88 Temples

Author(s): Laurel Nakanishi

Source: Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction , Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 2016), pp. 77-96
Published by: Michigan State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/fourthgenre.18.2.0077

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ESSAY

88 Temples
LAUREL NAKANISHI

Spring arrives with the ringing of pilgrim bells.

—Shikoku adage

W
e began as many do, awkward and clean scrubbed, bowing
before the first temple, Ryozenji. The Australian, my compan-
ion, lit the incense. I offered coins, a folded bill, a slip of paper
with our names, and then the Heart Sutra chanted in my own
imperfect voice. From the ceiling hung dozens of paneled lanterns dusting
the hall in a low golden light. The altar stood back, adorned with white and
yellow chrysanthemums, scrolls and bowls of glowing joss sticks. Outside it
was too bright. In the pond, the carp were brushed with orange; the turtles
lounged on rocks. A little boy leaned dangerously close to the water, point-
ing, “Kame! Kame!” And for a moment, I was confused, hearing Kami— god,
there is god.
That night we wound through the narrow streets of a neighborhood until
it was well and truly dark. It was raining. I was worried. Where would we eat?
Where would we sleep? And what if a car came too close and hit us? The low
cement walls and boxy houses were beginning to look all the same. Why
hadn’t we stopped at that wide parking lot by the pachinko parlor? What
about that Shinto shrine? The bare, sandy lot was covered in puddles, but
past the stork-legged tori gates, there was a narrow awning that would keep
out the rain.

Quote passages taken from Japanese Pilgrimage by Oliver Statler, Making Pilgrimages:
៮
Meaning and Practice in Shikoku by Ian Reader, Kukai: ៮ o-Daishi,
Major Works by Kob ៮ and
the Shikoku Henro Trail website: www.shikokuhenrotrail.com.

8 77

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78 8 FOURTH GENRE

Hunger and worry boiled up in my mind. I did not feel like a pilgrim on
the road to enlightenment. I felt nothing but frustration and then shame for
my frustration. Finally, I gathered the courage to inquire about camping
under the awning. It was my job to ask, to make small talk, to explain
ourselves. The Australian did not speak much Japanese, despite his claims,
and this was my journey anyway.
Years later, it all seems so simple. Of course we camped under that
awning. And the neighbor wife fed us noodles and cake. The husband pre-
sented us each with a sword hilt that we could file down ourselves. In the
morning, we left for the next temple. Looking back, I can call the pilgrimage
beautiful. I can nod spiritually. I can flex my bike muscles: 1,200 km, oh yeah,
we cycled it in a month. The truth is: I’ve forgotten. Only the poems keep me
honest.

Here is a hill, they say, see it

rise into a mountain.
This mountain lining up with the others
into a ridge, growing close
around the river Awa that still carries dust.
There is Tokushima, a city
that in fertile soil grew tall and grey.
It unravels; waves back to itself
from the straits of Naruto
that turn daily in whirlpools.
There are the temples that swim upstream
with veils of blooming wisteria.
In late summer, the women
put out baskets of persimmons.
The fields of rice grow heavy and bend.
In yellow hats children walk to school
joined sometimes by pilgrims:
white robes flapping,
hat, staff, small pilgrim bell.

In the top drawer that smelled of sandalwood, I found it—a simple

bronze against deep purple silk. It lay at rest next to her juzu, prayer stole,

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 79

and white pilgrim’s tunic. As a child, I was forbidden from ringing the bell.
And only with the utmost care could I open the book of rice paper and trace
the signature of the temples as my grandma told the story:
“You know, the pilgrimage was very demanding. Back then there were
no roads to the mountain temples. We had to walk up the stairs—not easy for
an old woman! I still remember the bells we carried. They swayed, ‘Ting,
Ting,’ echoing through the forest.”
On my pilgrimage, I would loop Grandma’s bell around my wrist and
listen for its echo. “A bell calls one to prayer and it is a reminder of imperma-
nence: its quickly fading sound is like human life—‘changing, inconstant,
unstable,’ predestined to be transitory.”
My grandma is dead. The Australian and I have broken up. I gave up
learning Japanese for Spanish. We are always arriving at the next temple,
pressing our hands together in front of our chests, mumbling the words of the
Heart Sutra. We are bowing three times, the incense rising up to sting our
noses and force tears from our eyes. I did not want to cry. Those first days of
the pilgrimage, I fought down the sorrow. There was no time to grieve. We
had temples to visit, meals to find, and then the rains began in earnest.

I meant to stop in the valley, where the mountains

pulled in close and the river became a deep, swift blue.
I meant to dip my head in the current
and push my back against the cliffs.
But the views became only more magnificent.
I rode around the bends, my speed
drawing me on, until I loved the whirl of my own wheels.
When the land became rice patties and low hills
I did not stop—the wind was fresh, my body buzzed
and the next temple was not far, not far.

無 無 無

It began with grief.

After her husband died, the priest told her, “Come, come to Shikoku with
us.” Koboji Shingon Temple in Honolulu was offering a trip, a pilgrimage to

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80 8 FOURTH GENRE

the 88 temples and Mt. Koya. My grandmother was 65 years old; my grand-
father was 68 when he died of cancer. She never talked about his sickness or
his death. And her stories from the pilgrimage tell me little. Her roommate
snored. They picked up rubbish on the temple grounds. The stairs were
tiring, “but the views—so nice!” All I know is that she returned two more
times, circling the island again and again—always with the same priest,
always with the same sorrow.
Each morning, if I woke in time—if I woke and shuffled down the hall
and to the room where she prayed with her hands looped in juzu. If I knelt
beside her, if I waited until the end of the Heart Sutra, after she called out our
names, my cousins lining up before me. If I did not fidget too much or
interrupt with questions, she would talk to him: “Good morning, Papa. We
are all fine here. Karen is going into college already! Please watch out for
her.”
As if he were alive,
as if he were right there.

For centuries, it has been a tradition in Japan to embark on the

hachiju៮ hakkasho pilgrimage after a loved one passes away. Parents circle the
island, holding photos of their dead children. Widows and widowers huff up
the mountainsides where many of the temples perch. In Japan, white is the
color of death, and we pilgrims are dressed for dying. Perhaps it brings us
closer to our loved ones now gone. Perhaps it helps us remember that life is
fleeting and precarious.
Six months after my grandmother died of cancer, I put on her white
pilgrim’s tunic and set off for Shikoku.
There is a section on the path to temple 12, Sho៮ sanji, known as “the place
where the pilgrim falls down”—whether in exhaustion or in death, I do not
know. The temple itself sits 2,640 feet above sea level, in a forest of giant
Japanese cedar. The road was too steep to cycle, so we parked our bikes and
hiked. It was raining softly, clouds moved through the treetops. On the side of
the trail, small bodhisattvas greeted us in moss-covered stone. I remember
nothing about the temple at the top, only the endless stairs, cedar needles
masking each step.
The typhoon hit on the fourth day of our pilgrimage. By that point it had
been raining steadily, and the Australian and I were soaked through. At the

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 81

21st temple, a kind neighbor let us sleep in his shed-turned-apartment. We

bowed and bowed thank you, dripping the storm onto his tatami mats. In the
city of Tokushima, a fellow English teacher offered us her floor. Outside of
these two warm nights, we were left to pitch our tent in the downpour. Even
after living through the monsoons of Nicaragua and the tropical storms of
Hawaii, I still have not experienced anything like it. My panniers were wet.
My food was wet. Everything I would ever touch was wet.
Later, I wrote poems philosophizing about the rain:

There is nothing extraordinary

about the rain that falls.
A wet neck is a wet neck, and the rain
that trickles down pilgrims’ coats
has been moving in this direction for centuries.
We know the heaviness of carrying this water
and the soaking that brings us close to our skin.

At the time, I made up a little song:

Ame ga fu-te imasu. Za—za—fu-te imasu.

Ame ga fu-te imasu. Za—za—fu-te imasu.
Taifuuuuuuuuuuu.
៮
Taihen taifu.

Which roughly translates to:

It is raining.
It is raining a shit-ton.
Typhoooooooon.
Fucking typhoon.

I do not know if it was the rain, or seeing the ocean whipped up into a
seething, gray beast, or fighting with the Australian (he had raced ahead of
me now), but at that moment, biking down the highway in the typhoon, I
felt the full weight of my grandmother’s death upon me. Tears and rain
and wind, the cars zooming by, the road grit, the salt in the air, the waves

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82 8 FOURTH GENRE

pummeling the rocky shore—they flooded into me. I was open to it all,
and with it came the pain of losing her.
Before that point, I had thought I was over it. I had grieved and moved
on. I was serene and seeking enlightenment. I have always been laughably
unaware of how much my expressions reveal my emotions. My sorrow was
probably stamped onto my face for all the little old ladies to read. Was that
why they were so kind to me—patting my hands and offering me sweet tea?
Buddhism tells me: “All beings as individuals are appearances only, like
illusions: they are composites of forever changing elements.” I wanted to
argue: yes, right, but what do you do about love? And my grandma, who I
loved in her form, illusion though it may be, how do I love her now? With the
typhoon barreling up the cape of Muroto, I wondered if her spirit might be
out there somewhere.
I felt the rain. I felt the wind pushing against my body. I felt my muscles
tensing.
I did not feel her. I stopped peddling and hopped the highway barrier.
The beach was scattered with boulders. The ocean piled up before me. I let
the tears run until I felt hollow.
It was only later that I learned that Cape Muroto is known in Japanese
literature as “the doorway to the land of the dead.” I would like to say that I
had some kind of vision there on that coast, that my grandmother’s spirit
came close to me. I wish she had. But in truth, I was so lost in my own grief
and loneliness that I was oblivious to the subtleties of the spirit world.
Eventually, I got back on my bike. I peddled down the narrow highway
shoulder. The winds buffeted me this way and that. I peddled past Shinmei-
kutsu cave where Ku ៮ kai, the spiritual leader of the pilgrimage, was said to
have attained enlightenment. I peddled to the very tip of the cape, to temple
24, pressed my hands together and prayed. I chanted the same sutra that my
grandma had chanted every morning of my life. I imagined that I was kneel-
ing beside her again. Later, in the poems, I claimed that I could hear her voice
rise and blend with mine. Such was my need.

無 無 無

៮ kai writes: “The flowers, however fragrantly blooming, are doomed to

Ku
whither. Who in this world can hope to live forever? The remotest mountain

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 83

pass of existence is crossed today! Awakening from a dream so evanescent, I

am no more subject to intoxication.”

I write: What is the radius of the soul in death?

I write:

When she became too weak to talk,

she squeezed my hand.
When she could not move or open her eyes,
she arched and lowered her eyebrows.

They say that hearing in the last sense to go.

We whispered to her.

And when her breathing stopped and then her heart,

and we finally let our grief flow,
did we mourn too soon?
Was she listening still and powerless to comfort us?

無 無 無

At the gates of temple 26, I studied the gruesome features of the Nio guardian
statues. They towered above me, swords raised, grimacing, hands held out in
threat.

I wanted only ugly things: billowing gray clouds and slanting rain.

Yet this morning we woke to the glare of sun. In the parking lot where we
had pitched our tent, I could hear the chat of early morning shoppers. When I
emerged, an old woman greeted me with skewers of roasted fishcake. The route
took us past sand-ruffled capes and bays the color of my Hawaii home. We
peddled through a fishing village, the boats clanging their bells in the harbor.

Before and after grief, there are expanses of the blessedly mundane.

It had become normal, this pilgrimage routine: we woke early in a field, or

on a beach, or in the corner of a park. After taking down our tiny tent, I

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84 8 FOURTH GENRE

would meticulously pack, lining my panniers with trash bags and check-
ing their weight. The Australian paced and watched me waste time. He
had already stuffed his belongings into his bags. When I finally finished,
we would tip our heads together over the map, calculating distance and
elevation.
The pilgrimage route moves from mountain peaks to valleys to the
rocky shoreline. We rode along rows of rice paddies, through small towns,
up curving mountain roads, and down coastal highways. The cicadas sang
in the humid afternoons. Japan was more lush than I could have ever
imagined.
One afternoon the Australian and I stopped in a small, shorefront restau-
rant to eat omelets; the proprietor/cook was so impressed with our cycling
journey (Jitensha de ikimasuka?!) that she doodled little bicycles on our eggs
with ketchup. In another store, an old woman pressed sweet anpan into my
hands. Everywhere we went, people praised us for our strength and tenacity,
shouting ganbatte! (“You can do it!”) from the side of the road.
Pilgrims are a normal sight in Shikoku. Foreign pilgrims on bicycles are
something to stop and stare at. While we probably received more attention
than most because of the novelty of our race and nationalities, it is a common
practice in Shikoku to give gifts to pilgrims. Osettai or alms can take the form
of money, food, or other acts of kindness.
Go back to the eighth century, to the very beginning of the hachiju៮ hak-
kasho, and you will find Ku៮ kai with a begging bowl in his hands. Later he will
be known as a scholar and a statesman—the bringer of esoteric Buddhism
from China, the inventor of alphabets, the creator of public works, and the
founder of this pilgrimage. He will be given the name Ko៮ bo៮ -Daishi, “the
Grand Master Who Propagated the Buddhist Teaching.” Scholars will write
of him, “Part of the genius of Ko៮ bo៮ -Daishi was that he spanned both worlds:
the world of meditation and austerity in the mountains, the world of action
and service on the plains.” In the beginning, though, he was just an ascetic
monk in tattered robes, living by the generosity of others, by the food and
coins that people placed in his begging bowl. “His shaven head was like a
round tray of copper, and his ashen face like an earthenware pot. He was
haggard and small; his legs were long like those of a heron standing near a pond;
and his sinewy short neck resembled that of a turtle in the mud.”

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 85

One morning he knocked on the gate of a rich man’s home—Emon

Saburo៮ . This man was not in the habit of generosity, and when he saw Ku ៮ kai
with hands outstretched, he struck down the begging bowl and slammed the
gate. Ku ៮ kai returned to Saburo៮ ’s home day after day and was greeted each
time by escalating acts of violence. Finally, Ku ៮ kai left, continuing his journey
around Shikoku.
Saburo៮ , it is said, thought nothing of these encounters until his oldest son fell
ill and then his younger son, followed by the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh,
and eighth sons. When the boys passed away, one after another, Saburo៮ fell into
a deep grief. It was then that he decided to find Ku៮ kai and ask forgiveness. He did
not intend to go on a pilgrimage, yet he visited every temple and every cave
where Ku៮ kai had been, leaving slips of paper with his name.
He circled the island for years, struggling through the snows of winter
and crouching in the narrow shade of summer. He was near death when he
finally met Ku ៮ kai on the path to temple 12. Here Ku ៮ kai gave him absolution as
he died. Here he buried the first pilgrim and planted his staff beside the grave,
which grew into a great cedar.
It is estimated that 150,000 people embark on the 88-temple pilgrimage
each year. Why do we come here? Is it devotion or remorse? Guilt? Or do we
really seek enlightenment?
Why had I come here?

Beside the main hall—a shed

with rows of standing rocks,
each with a red apron,
some with the carved face
of Buddha.

無 無 無

I wanted to take out my begging bowl and ask the strangers that I met, Do you
see my grandmother in me?
I held her photograph in my pocket for the entire journey. Sometimes,
when I spoke of her to strangers, I would show them the photo: Grandma in
her pilgrim robes standing in front of a statue of Ko៮ bo៮ -Daishi. They would

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86 8 FOURTH GENRE

smile, politely relieved to have some context for understanding my presence

in Shikoku, in Japan.
Do you see the Japanese in my face?
Nobody mistook me for Japanese.
Yet neither am I American.
The summers of my childhood are stitched with memories of Bon dances.
Each August, Grandma would dress us in yukata, wrapping the obi tight
around our skinny ribcages. My brother would get a blue yukata while I had
a red and black one that Grandma had sewed herself. I liked to flap the long
sleeves over my wrists.
“You’re just lucky this isn’t a kimono—those are so hot and the sleeves
trail down to here,” Grandma said pointing to her ankles.
In the cracked and tilted parking lot of Koboji temple, someone had
drawn two concentric circles in yellow paint. At the center was the yagura, a
tall temporary structure that held a platform crammed with musicians and
singers. The yagura was wrapped in red-and-white striped fabric and strung
with lanterns that swayed upon their wire strings. From the food booth there
wafted the smell of grilling chicken in shoyu sauce.
Grandma would try to explain Obon to us as we squirmed on the folding
chairs that circled the yagura. “Obon is a time when the spirits of the dead
come back to the earth,” she said. “The ancestors, everyone who has died,
they come back and dance with us. The story goes . . . ” But I do not remem-
ber her explanation. I was too excited about the mounds of tricolored shaved
ice, the taiko drumming reverberating through the air, and the dancing.
The squeaky, crooning band had started up, and groups of old ladies
were moving in synchronized patterns. They danced around in a circle,
taking small steps, joined soon by others: men and women in yukata or hapi
coats. When we were young, my brother and I would wiggle away from our
grandma and line up behind the adults, mimicking the sway of their hands
and their delicate steps. Sometimes Auntie Sue, Grandma’s roommate from
the pilgrimage trips, would take our arms and guide us through the motions.
Grandma would watch us circle around and around, waving as we passed.
Toward the end of the night, they would play the farmers’ song—an old
folk dance that involved a lot of digging and twirling of towels and, if we were
lucky, Grandma would come out and dance with us. At the end of these warm

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 87

summer nights, after the music faded and we walked sleepily home, I would
like to have asked her: so is this what it means to be Japanese?
When I was finally old enough to think of these questions, I was too
embarrassed to go to the Bon dances. As a teenager, I began to realize I was
different from the other kids at the temple. Everyone around me looked
Japanese. Their dark, slippery hair and slim eyes made it easy for them to
belong. I no longer wanted to jump into the line of dancers. I did not want so
much attention on my haole-looking face. I was embarrassed to be seen with
my mom, who is white and was born in Montana. She would come to the Bon
dances too. She would sit with Grandma and wave as we passed. Why is it so
easy to forget her? Why do I omit her, even now, from the story?
The truth is this: I am the child of a Japanese American father and a white
American mother. I was raised with my grandmother, who held tightly to her
Japanese traditions while also becoming American in ways that her own
parents, those first immigrants from Japan, could scarcely understand. To
people on the mainland and in other countries, I look white. To most people
in Hawaii, I look white. I am not. I am.
In Hawaii there is a word for people of multiple races: hapa. In
English, it gets awkward: do you say “biracial,” “multiracial,” “mixed,”
“mutt”? There are too many negative connotations to these words, and
the identity ends up sounding either exotic or confused. If I am “biracial,”
then I am a binary, made up of two different races that I must choose
between. As a child, I imagined that I was split down the middle: one side
of me white, one side of me Japanese. As I grew older, I lavished attention
on this Japanese side.
When I was 11, I moved into my grandma’s house: the three bedroomed,
high-ceilinged first floor to my parent’s basement home. It was then that my
education in being Japanese really began. Grandma taught me how to make
rice and miso soup, how to clean and organize the kitchen, how to fold washi
paper dolls and sew zabuton cushions. Grandma also coached me on life
skills:
“Be polite and nice to everyone, no matter who they are.”
“If you are going to do something, always do your best.”
“Learn everything you can. If you have the opportunity to learn how to
thieve, do it. That way you can help to catch the robbers.”

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88 8 FOURTH GENRE

I listened to her with a respect that I did not show to my mother. With
Grandma, I hid away my eye rolling, my snappy back talk, and my sullen
moods. My mother, unfortunately, did not enjoy such restraint from me.
Part of the grief that I felt over my grandma’s death was the grief of losing
this connection to Japan and to my cultural past. It was as if the cord that had
tied me to my Japanese identity had been suddenly cut. And who was I now
without her?
I could no longer be the dutiful granddaughter who steadied her grand-
mother as she walked down the stairs. I could not drive her to doctors’
appointments nor to the China Town markets. I could not write her letters or
call from college payphones. I could not visit at Christmas or make special
trips down for her birthday. I could not sit with her in the mornings, eating
breakfast and talking about the day. After she died, I felt like I lost the very
best of myself.

無 無 無

Grandma sews a yukata:

Her wrist is checked with fans,

with cranes flying over pink clouds, a sprig
of cherry blossom and floating chrysanthemum.
She pinches the silk seam to seam, matching scraps.
Hold steady, the machine takes delicate bites
and there, under her fingers—the smell of mochi
roasting over a straw flame, the clack of geta,
a flourish of obi and yukata.
The drum beats, the air thick with voices,
with rainfall, summer, and fireworks
patterning that little girl’s sleeve.
They dance, they raise their arms and step.
She rubs them into her fingers—
the night, the lanterns, the growing circle.
It is obon. We’ve all come home.

無 無 無

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 89

I coasted down the hill from temple 37, Iwamotoji—the only temple in the
expanse between the small city of Tosa and the cape of Ashizuri. The road
was wet from a short afternoon storm. I slowed at each curve, trying to
maintain a delicate balance between the rushing cars to my right and the
steep drop into the valley on my left. Deep in concentration, I did not see the
huge red ship. The Australian shouted me over: “Ahoy!” He had tipped his
bike near one of the portholes and was taking photos of the prominent bow.
The ship was either a full-scale replica or an actual vessel, hauled up here
by some enterprising business owner. There were three decks that looked out
onto the lush green valleys of Kochi and in the distance, the flat gray line of
the sea. The parking lot, which held enough spaces for a swarm of tourists,
was empty. The ship’s main entrance, double-glass doors with an awning,
was locked and the shades were drawn. The Australian and I fell into conjec-
ture: Was it a restaurant? A gift shop? A karaoke entertainment center? Over
the peeling red paint on the bow, someone had depicted a cute cartoon pirate
along with some words in Japanese. While I can speak Japanese, I am illiter-
ate in kanji (the most complicated and common of Japan’s three alphabets),
and I’ve often wondered what I’ve missed in my ignorance.
This encounter with the huge red ship was a typical Japan moment:
strange, funny, bizarre, and incomprehensible. The Australian turned to
me with a smile and said what we had learned to say at moments like
these, what most foreigners who visit and behold and wonder say: “Oh
Japan!”
Twenty-five years of life as a Japanese American and a childhood with a
Japanese grandmother did not prepare me for Japan.

When we stumbled upon a 15-foot shrine

hoisted and lugged down the main street by a group of drunken men
in white loincloths—
When I noticed that the local forest had its own mascot—
When the farmer’s market down the road
installed a fifty-foot plastic statue of Gulliver—

“Oh Japan!” I say, halfway between a laugh and a sign of exasperation.

When faced with such beauty and waste and contradiction, when bemused
and frustrated—what else is left but to sigh and wonder?

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90 8 FOURTH GENRE

Later, we coasted down the hill to the rolling lowlands. The Australian
had found a “Joyful” restaurant, the Japanese equivalent of a Denny’s, in the
map book. After weeks of udon noodles and convenience store onigiri, we
hungered for a change of cuisine. The Joyful was supposed to be 5 km down
the road, but we rode for an hour without seeing any sign of a restaurant or a
population center. The single-lane highway dipped into ravines with a rush
of cool air and the smell of mud. In some places, sand had washed over the
road. The ocean was not far.
Just after the sun sunk below the horizon, the Australian spotted lights in
the distance. Soon we coasted into a little fishing village: a handful of houses,
a dock, vending machines, a small hut where we could pitch our tent, but no
Joyful. In fact, it looked like there were no restaurants or shops at all in the
village. I approached a middle-aged couple as they strolled down the street.
“Umm, chotto . . . ” I said and then asked if they knew of any restaurants in
the area.
The man sucked air in through his teeth—a noise that signals conflict or
a negative answer. “Ano chotto muzukashii desu ne,” he said. “It would be a
little difficult,” a phrase that in Japan is code for “That’s impossible; there is
no restaurant here or in the next town. You are going hungry tonight. I am so
sorry.”
The man conferred with his wife in rapid Japanese and then turned
back to us. “We will take you to the convenience store in the next town
over. Then you will sleep at our house.” The woman smiled nervously, but
her husband beamed. “We will call our grandchildren to come over,” he
said. “They are studying English at school. They can practice with you
tonight!”

無 無 無

I spent the year before the pilgrimage living in the small town of No៮ gata,
in Fukuoka prefecture, on the island of Kyushu. I was supposedly there to
teach English to children in the local elementary and middle schools.
After a year of cycling from school to school, joining a taiko drumming
group, making weekend trips to the city, and drinking tea with my neigh-
bors, I learned one very important thing: I am not Japanese.
There are certain things that I will never understand. Why isn’t critical
thinking and democratic decision making more valued in schools? Why are

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 91

women treated so differently than men? Why don’t they turn the heat on in
the staffroom in the winter?
Over the course of the year, I began to see the deep differences between
my own values and those of my Japanese friends. I was surprised by the
ubiquity of bureaucracy and my friends’ general acceptance of the power
systems in politics and in society. I also saw that my students, from a young
age, were impressed with the duty to fulfill expectations and punished for
falling outside of the norm.
For half a year, I tried to fit in. I listened and observed and tried to
graciously accept this new way of life. But then my grandmother became
suddenly and gravely ill. For a year or more the cancer cells had been slyly
multiplying in her stomach and throat. At first she felt “a little off.” Then she
couldn’t swallow. By the time the diagnosis came, she was holding the
sickness all over her body.
In spite of these circumstances, my employers in Japan would not let me
fly home. “Muzukashii desu ne,” they told me. I could not miss work. I had used
up all of my vacation days earlier in the year, and I only had two sick days left. “It
is okay,” they told me. “Your grandmother is Japanese; she will understand.”
Baffled, I asked my friends what this meant. “There is something beau-
tiful in sacrifice,” they told me. “People honor your suffering because it is for
the good of the group.”
After a week of updates from home, each more worrisome than the next,
I set off for the airport. I called my workplace after booking my flight: “My
grandma may be Japanese, but I am not.”
And I went home to be with her as she died.

無 無 無

Just when I wanted to give up on Japan, there would be moments of pro-

found kindness and beauty.

A gnarled pine wrapped

in white paper blessings

Knitted shoes, rain-streaked

cranes hanging
from a temple gate

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92 8 FOURTH GENRE

Pines trimmed
into neat cloud formations

And at every temple and town I found statues of Ku ៮ kai: his feet wrapped
in rope sandals, one hand holding a begging bowl, wound in juzu. He, too,
circled the island. It is said that he established or restored each of the 88
temples. Many pilgrims believe that Ko៮ bo៮ -Daishi travels with them—a con-
cept illustrated in the pilgrim motto, dogyoninin (“We two pilgrims, to-
gether”).
It was later that I discovered that Ko៮ bo៮ -Daishi is a sort of superhero in
Shikoku folklore. There are countless stories of miracles and good deeds that
Ko៮ bo៮ -Daishi, then “Ku៮ kai,” conducted, some of which may be based on his
actual work as a civil engineer.
“The pilgrimage temples are referred to as reijo (spirit place, also ‘place
where the spirits gather,’ a term that has associations with death—a recur-
rent theme in Shikoku— but it is also a shortened form of reigenjo, or places
where miracles occur).”
During the pilgrimage, the Australian and I were constantly finding
little plaques detailing fantastical occurrences: a turtle who walked to an
inland temple with a bell on its back, a fierce dragon now subdued, and a
woman shaman who gifted Ku ៮ kai with a mountain temple. After receiving
the temple, Ku ៮ kai carved two statues of Fudo៮ , the fierce-faced messenger
of Dainichi Buddha. He placed one of these statues in a cave near the
gifted temple.
“By keeping the stone statue in the cave, Ko៮ bo៮ -Daishi ensured that the
entire mountain needed to be worshipped in order to worship the statue. This
way the mountain remained sacred, just as it had been in Shintoism. Over
time, every nook and cranny of the mountain became sacred and every rock
and slope became part of the sacred object.”
Ku ៮ kai moved rivers and stopped droughts. He threw holy objects over his
shoulder and they landed miles away, founding temples. He closed up the
mouths of leeches and smoothed the points of shells in the Sakase River. And
in one area of Kochi, the miracle of fude kusa, brush grass:

៮
Kukai writes,
the light shifts across his page.

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 93

He looks up to watch
the moon and tosses his brush
to the ground, where it takes root.

無 無 無

On the side of the road, a man shows his daughter the fallen chestnuts—
turning them over and over in his hands.
I wish that I had the attention to crouch, as she does
and touch them.
I am following a stream again—

I can see the pebbles at the bottom, smoothed by the flow.

My days are whittled down. My needs are simple and

overwhelming.

Saigyō, the twelfth-century poet and monk, writes:

The mind for truth

Begins like a stream, shallow
At first, but then
Adds more and more depth
While gaining greater clarity.

Is that what I was doing? Hollowing out? Deepening? Creating empty

space within me? We passed into the highlands and climbed up to the double
temples, numbers 44 and 45, that perch 2,000 feet above sea level. In the cliff
wall above the main temple building, there was a shallow cave. We climbed
the ladder up to the platform at the mouth and found shriveled flowers and a
worn wooden post, a temple.
In my childhood, a priest once told me, “We place flowers on the altar not
because they are beautiful, but as a reminder that all life fades.”
As we descended from temple 45, Iwayaji, my own body began to feel
like a crumpled bloom. The weeks of travel, compounded by the moun-
tainous landscape, had worn me down. Despite the physical exhaustion, I

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94 8 FOURTH GENRE

felt a deepening sense of calm wash over my days. My main concerns were
where to sleep, where to eat, and where to pray. Although these basic
needs could sometimes overwhelm me, especially at night in a strange
town, especially when we were lost or without food, I was slowly learning
to let go of worry. Was this what Saigyo meant by the “mind for truth”
deepening?
Back in the lowlands, we visited Dōgo onsen, a hot springs bath that dates
back 3,000 years. We had been to many onsen in the past weeks of the
pilgrimage, and by this point I had bathed naked with countless Japanese
women. Midafternoon at Dōgo onsen was quiet— only two grandma-aged
women soaked in the small round tub.

The slump and twist,

the sag and pooling,
the edges of bone that steam reveals.
So this is what I will look like at eighty.

And perhaps they are thinking:

so this is what gaijin look like under their clothes.

Or perhaps they are staring

at the bike grease on my legs
and my matted hair,
silently hoping that I scrub well
before joining them in the tub.

It is a relief to be naked
in a country that hides so much.

I know the ritual now,

the pattern of soaping and rinsing.
Beside me, one old lady scrubs another’s back.

They help each other

into the ofuro, groaning softly
as the water laps their bellies.
We are, each of us, in the process of dying.

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 Laurel Nakanishi 8 95

When I wrote this poem, I had begun to feel death at work in my own
body. Straining up mountain roads, I had found the limits of my physical self.
“Some day,” I told myself, “this body will pass over into death—I could be hit
by a car or whither away with illness. But I am not my body.”
“Flowers in spring, though transient, are bright to our eyes. The autumn
moon reflected in serene water delights us.” Although the world is full of
beauty, I can’t hold on to it, not even in poetry.
When Grandma first passed away, I asked:

What is the radius of the soul in death?

Does it arc like a compass— circling ever away on the pivot of home?
Or does it diffuse
like sunlight
falling upon the world with a familiar warmth?

I looked for her in the places where she had dwelled. I looked for her in
stories. I looked for her in Shikoku, in the words of the sutra I barely under-
stood. I was so eager to find her, to hold on to her presence. I missed her
fiercely.
Yet as the pilgrimage wore me into its own patterns, I found I did not
need to cling to my grandma so tightly. Gradually, I began to feel her there in
the ritual and in the silence, until she became the ritual and the silence.

無 無 無

Somewhere tucked away in a poem there is this moment:

I am swinging closed the door to my home. It is a school day or a weekend
day. The door bangs. I step into my rubber slippers, scuffing them onto my
feet. I walk past the moss-scummed patio and fern beds, past what we called
the “money tree” when we were young. At the gate I turn and look up to the
window where she is waving. She is waving. It is both a benediction and a
good-bye.

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96 8

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