders, it is to be doubted that the modern pilgrim who performs the pilgrimage at such high speed will attain Nirvana any more quickly than the pilgrim of bygone days who trod the narrow paths through the valleys and over the mountains.

The modern pilgrim may spin the prayer-wheel, but he rarely has time to do the penances. The revolving libraries have mostly jammed with age, so in a sense it is fair to say that the moderns have read little Buddhist literature.

It is also to be doubted whether the pilgrim of today travelling with excursionists on these modern conveyances is able to raise his thoughts from the mess of orange peels, the caramel cartons and empty bento boxes that litter the way, to an appropriate contemplation of the splendour of the Lotus, that dazzling symbol of Buddhism, that gorgeous flower that lifts its bud out of the slimy bottom of ponds, raises its unsoiled leaves and unfolds its immaculate petals without a trace of the mud from which it sprung—just as the souls of men, according to the Buddhist faith, rise from the mire of sin, advance little by little until they attain by their own efforts the blessings of Nirvana.

The pilgrims, especially during rainy weather, would rest in the ex-voto halls attached to the temples and gaze at the collection of temple offerings. There were the widows' mites, the hair shorn from the heads of women who had foresworn worldly things on the death of their beloved husbands, the pitiful garments of infants who had died and whose little souls had gone to the Buddhist Styx where the demons torment them and force them to pile up heaps of stones which are torn down again as fast as the children pile them up. There were paintings, carvings and pictures of all description, some designed from thousands of old coins—the mon or coppers, with a square hole in the centre, of a hundred years or more ago. Finally there were the flamboyant offerings of sake brewers and others who combined piety with commercialism.

The modern pilgrims still gaze at the same or similar types of offerings, and it can only be hoped that they note with anger how the old copper coins have largely disappeared—stolen by vandals, or removed during the war years in senseless collections of metal for machines of war, without a thought to the religious symbolism behind the coins—gifts to ease the way of wandering souls in the hereafter.

Except where towns have grown up around the temples, most are located in delightful settings of reverent quietude, in sheltered valleys, or near the mountain tops. Far too often the neighbouring slopes have been bared by the woodmen's axes, and in almost all cases the temple buildings are crumbling away with age—sad evidence of a declining income and of the numbers of Japanese who have forsaken religion in the postwar period.

The priests who in prewar days for a fee of ten sen would impress the seal of the temple on scrolls and in books, and with a writing brush would add an inscription as proof of the visit, were often master calligraphers who seemed to delight in their task. Nowadays the fee is still trifling, but the writing generally less skilful—indeed at some temples the inscription is imprinted with an ugly rubber stamp.

At the main gates of the temples, are the huge wooden carvings, customarily set in cages, of the semi-nude and athletic-looking guardian gods, the Mio or two Deva kings of Indian mythology (Indra & Brama). They are usually painted vermilion, the conventional device adopted by the Japanese Buddhist artists to distinguish the dark-skinned Indian saints and disciples from the lighter-skinned Japanese.

For ages the believers have pelted these guardian gods with spit-balls made from chewed paper on which prayers have been written, confident that should the pellet adhere to the figure their prayer would be granted. When however the chewing-gum culture burst upon Japan, an unwholesome weapon was placed in the hands of those who would shoot at the gods for sport. Whereas the paper pellets dried out and eventually fell to the ground without much damage to the painted carvings, not so the nauseating chewing-gum. It remains as an unsightly mess firmly fixed on carvings that might even be listed as national treasures.

While it is all too evident that some postwar visitors to temples must derive some queer satisfaction in aiming a well masticated piece of chewing-gum at the Indian kings and scoring a bull's eye, nothing to me is more disturbing than to see several lumps of bubble gum stuck firmly on the eyeballs of the guardian gods, thereby giving to them the grotesque appearance of winking broadly at each visitor who passes through the temple gate.

One of the guardians is always depicted with his mouth open as if in the act of saying "Ah" and the other with lips tightly closed as if murmuring "Um." Their faces are the target for our modern young marksmen, who far too often succeed in plugging the open mouth of one and sealing the closed lips of the other with a much manducated mess of gum. It is any wonder that in these modern times we never meet anyone who has heard the one say "Ah," or the other murmur "Um?"