It was fitting that a pilgrimage to Koya-san should follow my
unexpectedly well-chosen visit to Yamada-Isé. As the latter is the holy
of holies of Shintoism, so is the sacred mountain-top of Koya, also
situated on the southernmost peninsula of the main island, perhaps the
most venerated center of Buddhism in Japan. This time there was no
special occasion to swell the pilgrim ranks, but the less accessible
sanctuary enjoys a constant popularity, and almost as great a one as its
rival over the mountain range to the east. I was, therefore, far from
alone at any time during the journey, even though I had abandoned the
less mobile two thirds of my family in delightful Nara.
For those moderately accustomed to walking uphill it is three hours’
steady climb from the railway to the hallowed summit of Koya-san. Before
long the flat, dusty, rice-growing plain gives way to rugged foot-hills,
then to real, if not especially lofty, mountains, up which clambers a
more than well-worn trail that is almost a highway. Along this lower
stretch those who grew weary of their burdens could pick up a porter at
will, and to suit any load, for they range from eager boys of eight to
powerfully legged men who have made carrying a life’s work. The carriers
are of both sexes, too, and the frequent sight of a haughty man of
wealth, easily recognizable for all his pilgrim garb, burdened only with
a fan and a towel, and followed by a sun-browned woman bowed half double
beneath his baggage, kept one reminded that this was Japan. Here also
those who can climb only by the exertions of others engage their
_kagos_, a cross between a traveling-chair and a hammock swung on a
single bamboo pole. But the gods are evidently not kindly disposed
toward those who thus ease their pilgrimage without just and sufficient
cause, and I passed many—the ailing, the lame, the blind, tottering old
women—who were taking no chances of thus jeopardizing celestial favor.
The typical pilgrim garb of knee-length kimono, inner sleeves ending in
a kind of fingerless glove, brilliant sash, white drawer-stockings and
straw sandals, a huge woven-reed hat, on the chest a wooden alms-box
inscribed with Chinese characters, with a sack to hold donations of food
below it, a formally folded pack on the back, a bell, a kind of scepter,
and a rosary in one hand and a long staff topped by jingling rings in
the other, was frequently seen in its entirety, and did not always cover
one who actually lived on alms, though the genuine pilgrim is expected
in theory to do so. But modifications of this get-up, ranging all the
way from slight variations to full European attire, were to be seen in
the almost unbroken lines of climbing and descending Japanese. Here a
pilgrim’s smock and a coolie’s straw head-shade—one or both of them
stamped with intricate characters indicating each temple
visited—disguised a merchant or a dentist from near-by Osaka, a doctor
of Tokyo, the principal of one of Japan’s important higher schools.
Women in full Japanese dress, their skirts drawn high about their bare
legs in the frank and natural manner of the country, their faces still
waxen with rice-powder in spite of their flushing exertions, more likely
than not disfigured with the clumsy gold teeth so general in Japan as to
be almost the rule, strained their way upward with a difficulty that
would have evoked laughter from their laborious country sisters, did not
the barriers of caste and an inexpressive temperament prevent it. A
short-haired widow, a plump and comely nun, who, in her black garb and
closely clipped head, might easily have been mistaken for a man, an aged
peasant with a deep sorrow in his eyes, a man and woman of wealth
fulfilling some vow made in time of stress—the wife, of course, plodding
in the rear, as the social standing of the sex requires—city youths and
school-boys making the pilgrimage a combination of lark, duty, and
mountain excursion—there is no class or age or condition in Japan that
was not represented. Descending, satisfied pilgrims sometimes suggested
yeomen suddenly stepping forth from the days of King Arthur; now and
again a _kago_ came down bearing an inert, white-faced man for whom the
exertion of the climb had been too much.
[Illustration: The _basha_ is still the most rapid and aristocratic
means of conveyance in many parts of Japan]
[Illustration: Some of my fellow-pilgrims on the climb to Koya-san; it
is as usual to hire women carriers as men in this part of Japan]
[Illustration: No small number of pilgrims to the sacred mountain climb
by the exertion of others]
The entire ascent was well-, indeed over-supplied with the indispensable
requirements of travelers,—food, drink, and even lodgings. Sometimes the
open-front shops lined unbrokenly both sides of the way, until it seemed
a city street; there was not a single projecting point, not a solitary
place of vantage along it, that did not have its tea-house with an
ever-spreading view of the world below. This was splendidly wooded in
the steeper portions, fantastic with patchwork rice- and wheat-fields
wherever cultivation was possible. A river serpentined through the
middle distance; a rugged and in places bare range of hills formed the
horizon. Here and there lay a compact little town, but a Japanese
village pitched on a mountain-side is disappointing, because, while an
almost unbroken green usually surrounds it, there are no red, or maroon,
or old-rose tile roofs to contrast with this, but only dull-gray ones,
which with time blend almost imperceptibly into the landscape.
For several miles, more than half-way up, and so distinct in limits as
to suggest that they were forbidden elsewhere, the pleasure of the climb
and the view were ruined by scores of horribly diseased beggars along
the roadside, creatures as dreadful as any to be seen in China or India,
and many times more conspicuous, for they were the first I remembered
meeting anywhere in the country. It is the Japanese way to thrust
infirmity out of sight; in Japan, unlike the rest of the Orient, begging
is not only frowned upon but is neither customary nor often necessary;
but here foreign visitors are few and piety quite ready to assist in the
support of the helpless. Leprous women with babies already rotting from
the same disease, men plainly far beyond the assistance of medicine,
children with hairless scalps and great suppurating sores where skin
should have been, horrors that one would avoid any effort to recall,
writhed and gurgled appeals in the sun-scorched dust, or trailed
whiningly after each passer-by.
Most of the pilgrims, no doubt with a certain amount of the self-seeking
which distinguishes almsgiving by the pious the world over, took care to
toss something to every one who asked, for which purpose every shop
along the way offered, for slightly more than their value in modern
money, stacks of old copper coins, worth a fourth or an eighth of a
cent. Only a man of wealth could have afforded any real relief to the
scores after scores of unfortunates, and I made the error of trying to
pick out a few of the more deserving cases. For no sooner had I dropped
ten _sen_, equal to an American nickel, into the hand of a mother of
three leprous children than the word of the extraordinary benefaction
spread from end to end of beggars’ row. Every mendicant thereafter who
was still able to walk, even on hands and knees, stuck to my heels long
after his precinct had been left far behind, and I quickly became known
all over the mountain-side as the eccentric and wealthy foreigner who
gave _ju sen_ at a throw.
Japan seems to have no tramps in the American sense, but her pilgrims
take the place of them. The youth—and even the unyouthful—who suddenly
feels the call of the road has only to slip into some fantastic garb,
clutch a handful of jingling bells, and set off for some famous shrine
or temple. If he is more than a “gay cat” by nature and the wandering
life proves the one above all others he prefers, he may remain
perpetually on a pilgrimage. He who openly “panhandled” or halted at
houses to demand, tramp fashion, a “hand-out” or a “set-down” would
quickly catch the unwelcome attention of the omnipresent Japanese
police. But let him grasp a tinkling staff at his waist, and he may
safely and permanently appeal to charity anywhere without even the
exertion of opening his mouth. Far be it from me to assert that this
ruse is widely practised, but few people are more persistent travelers
within their own land than the Japanese, and by no means all of them are
financially in traveling circumstances.
Not far from the end of the climb I fell in with a group of professional
and business men from Osaka—though it would have been hard to recognize
them as such under their pilgrims’ disguise—led by a young Buddhist
novice who had come a little way down the mountain to meet them. The
latter, for all his priestly garb and manner, was something in the
nature of a hotel runner, and at sight of me he bowed low, rubbing his
thighs Japanese fashion, and asked, with an ingenuous smile, whether I
had chosen a stopping-place. When I answered in the negative, he replied
in his chipped English, as if that fully settled the matter, “Then you
will stay in my temple.”
All Koya-san is a Buddhist sanctuary, without layman inns to minister to
the wants of visitors, and any who spend the night there must put up in
one of the score of monasteries, technically as invited guests. While
these make no actual charges, it is the custom, rarely overlooked, to
leave as a donation to the adjoining temple an amount at least equal to
what one would pay in a first-class inn—hence the competition of novice
runners. Japanese are usually assigned to this or that group of priests,
according to the part of the country from which they hail, but
foreigners are fair game for any of them, and the first to establish
contact with such a windfall becomes henceforth his undisputed host. I
had no choice, therefore, as well as no other desire, than to accept the
proffered hospitality.
[Illustration: Pilgrims—in real life lawyers, doctors, dentists,
business men of Japan’s second largest city—climb Koya-san with all the
customary accoutrement, led at the end by the young Buddhist priest who
took me in as guest]
[Illustration: Women pilgrims arriving at the entrance to the miles of
temples, tombs, and the like on Koya-san, a point beyond which, up to
half a century ago, no member of the fair sex was allowed to pass]
[Illustration: Two pilgrims to Koya-san]
[Illustration: The shrine in our garden at Beppu]
Would that all hotel-runners were as solicitous for the welfare of the
guests they capture as was this girl-faced priest-to-be. From the moment
of laying claim to me until he handed me back my knapsack and bade me
farewell at the beginning of the descent next morning, he never for a
moment relaxed his efforts to anticipate my slightest want. There may
have been a touch of selfishness in his attention, for the Japanese who
longs to learn English is diligent in the pursuit of travelers on whom
to practise; but there was nothing to suggest that his hospitality would
not have been as sincere had I turned out to be one of those rare
visitors to Japan who are neither Orientals nor yet speak what no small
number of Nipponese consider the universal tongue of the West.
From the curious old back gate, main entrance to Koya-san since the
coming of the railway, the ground sloped gently down into a shallow
dish-shaped mountain-top filled with more temples, monasteries, royal
tombs, and similar religious edifices than one could have counted in a
day. Until half a century ago no woman was allowed to pass the first
shrine within the gate, where she must say her prayers and return.
Contact with the modern world has softened much that is still
essentially Japanese, however, and the numerous female pilgrims are now
housed by the priests quite as freely as are male visitors. Shopkeepers,
too, have gradually invaded the once wholly non-secular residence,
lining the broad central street with all the odds and ends that find
sale among pilgrims, and some of them have brought their families with
them, so that the once strictly monasterial aspect of the town has
largely disappeared. I was surprised to learn, also, though perhaps I
should have known it, that during the last few years the Buddhist
priests of Japan have been permitted to marry. My informants all added,
however, that few do so, because there is a conviction that a man with
family cares cannot give his full energies to priestly duties, and those
with ambitions for high place refuse to handicap themselves. As I have a
passing acquaintance with the sternly celibate Buddhist votaries of
other parts of the Orient, it was hard to picture this essential change,
until I recalled that even the Roman Catholic clergy has been deprived
of legitimate family joys, and worries, only since the days of Pope
Gregory VII.