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Please forgive the "plain wrap."
This page is a kind of "place holder" until I have time to design
it.
FURUDERA
"Old Temples"
During nearly my nearly five years of living
and teaching in Japan, I spent most weekends and vacations ranging around
the country visiting temples, and shooting thousands of pictures. In
the process, I achieved several notable milestones, including:
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The Saigoku sanjusan
reijo, or "Visit to the 33 places sacred to Kannon* in
the Saigoku region." Saigoku is Kansai, the area centering on
Kyoto. The pilgrimage starts in Wakayama Prefecture at Nachi, site
of Japan's highest waterfall; wanders through the mountains and into
urban Osaka Prefecture; into Nara Prefecture, one of Japan's most
ancient capitals and site of the Great Buddha; on to Kyoto and Shiga
Prefectures, perhaps the center of Japanese cultural life for centuries;
back through Osaka to rural Hyogo Prefecture; into northern Kyoto and
Shiga again, including an island in the center of Biwa-ko, Japan's
largest freshwater lake; and finally to a single temple on a mountain in
Gifu Prefecture, where solemn rites celebrate the pilgrim's attainment.
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The Bando sanjusan
reijo, or "Visit to the 33 places sacred to Kannon* in
the Bando region." Bando is Kanto, the area centering on
Tokyo. The pilgrimage starts in Kamakura, perhaps the most furukusai
(literally "stinking of age") place in Japan outside of Kyoto,
but one which has escaped much of Kyoto's urban development.
Kamakura is in Kanagawa Prefecture, not far from Yokohama, and includes
a side trip to Japan's other "Great Buddha" at Kotokuin.
Leaving Kamakura, the pilgrimage leads up into northern Kanagawa, jumps
up to some precious rural temples in Saitama Prefecture, returns to a
single temple in ultra-modern Tokyo (Senso-ji, which I considered to be
my "home temple" hen I lived there) and, inexplicably, back
down to Yokohama for one temple; again into the rural areas of Gumma,
Tochigi, and Ibaraki Prefectures to some of the most untouched temples I
have ever seen, with mountain caves and ancient burial mounds along the
way; and finally down into the Chiba Peninsula. The last temple is
at a logical jumping-off point for one to take a ferry back to Kamakura,
this closing the circle.
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The Chichibu sanjuyon
reijo, or "Visit to the 34 places sacred to Kannon* in
the Chichibu area." Chichibu is a beautiful mountain valley
near Tokyo. The entire pilgrimage is about 100 kilometers, or 60 miles,
and can easily be walked in a few days. That is exactly what I
did; it is the only pilgrimage that I have walked in its entirety so
far. Why does Chichibu boast 34 temples instead of the usual
33? Some say it was to "better" the bigger guys.
Others say that, with the one extra, the three pilgrimages together
equal 100 temples; indeed, they have come to be known collectively as
The Nihon hyakku Kannon--"the 100 places sacred to Kannon*
in Japan."
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The 53 Stations of the Old
Tokaido
Highway. In the Fall of 2001, I was able to walk
the full length of the Tokaido, or "Eastern Sea Road," from
Tokyo to Kyoto. In the early 17th century, a shogun or
military ruler was the real head of the government; the Emperor was
merely a figurehead. Nevertheless, Kyoto remained the capital,
even though the shogun was in Edo (Tokyo). So in 1601, this
highway was built, and post stations established along it, to facilitate
communications between the real ruler and the puppet. Although
technically not a "pilgrimage," you will see elements of a
sacred journey in my account, as well as in the many temples I visited
along the way.
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The 88-temple
pilgrimage on Shikoku, or "shikoku hachijuha kassho." Continuing my Aki
Meguri ("Autumn Journey") beyond the Old Tokaido, through
Mount Koya, to the Island of Shikoku, where I traced what may be Japan's
oldest pilgrimage through the "four countries" of the
island. Unlike the other pilgrimages I made, this one was done in
one journey, without going home in between. It literally changed
my life.
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The Aki Meguri
is
made up of both the Tokaido and Shikoku experiences, as well as time
spent in Old Yamato. This was a
journey of about 10 weeks; I carried a notebook computer and a digital
camera and created a journal along the way. This section of my
site is a reworking of that journal. It includes some historical
background regarding the logistics of the trip, and a lot of Words and Pictures pages created
along the way. There are also special indexes for the Logbook
pages and Journal entries,
and an alphabetical listing
of locations visited. The entire section also has its own Sitemap.
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In early August of 2004, I
returned to Japan for half a month and completed a number
of smaller pilgrimages, including:
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In addition to all of the
above, I visited many temples in Japan that were not part of any
"official pilgrimage." The Furudera section will have a
lot about these, too, as well as some general information on the
features of Japanese temples and the types of Japanese Buddhism
*Kannon, also known as "Guan
Yin" in China and "Avalokiteshvara" in India, is the Bodhisattva
of Compassion.
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