Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan

  With a mixture of reluctance and relief, I turned my back on Uwajima, a city where every extreme is possible and no one gets out unbruised. I chose a spot in front of a gas station and stuck out my thumb.

  And that’s when I met the Japanese mafia.

  9

  I DON’T KNOW for certain he was a member of the Japanese mafia. I was making an educated guess based on several important clues: he had on sunglasses, he was wearing a shimmering lime-green silk suit, his hair was in a tight “punch-perm,” and—most telling of all—he was driving an American car. “Watch out for Cadillacs,” my fretful Japanese friends had warned me as I set out. “And beware the black Benz!”

  Japanese gangsters do tend to favour such vehicles, but I suspect that the connection between foreign cars and danger reveals more about the Japanese psyche than it does reality. Good people drive small white Japanese cars. Bad people drive expensive, black, non-Japanese luxury cars. And the Americans wonder why they can’t seem to sell any Chryslers in Kobe.

  I didn’t care. After spending much of my time twisted like an amateur contortionist in cars the size of tin cans, it was nice to ride in a big, cigar-smokin’ Yankee automobile. Whether my host was a gangster or not was still undetermined. Yakuza thugs have tattoos up their backs and they are often missing the joints of their little fingers, chopped off as an act of repentance each time they do something wrong. (You can spot the really talentless thugs. They’re the ones with the nickname “Stumpy.”)

  I wouldn’t be able to see a tattoo on the man unless he took his clothes off, and I couldn’t think of a smooth way of asking him to do this. Instead, I surreptitiously counted his fingers and they were all there, which I found reassuring. If he was a gangster, at least he was an astute gangster. Polite too. The whole time we rode together he never once tried to extort money from me. He even bought me a can of apple juice.

  In a cunning ploy to uncover his yakuza identity, I casually asked what he did for a living. He answered, cryptically, “I’m a city engineer for Ehime prefecture, Uwajima Department of Resources. Here, take my business card. It has my address and phone number right there.” It was all very mysterious.

  I was standing beside the highway, drinking said apple juice and having survived my brush with organized crime, when a figure approached on the other side. It was a man in a white robe with a bowl-shaped straw hat that covered his face. He was carrying a begging bowl, a pouch, and a pilgrim’s staff. I watched him walk toward me, trucks rattling by in clouds of highway dust and noise; it was as though he were moving in slow motion against the backdrop of a speed-addicted world.

  I wanted to run over and give him a settai, a donation, and receive his blessing, but I wasn’t sure how to approach him—or even how to cross the multi-lane highway that separated us. (It is the fate of many of us to always find ourselves on the wrong side of the highway from enlightenment.)

  The man was a henro, a pilgrim, and he was following a path more than a thousand years old. In 804, a Shikoku priest named Kōkai made a perilous journey to China, seeking wisdom. He returned two years later, and he brought with him a liberating idea, one that would form the foundation for a new school of Buddhism, the esoteric sect of Shingon. The idea was as revolutionary as it was simple: Anyone might attain Buddhahood in this life. One needed only to rely on the love of the Buddha to attain salvation. It was a hard road, but not impossible.

  In saying this, Kōkai had thrown the doors of enlightenment open. He was resolutely democratic. He founded the first public college in Japan where everyone was welcome, whether they be rich or poor, man or woman.*

  The esoteric movement in Buddhism failed in China, but it took strong root in Japan. With Kōkai, Buddhism became more encompassing, more accessible, more immediate, less concerned with creeds and doctrine. Less abstract, more tangible. In a word, more Japanese.

  Kūkai died in 835. After he passed away, he was given the name Kōbō Daishi, signifying a Great Teacher. He remains the most important figure in the history of Japanese Buddhism and the nearest Japan has ever come to producing a Bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint who stops at the very threshold of enlightenment and, instead of becoming a Buddha, chooses instead to stay on this earth to help others make the same journey.

  As Kūkai, he was a charismatic, hard-working, progressive priest. As Kōbō Daishi, he became something more, a divine figure, a source of miracles and wonders. Legends about the Daishi grew: he gathered disciples, he cured the sick, he healed the lame, and he gave sight to the blind. (Any of this sound familiar?) And when the Daishi struck his staff against the ground, fresh mountain water gushed out. Indeed, you can’t turn around anywhere in Shikoku, or even Japan for that matter, without stumbling upon a spring created by Kōbō Daishi. He is also credited—apocryphally—with inventing the kana, Japan’s phonetic writing system. The kana, simplistic yet beautiful, freed Japan from some of the restraints inherent in the ill-suited, yet doggedly preserved, system of Chinese kanji characters. In this too he helped separate Japan from China and set it on a markedly different course.

  After Kōbō Daishi’s death, a pilgrimage route slowly took shape on Shikoku. It has been followed by the faithful ever since. The Eighty-Eight Temple Route, as it is known, more or less follows the coast clockwise, in a circle that begins and ends north of Tokushima City. Because it is a circle, one needn’t begin at the first temple. You can join at any point, and you can even complete the journey counterclockwise. It covers twelve hundred kilometres (seven hundred forty miles) and takes two or three months on foot, though in older times it took much longer and the route was harsher. The anonymous graves of pilgrims who died on the journey litter the way.

  The Daishi only founded a handful of the Eighty-Eight Temples, and for the most part he was following even older paths. Ancient pilgrim routes were absorbed into the larger circuit, which remained a somewhat disjointed collection of holy sites until they were united in the journey of a man named Emon Saburō, the first true pilgrim. Emon was the Saul/Paul to Kōbō Daishi’s Christ.

  Emon Saburō was a greedy man, cold-hearted and sly, who had grown rich and fat on the work of others. Having reached his middle years, he surveyed his domain and was satisfied. Life—in its most ephemeral, illusionary aspect—had been good to him. Then a beggar appeared, asking for alms. Emon chased him away. The next day the beggar returned and again Emon chased him away. When the beggar returned the next day, Emon struck him, and when the beggar returned yet again Emon relented. “Give me your begging bowl,” he said, “and I will fill it for you.” He handed it back full of his own excrement. “There!” he laughed. “That will get rid of you.” But again the beggar returned. Furious, Emon smashed the bowl to the ground and it shattered into eight equal parts. The monk came no more.

  Having rejected the spiritual, Emon Saburō returned to the bloated satisfaction of his life. But it was a life built on illusions, and one by one the certainties passed. His sons died, his fields withered, sickness came, and all the money in the world could not stave off old age or death. It was then that Emon remembered the beggar monk whom he had driven away.

  Emon set out to locate the monk. He followed the monk’s route from temple to temple, and at every turn Emon left a paper with his name written on it (something which persists to this day in a sort of spiritual graffiti; temples across Japan are plastered with visitors’ names). Many times Emon arrived only moments after the monk had departed. Sometimes only footsteps after him, then only heartbeats, yet never did he overtake the beggar monk, and eventually he arrived back where he had started. He had closed the circle and still, nothing. By now he knew with certainty who it was he was following; he was chasing the spirit of Kōbō Daishi himself. Again, Emon set out, and again he followed the path around Shikoku, and again he returned without reaching the Daishi. Emon was now living on alms, for he had given up his possessions and ambitions. He pursued the Daishi for more than four years, coming closer and closer yet never succeeding. He even circled it
the other way in the hopes of intercepting the Daishi coming back, but to no avail. After twenty-one circuits, his health was failing. He stopped, sank down on the rocky path, and, weeping, he conceded defeat. And it was only then that Kōbō Daishi appeared …

  At that moment, the story ends. Later versions, however, added a rather dubious postscript. Daishi said, “Congratulations! You found me. Anything I can do for you? Anything at all, you name it.” To which the dying Emon Saburō replied, “Yes, I would like to be reborn as an even richer man, a lord no less, so that I can better help the common folk.” (Sure, the ol’ “let-me-be-reborn-as-a-millionaire-and-I-promise-to-help-the-poor-this-time-honest-I-will-honest” routine.) Kōbō Daishi granted him his last wish and wrote a message on a small stone and pressed it into the palm of Emon Saburō’s hand just as Emon died. Emon was buried with it still in his palm. His pilgrim’s staff, planted as a headstone, came to life and grew into a great cedar. Nine months later, the wife of Lord Iyo gave birth to a baby who was born with his hand clenched into a fist. A priest was called in from a nearby temple, and as he chanted the sutras, the infant’s hand opened. Inside was a small stone. On it was inscribed: Emon Saburō, born again into this world.

  The stone—and the legend—is carefully preserved at Ishite-ji Temple in Matsuyama City. Temple Number Fifty-One on the circuit. In Japanese, the name Ishite-ji means “Stone-in-Hand Temple.”

  It reminds me of something I once read about the origins of the “thumbs up” gesture. When a child is born, its hands are curled into tiny fists. Slowly, one by one, the fingers relax, releasing the thumb. It is the first action of self-declaration, of saying, I am here. The extended thumb became a symbol of birth, of life, of freedom. It was this symbol that was used by Roman emperors to pass judgment. And it is this symbol that signifies the hitchhiker, the traveller. The first-person pronoun in motion.

  American author Oliver Statler made the Eighty-Eight Temple Pilgrimage several times, and in Japanese Pilgrimage he writes:

  There are pilgrimages all over the world. In most, one travels to a place or places hallowed by events that took place there. One goes; one reaches one’s goal; one returns … But this Shikoku pilgrimage is the only pilgrimage I know of that is essentially a circle. It has no beginning and no end. Like the quest for enlightenment, it is unending.

  What is important is not the destination but the act of getting there, not the goal but the going

  When I read this I felt a rush of emotion: There it was, the Traveller’s Maxim, the Creed of the Hitchhiker. Then, in an equal rush of emotion, I realized that far from being a circle, I was charting a linear, prosaic course. A razor-straight line. It dogged me the entire way, the sense that the path I was following was dishonest, or—at the very least—flawed. It wasn’t until much later, alone in a blizzard on an island at the end of Japan, that I realized what I had been missing. It is so simple it is almost banal: There are no straight journeys in life, because all journeys are essentially circles. You may set out to leave your Self behind, but in the end you always come back to it, like someone lost in a forest, like a dog tethered to a leash.

  When you are pinned to the centre, every journey is a circle and all circles are self-referential, turning again and again, like Emon Saburō seeking an answer.

  * Before Kōkai it was assumed that women had an extra rung to climb and could not achieve Nirvana until (a) they were reborn as men, and (b) became priests. This rule was made by men who were priests.

  10

  MY SECOND RIDE of the day took me to Matsuyama City. The vehicle was the same type of boxed truck I had ridden in Kyushu, but instead of pachinko machines it contained the clippings and debris of flowers and an aroma so strong it gagged me. It was like being trapped in an elevator with Aunt Matilda of the excess perfume.

  The driver was a stocky man with flyaway silver hair, and, in one of life’s quirky little coincidences, his name was Saburō. “But my family name is Nakamura,” he said. “Nakamura Saburō. No relation to Emon.”

  He was on his way into Matsuyama City to meet his daughter Etsuko, who was flying in from Kobe. I was a big man, he said, slapping me on the chest. Had I climbed Mount Fuji yet? Yes, I said, I had. And then, in my typical suave and bon mot way, I repeated the witticism about how it is a wise man who climbs Mount Fuji once, and a fool who climbs it twice.

  There was a long pause. And then slowly, deliberately, Saburō said, “I have climbed Mount Fuji three times.”

  Oh. “Well,” I said, “I guess that would make you a … a wise fool.”

  He roared with laughter. “Yes!” he said, not in agreement but in a sort of Eureka! way, as though that were the formula he had been looking for to sum himself up. “A wise fool,” he said, and smiled to himself with that special affection eccentric people often have for their own foibles. “I have climbed every mountain in Japan,” he boomed. “Every mountain!”

  “Every mountain?” I said, offering him a chance at abridging this bald statement.

  “Every mountain,” he said, and proceeded to list them. It was a long list.

  “Mountains put us closer to the gods,” he said. “Japan is a land of thirty thousand million gods! Atop the mountains, the sky and the land meet. The gods are there. I have met the gods.”

  He actually said that: I have met the gods. He was either flamboyant, passionate, or mad. “Really?” I said. “The gods? What did they, ah, look like? Were they like ghosts or could you touch them?”

  He gave me a look of sorrow and exasperation, and said—in one extended sigh—“The gods are the mountains. They aren’t real in the way you say. The gods exist in the act of climbing a mountain, a sacred mountain.” He shook his head and gave up. We drove awhile, surrounded by the scent of flowers no longer present (much like the gods themselves, I imagine). He shifted in his seat, and then, again with a sigh, decided to take another stab at it. “I climb mountains, right?” Yes. “And mountains are closer to the gods, right?” Yes. “In fact mountains are gods.” He waited until I nodded before he continued. “So when I—we, anyone—even you—climb a mountain, climb it with sincerity, the gods—” He looked across at me. I smiled back in what I hoped was an attentive way. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but changed his mind. The theology lesson was over. I never did figure out if he had actually met the gods—like a close encounter of the divine kind—or if he was just speaking figuratively. He didn’t seem like the type of man to resort to metaphors, he was too rooted and no-nonsense.

  “My eldest girl, Etsuko, she practically grew up on the mountains. We first carried her up a mountainside when she was just five months old. She has since travelled through Switzerland, France, and China, climbing mountains along the way. She climbed the Great Wall as well. It was exhausting because it’s man-made. Stairs are too systematic. Nature,” he said pointedly, “doesn’t work in steps.”

  We passed a lone pilgrim—it may have been the one I saw earlier—and Saburō gave his approval. “That man is a real traveller. He has the spirit of Kōbō Daishi. Today’s pilgrims, bah! They travel by bus, they stay in hotels. I call them ‘instant henro.’ Just add water, like Cup Noodle.”

  “Have you done the Eighty-Eight Temple Pilgrimage?” I asked. It seemed like a fair question: the pilgrimage route is mountainous, with many of the temples located on peaks high above ravines.

  “The pilgrimage?” he said. “The pilgrimage?” but he was just buying time. He was already starting to blush, ever so slightly, as though I had caught him in a fib. “No. No, I haven’t, but,” he said in a non-sequitur that seemed to make sense at the time, “I am going to the Rocky Mountains next June with my family. We will climb every mountain there.”

  “Every mountain? Are you sure? I mean, that’s a lot of mountains. Jeez, there must be—”

  “Every mountain,” he said, and looked over at me with a cross look, as though I weren’t holding up my end of the conversation.

  We had lunch in the town of Uchiko, on a beautifully
preserved street. Uchiko is one of the many places in Japan that are just a half step off the main tourist beat and therefore spared the influx of visitors that infests more famous sites like Kyoto. The town had made its fortune in candle wax, which may seem strange, but in the days before electricity, wax merchants were somewhat akin to the oil barons of today. The entire street, from the Kabuki theatre to the stone lantern temple at the other end, was slower, calmer, and more dignified than the modern world that raced by just a block over on the main highway. Saburō’s hands were far too clumsy for flowers, I thought, they were the knuckles of a miner, yet here he was drinking fragrant tea, his fingers barely able to grasp the tiny ceramic cup. Above us were wide roof beams. “Yakasugi trees,” he said approvingly. “They come from Yakushima Island. The trees there grow like giants. Biggest trees in the world.”

  “You mean Japan. They’re the biggest trees in Japan.” I had been to Yakushima. The trees were magnificent, disappearing in graduated silhouettes into the mists that seem to permanently shroud the island. They are the largest, and certainly the most impressive, trees in all of Japan.

  “The world,” he said, correcting me.

  “Japan,” I said.

  “The world.”

  “Japan.”

  He drained his cup of tea. “Time to go.”

  South of Uchiko was the village of Ikazaki, where the art of kite fighting has been revived. Sharp blades, called gagari, are attached to the kites which slash and dive in swirling aerial duels. Kites with severed strings, although free, will float aimlessly for a while and then—like parables in a Confucian analect—fall to earth. Kites that are merely wounded, however, will scream downward, spiraling to the ground in dramatic crashes.

  “Hokkaido has good mountains,” said Saburō. “You’ll like it there. Lots of horses. Open ranches. My daughters and my wife and I”—he was surrounded by women; perhaps that was why he was so manly—“we went horseback riding in Hokkaido. The horses were fast and strong.”