Here come a band of pilgrims, with yellow straw overcoats, 'rain-coats'
(mino), and enormous yellow straw hats, mushroom-shaped, of which the
down-curving rim partly hides the face. All carry staffs, and wear their
robes well girded up so as to leave free the lower limbs, which are
inclosed in white cotton leggings of a peculiar and indescribable
kind. Precisely the same sort of costume was worn by the same class of
travellers many centuries ago; and just as you now see them trooping
by--whole families wandering together, the pilgrim child clinging to
the father's hands--so may you see them pass in quaint procession across
the faded pages of Japanese picture-books a hundred years old.
At intervals they halt before some shop-front to look at the many
curious things which they greatly enjoy seeing, but which they have no
money to buy.
I myself have become so accustomed to surprises, to interesting or
extraordinary sights, that when a day happens to pass during which
nothing remarkable has been heard or seen I feel vaguely discontented.
But such blank days are rare: they occur in my own case only when the
weather is too detestable to permit of going out-of-doors. For with ever
so little money one can always obtain the pleasure of looking at curious
things. And this has been one of the chief pleasures of the people
in Japan for centuries and centuries, for the nation has passed its
generations of lives in making or seeking such things. To divert one's
self seems, indeed, the main purpose of Japanese existence, beginning
with the opening of the baby's wondering eyes. The faces of the people
have an indescribable look of patient expectancy--the air of waiting for
something interesting to make its appearance. If it fail to appear, they
will travel to find it: they are astonishing pedestrians and tireless
pilgrims, and I think they make pilgrimages not more for the sake of
pleasing the gods than of pleasing themselves by the sight of rare and
pretty things. For every temple is a museum, and every hill and valley
throughout the land has its temple and its wonders.
Even the poorest farmer, one so poor that he cannot afford to eat a
grain of his own rice, can afford to make a pilgrimage of a month's
duration; and during that season when the growing rice needs least
attention hundreds of thousands of the poorest go on pilgrimages. This
is possible, because from ancient times it has been the custom for
everybody to help pilgrims a little; and they can always find rest and
shelter at particular inns (kichinyado) which receive pilgrims only, and
where they are charged merely the cost of the wood used to cook their
food.
But multitudes of the poor undertake pilgrimages requiring much more
than a month to perform, such as the pilgrimage to the thirty-three
great temples of Kwannon, or that to the eighty-eight temples of
Kobodaishi; and these, though years be needed to accomplish them, are as
nothing compared to the enormous Sengaji, the pilgrimage to the thousand
temples of the Nichiren sect. The time of a generation may pass ere this
can be made. One may begin it in early youth, and complete it only when
youth is long past. Yet there are several in Matsue, men and women, who
have made this tremendous pilgrimage, seeing all Japan, and supporting
themselves not merely by begging, but by some kinds of itinerant
peddling.
The pilgrim who desires to perform this pilgrimage carries on his
shoulders a small box, shaped like a Buddhist shrine, in which he keeps
his spare clothes and food. He also carries a little brazen gong, which
he constantly sounds while passing through a city or village, at the
same time chanting the Namu-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo; and he always bears with
him a little blank book, in which the priest of every temple visited
stamps the temple seal in red ink. The pilgrimage over, this book with
its one thousand seal impressions becomes an heirloom in the family of
the pilgrim.