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The Path of Kobo Daishi: Shikoku's Henro Pilgrimage
| Article
# : |
17135 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1998 |
538 Words |
| Author
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Dave Bartruff; Text By Norman Sklarewitz
Dave Bartruff, a freelance photographer based in San Anselmo,
California, and Norman Sklarewitz, a freelance journalist
based in Southern California, have made numerous trips to
Japan. |
Shikoku is separated from Honshu by what westerners call the Inland Sea, a relatively narrow body of water dotted with thousands of picturesque, pine-covered islets, likely the cones of extinct volcanoes. In Japanese, this body of water is called Seto-naikai, or the Sea Within Channels. It extends for some three hundred miles between the islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku.
For centuries, getting to Shikoku involved a boat trip, contributing to its relative remoteness. But in 1988 the massive Seto-Ohashi Bridge was completed, giving Shikoku a land link to the rest of Japan. Built at the staggering cost of $8.7 billion, it was then Japan's biggest construction project of the century.
Even so, Japanese travelers are inclined to take their vacations at far more chic destinations--going to ski resorts, sightseeing in Hawaii, or visiting Europe. The result is that Shikoku still remains a bit isolated. Residents are just as happy.
"Shikoku is the real 'old Japan' that perhaps doesn't exist anywhere else," Shuzen Takeuchi, an official of the Kagawa Prefectural government, told me one evening as we munched yakitori in a noisy restaurant. "Much of Japan has become industrialized and not retained its natural beauty and traditional ways. But Shikoku has."
This is demonstrated in dozens of ways: in the island's distinctive dialect, the warm personality of its people, the dramatic look of its forested mountains, and a dedication to traditional arts and crafts.
But more than anything else, Shikoku is distinguished from every other part of Japan as being the home of the Henro pilgrimage.
Despite the island's rugged terrain, this one practice ties all of Shikoku together, both emotionally and physically. One author described the pilgrimage as "a nonsectarian walking Zen."
It involves visiting and paying appropriate respect at eighty-eight Buddhist temples scattered from one end of Shikoku to the other. Each of these temples was founded by an eighth-century Buddhist scholar-priest named Kobo Daishi (later known simply as Kukai) or by followers of the Shingon sect of Buddhism he founded.
As a youth searching for truth, Kukai walked a trail that later became the pilgrimage route. Today,
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