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Wayne Emde
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Wayne Emde, Class of '62, trekked from one end of Japan to the other with his son,
Jason, last April and May. The pilgrimage was 1200 kilometers (ca. 800 miles), and
took 48 days to complete. Wayne's article was published by "Real Travel" magazine,
and is a delight to read.
Wayne is now planning a "shorter" trek, 800 kilometers (about 35 days' duration),
on the Camino de Santiago in Spain this April....
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Shikoku - Nothing to be Achieved
‘Our first Daishi,’ said Jason.
The historical Kobo Daishi was a super duper Buddhist success who brought Shingon Buddhism to Japan from China
in 806. Though Shingon Buddhism has been in decline in Japan for centuries, Kobo Daishi (‘Great Teacher’) is still
revered in Japan, and especially on the island of Shikoku, having been transformed into a kind of demi-god, steeped in
mystery and legend and credited with all manner of miracles and cosmic achievements. He was born in Shikoku in 774,
underwent ascetic training in the mountains and caves, and the pilgrimage to the 88 temples of Shikoku is based,
loosely and strangely, around his life and myth. By all accounts a tremendous scholar, thinker, traveler, writer, poet,
calligrapher, and engineer, he passed into a higher plane of existence in 835 in the Buddhist centre he’d founded on
top of Mt. Koya. The monks there still bring him food twice a day.
developed over a thousand years and loops around Shikoku, the smallest, least populated, least developed, and least
popular of the main Japanese islands. More than 100,000 pilgrims, mostly Japanese who travel the route on bus tours,
complete part or all of the route each year. Fewer than 1,000 walk.
Pilgrims - henro - can start at any of the 88 temples they please, as long as they finish
there as well; they can take as long as they want; they can also believe whatever they like.
We didn’t necessarily believe in anything and we had a long, unleisurely stroll ahead of us: 1200
kilometres, and though we were both in fairly good shape - having walked hundreds of kilometres
in preparation - there were some comprehensively challenging scenes ahead: mountains, rain,
snakes, blisters, my age, my son’s impatience with Japan after 13 years.
We were both intrigued, however, and maybe secretly encouraged, by the idea that the Daishi travels with
pilgrims, guiding and protecting them, appearing, in any form, when needed. Maybe the Daishi could help us with some
or all of the journey ahead; maybe we could learn to help each other, and ourselves, with our grief at loved ones gone
and going; maybe we could find something - anything - out. At any rate we wanted to see what could happen by
random chance, on foot, in Japan; we wanted to spend time together, as adults, moving through the world; we
wanted to spin ourselves like tops down the path and see what we crashed into on the way.
Though we refined our temple performances as we went - another singular element of the Shikoku
pilgrimage is the freedom to worship as much or as little as you like - we understood the basic routine and decided
early on to try to do it ‘properly.’ Bow at the main gate; light a candle and three sticks of incense (representing the
three mysteries: acts, words, and thoughts) in front of the main hall; deposit an osame-fuda (a slip of paper with your
name, address, age and prayer written on it) in the metal box provided; throw a coin into the offering box; ring the
bell; bow; recite the Heart Sutra; recite Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo (‘Homage to the great teacher who brings light to all
the people’) three times; bow; repeat at the Daishi Hall; get our books stamped and signed at the temple office; bow
at the main gate.
‘Only 88 to go, Jase,’ I said.
'Yeah. Easy-peasy.’
We repeated our performance at the first five temples that day and checked into a
cheap minshuku (lodging house) where the proprietor washed our staffs for us. For four thousand
yen each - about $40 Canadian - we got a large tatami mat room, shared bath, dinner and breakfast.
After a fall that gouged open my hand when I stumbled and hit the pavement between temples two
and three, pushed down by my too-heavy pack, I eagerly tossed out shirts, pants, even my
English-Japanese dictionary. We’d walked twenty kilometres and were sound asleep, exhausted,
by 8:30.
In the morning it was drizzling. We put on our rain gear and walked.
The first ten temples are located in a flat river valley that stretches far into the interior, but the path beyond
Temple 11 was extravagantly intimidating: long, steep, hot, and arrowing directly into the mountains bulked solid and
indifferent ahead.
‘Dig this path,’ Jason said.
‘This path just might dig my grave.’
Past Jizo statues draped with Mickey Mouse bibs, and up, deeper, hotter, into the upper air. The path wound
through cedar groves, bamboo groves, groves of trees we didn’t know the names of. Hanging from branches along the
path were signs that said ‘Two together’ or ‘Keep going’ or ‘Kobo Daishi is with you.’ I could hear the bell on Jason’s
staff ringing some of the time and some of the time it was just my breath and the path and sweat in my eyes and
flaring pains along my feet and more to go, more to go. From time to time we’d meet henro coming the other way,
performing the pilgrimage counter-clockwise. That choice of direction is said to be three times harder because all the
direction signs are on the other side of poles, fences, bridge abutments.
‘This is the hardest part of all, a lot of pilgrims give up here. Keep going!’
It was hard; it was also beautiful. The light filtered down through tall, beautiful cedars, sifting down onto rocks
covered with moss that was almost radioactively green. We walked and walked, talking family history, poetry, towns
and cities we knew and loved, Paris, San Francisco, Venice, London, Seattle, Vancouver, New York.
In the night the wind blew over one of the staffs; Jason went out and stood it up again. The staff is the embodiment
of the Daishi, after all; the Daishi who’d defeated a fire-breathing snake on this very mountain. In the morning we
decamped and went up to Temple #12.
We quickly refined our daily routine. In the morning we’d stretch, break camp, or check out of wherever we’d
stayed, and walk, together, talking about Bob Dylan, Canada, personality mysteries, love and death, home renovations,
sex. In the afternoon, usually after a lunch gobbled in the parking lot of a convenience store, we’d generally walk
separately, at our own chosen speeds, with our own private thoughts and memories.
The landscape was different every day. Sometimes it was endless ocean, sometimes soft mountain paths;
sometimes trashed-out vistas of dilapidated resorts, abandoned love hotels, and decrepit karaoke houses, sometimes
deep, shadowed river valleys; sometimes big urban concrete circuses; sometimes silent
cedar forests. We walked under blossoming cherry trees and past countless rice paddies.
The clear calls of hidden cuckoo birds followed us around the island, large, brown hawks
soared on the southern coast currents and pure white cranes glided over rice paddies.
We’d sleep at shrines, on white sand beaches, in business hotels, in temple lodgings, in
parks and once in a garage offered up as settai, an offering to the henro. It became a very
simple existence, and we were both seduced by the clarity of our days. Wake up and walk. Perform temple rituals.
Easy-peasy.
And every day we were met with bewildering, unutterable, constant kindness. Hands whooshed out of car
windows holding cold drinks. A man took an hour out of his afternoon to find us a safe spot to camp and then came
back two hours later with a bag of food, saying ‘When we give to pilgrims we give to the Daishi.’ A woman brought us
morning coffee in delicate porcelain cups when she saw us sitting outside her shop. A grandmother gave us a thousand
yen, saying ‘Please buy some juice, it’s hot.’ We were frequently loaded with bags of freshly picked oranges.
We’d seldom been treated so well by anybody, let alone perfect strangers, and it took us awhile to get used to it,
for our North American suspicions to melt and dissolve in the open and gracious face of it. The pilgrimage is a
fundamental element of Shikoku culture and not a day went by without somebody blessing us with their generosity,
their kindness, their encouragement. And even on the nights where there were no hotels and we were tired and sore
and it was getting dark we always managed to find someplace to stay or camp. It really did seem, at times, that the
Daishi was guiding us. We went to sleep every night amazed.
The walking wasn’t always easy, though; in fact it was very rarely easy. We were confronted, every day, with
rhythms of pain that we’d never experienced before. Our shoulders ached under our pack straps before noon; our feet
burned up and blistered on endless blacktop highways; the thunder of traffic through long tunnels with narrow
walkways frightened us; lightning bolts of agony raced up and down our legs by mid-afternoon. We averaged
somewhere between 25 and 30 kilometres a day but I don’t think we ever got used to it. We toughened up, slowly,
and I lost fourteen kilos, but we were always yawning and beat by early evening.
In our tents at night we’d listen to the wind or surf or mysterious crashing sounds in the bush nearby and never
believe that our aching bodies would be ready for more of the same next day. Toilets were not always available nearby;
we often felt impossibly out of contact with our friends and loved ones; one morning Jason woke up with his tent full
of ants. Snakes reared up on the path ahead of us from time to time; showers and clean socks became the focus of
fascinated longing; I endured strange swellings that neither we nor a doctor could explain. I got tired of piercing and
slicing blisters in my tent by flashlight.
Not everyone we met welcomed us with tender and open arms. After visiting temple #23 in Hiwasa and tramping all
day down a hot and boring highway we were turned away from the hotels in town.
‘We’re full. And we’re sorry.’
‘Is there anyplace else in town?’
‘There’s an inn down the road.’
When we got to the inn the proprietor came outside and shook his head.
‘We’re full!’
‘Is there anyplace else in town?’
‘Go down, turn left, turn left again, you’ll find the highway, there might be rooms in the next town, maybe.’
‘Are you sure you haven’t got any rooms?’
He writhed in embarrassment.
‘Well, ah, we have some rooms, yes, but they’re Japanese style, you wouldn’t like them.’
‘No, anything is fine.’
‘We only have Japanese-style toilets!’
‘Can’t be helped.’
‘No beds! Only futon!’
‘Fine with us.’
‘No…spoons! Only chopsticks!’
‘Not a problem, really.’
A Japanese woman appeared in the doorway. She looked at us with amusement. We assumed she was a daughter.
‘Seems like he doesn’t want you to stay here’ she said, in perfectly unaccented English.
‘I’ll say.’
She looked at the proprietor.
‘What’s the problem? They’ll be fine!’
The proprietor gave in with good grace and a deep bow.
‘Please. Welcome.’
Our newest Daishi was from Tokyo but Kaoru had been a dancer in New York for twenty years. She was walking the
pilgrimage as part of her rehabilitation after an injury.
‘Another Daishi, now appearing as a dancer from New York,’ said Jason, appreciatively.
Strangely, we didn’t get into a single argument for the seven weeks it took to walk the entire 88 temple circuit.
Jason said at one point near the end that he hadn’t been angry with anyone or anything for weeks. We’ve always
loved and respected each other but I think it was the ritual simplicity of our days, the falling-away of ordinary cares,
the plodding advance of our pilgrimage, the freedom from work and bosses and screaming telephones and bills, the
fresh air and the long exhausted sleeps that did it. Or maybe it was something else, just simple moments adding up?
‘This is going to be over before we know it,’ I said one day.
‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘But I don’t want it to end.’
It was an addictive lifestyle, despite the blisters and the uncertainty and the exhaustion.
When we found a place to sleep - on a beach, at a shrine, at a charmingly beat-up hotel - it was a
stupendous and completely satisfying victory, and we went to bed glad and satisfied. When a
stranger ran up to give us hard-boiled eggs or cold drinks or bananas or money or encouragement,
our hearts opened in a sweet and amazed and humbled way. When we stood, together, at a railing
over the ocean, done for the day, and watched the sun go down in a fury of purple over the endlessly
heaving ocean, something would pass between us that didn’t require comment. We walked and
walked, past signs that said Nice to meat, you! and Ruxyrious Restrant Room and Futuristic scene
comes to your hand…Reach your both hands and fortunes and futures in the AN-Z spatiotemporal
world will be your own.
One morning Jason read Whitman’s Song Of The Open Road to me:
Aloof and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose [....]
‘That’s neat,’ I said.
‘I warned you about saying neat.’
‘Beautiful?’
‘You’re only right.’
By the time we got to temple #88 - after the hardest, hottest mountain climb yet on a path that at one point was
only a tumbled rock slope - it was very difficult to know how to feel. Jason was waiting for me at the bottom of the
steps.
‘We did it, dad.’
‘Yeah. That we did.’
‘Now what? Back to the world?’
‘Did we ever leave it?'
The next morning I walked around the last temple again, trying to freeze it in my memory, the monk sweeping the
steps, the high mountain rising up behind the main hall, the statues, the vast collection of staffs abandoned by
hundreds of pilgrims who had completed the journey. Later, in one of the shops, I measured my staff against a new
one - mine was almost ten centimeters shorter. I kept it.
In order to complete the pilgrimage you’re supposed to return to the temple where you began and, though we
intended to, the world got in the way. Before we knew it we were back in Gifu, where Jason lives with his wife,
Maho. Walking down the street in our pilgrim gear, together, for the last time, we talked about not closing the circle.
‘I don’t think I mind,’ Jason said.
‘How’s that?’
‘Because it means we have to go back.’
I would like nothing more.
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Up and down two mountains and up a third. It was almost as dark as the inside of a cow.
Jason was waiting for me on the path.
‘I think we should stop and sleep. And I think I found the place for us.’
It was probably the only flat area on the whole mountainside: a tiny shrine at the side of
the path. We put up out tents and crawled in and lay there, listening to rivers of wind moving
in the millions of trees around, listening to the soft call of an owl.
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In the shop our first Daishi’d led us to we bought all the pilgrimage gear we needed in addition to
the tents, sleeping bags, cameras, notebooks and maps we’d brought with us: conical sedge hats,
white pilgrim hakui shirts, candles, incense, name slips, walking staffs, and the books we’d get
stamped and signed at each temple. Clanking and wobbling under our packs we entered the precincts
of temple 1, Ryoenji.
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The pilgrimage based on his life is a uniquely Japanese mix of the absurd and the amazing,
the troubling and the stunning, the laughable and the humbling. Though the historical Kobo
Daishi’s connections to most of the temples and sites now soaked in his mystical legend are
mostly tenuous, historically dodgy, or out-and-out fabrications, he looms like a colossus over
the entire island. Known as Kukai during his lifetime - Kobo Daishi was a posthumous title
awarded by the emperor - he has become the focus of a singular religious pilgrimage that has
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In the parking lot in front of Bando Station stood a wizened, white-haired, twinkly-eyed gnome
in spotless head-to-toe pilgrim gear, so perfectly made to order he was almost ludicrous to behold.
He lifted his right index finger. Temple One? We nodded, he spun on his heels and tramped off, his
staff bell ringing in the quiet late March air. He led us down a maze of empty alleys, never speaking,
only pointing, rather extravagantly, before each corner, showing the turn, showing the way. He
deposited us in a shop next to the first of the 88 temples and, after a long, low bow, vanished.
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