Echoes of Incense A Pilgrimage in Japan by Don Weiss

Chapter Seventeen

The End, Again

Kayoko walked with us for the final four days of our pilgrimage. She and her mother met us at Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu City. Phyllis had never seen the garden before, so she and Kayoko walked around while Shimada-san and I sat under a tree.

We didn't talk much. I had gotten out of the talking mood. Even when I met the priests at the temples or other henro, I was no longer talking a lot. I'd been walking for almost four months, first alone, now with Phyllis, and the end was just four days away. Images of the pilgrimage rose in my mind like clouds in the sky over a mountain. The temples, the statues, the flowers, the incense, the meals, the trails . . . Walking along the busy city streets that morning, I felt I was both there and every other place on the pilgrimage. My feeling for time was fading.

This was the start of Golden Week, the busiest holiday time of the year in Japan. We'd had a problem finding an inn for our next-to-the-last night, so we were planning a long day, then a very short day, then a very long day before the final day of 26 kilometers from Temple Ten to Temple One.

At Phyllis' suggestion, Kayoko and her mother took the bus from Ritsurin Garden to Yashimaji, Temple 84. As she and I walked through downtown Takamatsu, it began to rain. We stopped at a store and bought some donuts and milk (a chocolate donut for me, of course), then put on our rain jackets and rain pants. Back out on the street, we caused a few smiles. The henro route passes through the center of Takamatsu. Foreign henro in straw hats and yellow rain suits didn't seem to fit in with banks, department stores and insurance company offices.

As we were walking up the steps to Yashimaji, I stopped and pointed with my walking stick at the sign by the inedible pear trees. I still didn't feel like talking. I wasn't depressed or angry, but something about the day had made any desire to chat melt in the rain.

I used to dislike walking in the rain, with wet hands, face, and feet. The first time I ever really enjoyed a day's walk in the rain was the first day I walked on Shikoku, ten years before, on a short vacation. That day, I felt like I was walking into a wood block print by Hiroshige. On this Walk Into Spring, the days I felt the spirit of the pilgrimage most strongly were days of rain. The water on my face and hands and filling my shoes somehow connected me with the outside world. It broke through the barrier separating Self and Other and let my senses expand to fill the world around me, let the world enter and fill me.

Kayoko met us at the top of the steps and together we toured the temple. It was mobbed with tourists and I had to wait nearly ten minutes to have my book stamped. The priest looked at me, surprised, when he saw I was a foreigner. Then he opened my stamp book, saw that this was my second time and called over another priest to show it to him. He said, "It's tough in the rain, isn't it?"I said, "It's okay,"smiled and left.

The following day was the shortest of the trip, just seven kilometers to a small inn across the street from Temple 87. I spent much of the afternoon photographing in the temple courtyard, with time out to eat and rest. The inn was full for Golden Week, so the four of us had to share one room. Our futons nearly covered the floor. I wondered what this must be like for Kayoko. Most 13-year-old Japanese girls have never spoken with a foreigner except perhaps a couple of times in English class. She didn't know a lot of English, but what she knew, she could use better than most Japanese high school kids after six years of English classes. They were lost after, "I'm fine. How are you?"

Phyllis never learned much Japanese, but she usually communicated fairly well. She knew a few hundred common words and phrases and felt comfortable using gestures and simple English to fill in the gaps. At the inns, when people saw her copying the Heart Sutra in Japanese, they always thought her Japanese must be excellent. With the brush, her skill was greater than most Japanese, all of whom study calligraphy throughout their school years. We made an odd pair. I could speak Japanese fairly well, she could write it very well, but neither of us could read much at all.

Our next to the last day we walked from Temple 87 up the mountain to Temple 88 and then down to Temple Ten. It was 31 kilometers, crossing over an 800 meter mountain. We started early, rested and strong from our short day. Shimada-san's husband came to the inn by car to drive her up to Temple 88.

The first five kilometers, the route took an old road, parallel to a major road, just twenty meters away. But it was so early there were few cars out. It was May 4th, the heart of spring. The rice paddies were all planted and the first puddling was over. The little rice plants stuck up out of the black, muddy earth in wavery rows. Footprints between the rows showed where the farmers had walked behind their little rice-planting walking tractors, filling in by hand any gaps. Though almost all rice in Japan is now planted by machine, every square meter of earth still feels the weight of the farmer's foot. Our friends had told us how they were taught to respect farmers. At Kappa Dojo, we had ended our dinner and breakfast by rinsing our bowls and swallowing every single grain of rice. This was all part of the same idea of respect for food, the earth, the act of growing food, and life itself.

The day warmed steadily. When we started at seven it was about 20 degrees. When we climbed the steepest parts of the trail, below the summit of Peaceful Woman Mountain, it was 25 and humid. I went first with Kayoko at my heels. Phyllis followed slowly behind. I tried to match my pace so we could stay together, but she seemed to prefer staying well back. After a while, I walked faster and stopped when I felt I was getting too far ahead.

Shimada-san and her husband were waiting for us at Okuboji. She took pictures as we arrived, as we washed our hands in the fountain, and while we were praying at the Hon-do. After praying at the Daishi-do, we went to the office to get our stamps.

Like every other temple these last few days, Okuboji was crowded. The little office was stuffed with tourists and pilgrims buying souvenirs and good luck charms or having their books and scrolls stamped. Drivers from two bus henro groups stood ahead of us in line with piles of books and scrolls to be stamped, so we had a long wait. Finally we reached the head of the line. Phyllis went first. The priest quickly unrolled her scroll to the proper place, did the stamp, and handed it to her so she could take it to a table across the room and dry it with the hair dryer that all the temples keep for that purpose.

When it was my turn, I handed my book to the priest and watched to see his reaction. He opened it to the proper page and paused, seeing the previous stamp. Then he leafed through slowly, noting that every page was stamped at least twice except for the single completion stamp from Temple One. He closed the book, held his right hand over it, made a mudra and said a very brief prayer. Then he opened it again and did the stamp. When he handed it back to me, he said, "Congratulations, o-henro-san."

Phyllis and I went with Kayoko and her parents to the cafe where we always go, near the new temple gate. We ate the special Soup of Completion plus a big lunch, then started down the path.

By the time we reached Sakamoto Ya, below Temple Ten, Kayoko was limping and Phyllis and I were both pretty tired. Shimada-san wasn't there, so Kayoko telephoned and in a little while her father came and picked her up. They lived just a few kilometers away. Phyllis and I went to bed before nine.

Kayoko arrived at 7:30 the next morning. We walked up to Kirihataji, then we returned to the inn, picked up our packs, and headed back down the road towards Temple One.

When I had walked this final stretch of the pilgrimage two months earlier, I was alone. At each temple, I stopped to talk briefly with the priest or his wife while I collected duplicate stamps. This time I didn't bother with the stamps and I was almost completely silent. When I met a friend at Temple Six, I mostly smiled. At each temple I recited the Heart Sutra, that was all. I hardly even took any photos.

The backroads and paths from Temple Ten to Temple One had taken on new meaning for me. I knew them so well. I'd walked this stretch six times and also traveled it by bike, scooter, car and bus. I'd taught school near here, partied, visited friends, broken my knee. Now, walking it again, I thought about all those other times, good and bad. When I saw rice in the fields, I remembered the day I went out with the fifth graders at Kakihara elementary school to help them cut by hand the rice they had planted by hand and would later cook and eat themselves. I also thought about when I had photographed farmers planting their rice, and then harvesting it in the fall.

When we walked through the village of Rakan, I remembered their festival when I had helped the Young Men's Club pull a cart that carried children in antique costumes. All day we toured the village, drinking sake. Every so often we raced the cart along the road, or stopped and rocked it violently while the children shrieked happily.

At Temple Five, I remembered staying nearby with our good friends the Kurotas and so many visits to the temple, they all flowed together. The first time, ten years before, when it was all a mystery. Then, when we arrived to live in Japan in September of 1990, we would go out at 6:00 a.m., visit the temple and get some exercise before the heat got too bad. I remembered photographing the plum blossoms in February, the cherries in April, and the maple leaves in November.

I remembered other friends, like Wada-san. After we had been in Japan for two years, we went to the visa office. They didn't want to extend our visas. The man in the office said, "They came to write a book. They have been here for two years. Where is their book?"Patiently, politely, she explained. For two years we had been studying, learning, and photographing the temples. Now we would walk the pilgrimage, then write a book. Finally we got our visas so we could stay and fulfil our plan.

Approaching Temple Three, we walked through Itano Town. I remembered the first time I ate okonomiyaki. That little cafe was filled with students, as okonomiyaki shops often are. It was the day before the biggest typhoon in 30 years, and I remembered chasing a child's slide as it was blown down the street by the wind.

Walking with Kayoko, I remembered teaching her, first at the elementary school, then at the junior high school. I remembered other students, and the teachers I worked with. I was in class, and at my desk in the teacher's room, and yet on the road, walking from temple to temple, all at the same time.

And Phyllis. As we walked, sometimes together, sometimes apart, memories washed through me, of the beginning, the good times, the bad, and now the end. The end of my first pilgrimage should have prompted feelings of completion. It didn't. I knew I was soon to go again. This time, which was more of a real end of many things, I still didn't feel that anything was truly ending. Rather, I felt continuation. I had walked this way before, I was walking again. I had been married to this woman for more than 20 years. Now that was ending and the future was unknown. But when a truck had been about to drive into me nineteen months earlier, the future had been unknown too. I was somehow beyond worrying about the future. It didn't exist for me. When I had done zazen at Kappa Dojo, I just sat. Now, walking the last kilometers of the pilgrimage, I just walked. Like Hakuin, now I could say, "Ah, so desu ka?"

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 February 2, 1999.