Echoes of Incense A Pilgrimage in Japan by Don Weiss

Chapter Fifteen

Nansho

Five days later we climbed to Temple 60, Yokomineji, Side Summit Temple, 800 meters up Mt. Ishizuchi. When we first came here, on our bicycle trip two years before, we saved this temple for last. We followed the road around Temple 64 and up a long, deep valley to a point directly below Yokomineji. Then we parked our bikes and walked up the trail.

Phyllis had been sure we would get lost, get rained on and miss our train home. The first of these dangers almost came true. We went a kilometer too far on our bikes and almost took the wrong path. A woman digging for bamboo shoots saw us and set us on the right route.

Rain had been predicted but though it was cool and overcast, we never got wet. Yet, as we walked up the trail, Phyllis kept wanting to go faster, angry at the imaginary dangers. When we got to the temple, I bought her a little silver bell to remind her that it hadn't been so bad after all. It had just been a nansho, a "difficult place."Like all nansho, the true difficulty was in her mind. We got back down in plenty of time. While I took apart the bikes and put them in their traveling bags, she walked to a nearby hot springs resort for a bath.

I had hoped we would have a much easier time now, since I knew the best route from my winter walk. Unfortunately, it started to rain during the night. We left our inn at 7:15. By the time we reached Temple 61, it was raining heavily with no sign of stopping. We said our prayers, got our stamps, and put most of our gear in the temple office. Then we bought a couple of cans of hot drinks and started up the path towards Yokomineji.

The first part of the route was a soft dirt road, muddy from the rain. We almost fell several times before we got to firmer ground. I led, trying to go slowly so we wouldn't get tired. I remembered how steep the first five kilometers of trail were. There were Shikoku no Michi rest stop benches every few kilometers, but Phyllis refused to sit down. She didn't think her rain pants would work as well sitting as walking.

Cherry blossom time was almost over, but the azaleas were in full bloom. Every few hundred meters, we would come around a bend and find ourselves in a tunnel of red flowers.

Other flowers grew at our feet. Birds sang through all but the strongest downpours. The rain released the scent of the trees, flowers and earth out into the air. The sight of the flowers, the sounds of the raindrops and birds, and the scent of the forest made the hike a superb sensual experience. The thermometer had read 13 degrees at dawn and it stayed there all day. I walked without a sweater. My rain jacket clasped my arms in a cool, damp embrace.

The rain brought out frogs and land crabs. The frogs were the same color as the wet mud and were silent, so we only saw them when we bent down and looked. The crabs were much easier to see, and also to hear. Anytime we came with two meters of a crab it would lift up its claws and croak eerily.

We got to the temple at 1:30 after a three-and-a-half-hour hike. It had rained most of that time. At the temple, we were in a cloud, walking in cottony mist. After prayers and lunch we started back down. In the mist, we walked into and through a large group struggling up from where their bus was parked. Several of the women seemed ready to collapse. Another, who couldn't walk at all, rode up in a car sent down by the temple. The group was accompanied by a yamabushi who walked barefoot up the road, reciting prayers.

We sat next to this group at dinner that night. When we were almost finished, the man on my left turned to me and asked, in perfect English, "Where are you from?"

"We're from America. And you?"He said he was from Osaka. Then I asked, "How far did you have to walk from your bus to Yokomineji today?"He pulled a pedometer from his pocket and looked at it.

"Ten thousand steps,"he said.

That meant he wasn't sure exactly, but it was a long way. Ten thousand, in Japan as in China, often means simply, lots. But even as he said it, he smiled. I knew that, for him, however many steps he had climbed, it had not been a nansho. For Phyllis, once again, it had.

Breakfast the next morning was small standard Japanese. With our walking henro appetites, it left us still hungry. An hour later, we stopped at a bakery in a train station and bought some pastries and milk. Phyllis' pastry was shaped like the head of a cartoon rabbit and filled with vanilla custard. I said, "We always knew that about bunnies, didn't we?"

The following morning, at just about the same time, a woman stopped us as we were walking by her house and invited us in for tea. Her name was Yoshioka-san. She led us into her kitchen, made tea and coffee and offered us cake. She told us that she and her husband had driven the pilgrimage last year and that this December she would go again. Her granddaughter, she said, had walked twice!

She asked a lot of questions about walking the pilgrimage, what things were difficult, why we did it, etc. Then she asked, "What time every day do you get to your inn?"

"Sometimes 3:00, sometimes 4:00, occasionally 5:00."

"Oh, that's not good. You should always be finished walking by 3:00. After that, the Gods come down and it isn't good for walking."

I'd never heard this idea before. It was obviously a folk belief, not a Buddhist teaching. I asked her to explain, but I couldn't understand her answer ‹ many of the words were unfamiliar. She asked me to wait a minute and phoned her granddaughter. Afterwards, she said, "Four o'clock is okay. But five is too late. Please try to be at your inn no later than 4:00 every day."During the phone conversation, I heard her asking how much it cost to stay at henro inns and heard her repeat the answer, 3,000 yen. I wasn't surprised, when we left, that she gave Phyllis an envelope with 3,000 yen.

About 45 minutes later, as we walked up a steep hill in light rain, a very pretty teenage girl on a bicycle caught up to us, stopped, got off her bike and bowed. It was Yoshioka-san's granddaughter. She had taken time off work to ride along the road and find us. She gave me 3,000 yen and we stood under the roof of a building to talk about the pilgrimage. She told me how it made her heart happy to meet foreigners who were devoted to Kobo Daishi. Her love for him was the center of her life. She wanted us to have the money because we must try with all our might (isshokenmei) to pray to Kobo Daishi, to devote ourselves to Kobo Daishi, and while we were on the pilgrimage to live for Kobo Daishi. Then she got back on her bicycle and pedaled back to work. When she graduated from junior high school she had gotten a job in a take-out bento shop, earning money for her next pilgrimage. She was fifteen years old.

Published by Don Weiss (henrodon@gmail.com) -- All rights reserved. You may read this electronic copy on the web or print it out for private reading but no part may be sold or included in any work for sale except for short excerpts used for review purposes.All photographs and maps are likewise copyrighted and may not be reproduced without permission except for private, non-commercial use. Updated June 17, 1999.