Let me introduce myself. My name is Kazuko Iwai. I was born in Zentsuji City, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan on April 11, 1984.
I am a first year student at Kagawa Junior College. My major is Nutrition.
My hobbies are listening to music, sleeping, and talking with my friends or sisters.
My home page address is http://www.geocities.co.jp/CollegeLife-Labo/4001/2004/403004.html
Mari Tasaka@
r @d Ff
c FxIibmss goo
d @s
World Association for Online Education
Visiting or living in Shikoku is something special, for this island had always been the spiritual sanctuary of the Japanese people. No other place in Japan has been visited by so many generations of people from all over the country.
They have often spent more than 60 days walking along the whole circuit of the eighty-eight temples that compose the longest, oldest and most popular pilgrimage in Japan.
Even those who have arrived here in weariness of life, in unhappiness or weak health, have usually left the island with a lighter heart, more enlightened, and in many cases in improved health.
Though today the island is quite accessible and traveling around it can be very easy, some of the eighty-eight temples still remain very hard to reach.
This pilgrimage circling the island is nationally known as O-Shikoku-san, showing that "Dear old Shikoku Pilgrimage" is synonymous with this island and provides sanctuary to the soul of Japan. The scenes along the Shikoku Pilgrimage correspond well to what Shikoku offers - the Seto island Sea, the Uwa-kai Sea, the Pacific Ocean, the green mountains that crown a large part of the island, cosy little towns and middle-sized cities that fringe the coasts.
Its climate is mind; the seas are bountiful; the land is fertile. Naturally local people have been content with their blessed island, even if it has remained underdeveloped since the 8th century. Until then the northern coast of Shikoku was among the first areas to enjoy civilization in Japan, as proved by so many archaeological findings.
Remote as it was for many centuries, however, Shikoku did not stand aloof but observed movements on the Inland sea as an artery of Japan's cultural, political and economic development. On the other hand, Shikoku's unique attractions such as the Shikoku Pilgrimage, Kompira worship and the Dogo Onsen Hot Spring spa have always drawn a large number of people from the capitals and other parts of the main island of Honshu and neighboring Kyushu.
Naturally those visitors brought something new with them each time, just as refugees and exiles from the capitals added color to the island's history. They were welcomed and sometimes the culture they brought here was carefully preserved or developed even long after being forgotten in its homeland - language, festivals, arts and techniques. These cultural assets now peculiar to Shikoku have added another dimension rewarding travelers to this island.
A new type of attraction in Shikoku is the fruit of modern technology that the waves of development have finally brought here in the 1980's and 90's - the colossal bridges connecting Shikoku with the main island, pleasure resorts, theme parks, museums, skyline drives and relatively inexpensive golf courses. So the charm of Sikoku can rightly be called an exquisite coexistence of tradition and modernity, nature and art.
Last but not least is a spiritual climate of Shikoku that has produced people like the father of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, who is often credited as a father of Japanese culture, the man who aired the idea of the Seto Ohashi Bridge, and two young men who turned out to be most instrumental in carrying out the modernization of Japan, opening Japan's door to the world as an independent nation. They were all rare cosmopolitans in Japanese history. There must have been something inspiring on this island.
We hope this guidebook will help you enjoy Shikoku, and Japan herself seen through Shikoku, finding inspiration of your own by traveling around this small but great island. Bon voyage!
@
The pilgrimage known as Shikoku Henro or O-Shikoku-san is the oldest and most famous in Japan. Circumambulating the island via the 88 Buddhist temples designated as the Sacred Places of Shikoku is meant to follow the trail Kobo Daishi (Kukai) walked in his youth for ascetic practice, searching for the Truth.
That ias why the authentic pilgrims go on foot as the great saint did long ago. It takes about 60 days to hike the 1,647 km, going deep into rugged mountains, plodding along sandy beaches, rocky coasts, through fields and hills, villages and towna. Indeed, it is a walking Zen.
The Shikoku Pilgrimage is nonsectarian, though Kukai was the founder of the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism. Pilgrimage seem to forget their Buddhist sects in worshiping Kobo Daishi who stands far beyond factionalism. Not all of the 88 temples are of the Shingon sect, either. It is impossible to discuss this pilgrimage without recounting the life of Kukai.
Mao (Kukai) was born in 774 in what is now Zentsuji City, the seat of Zentsu-ji Temple, the 75th Sacred Place of Shikoku, as the third son of Saeki Yoshimichi, the Lord of the County. The boy Kukai was so bright and gifted that his parents expected him to go into government service, the most respected profession at the time. When he was 15, he was sent up to Kyoto, the then new capital, where he studied with his maternal uncle, a great Confucianist and turor to one of the Emperor's sons.
At 18, he entered the university and studied hard. But soon he was disappointed with the curriculum offered there - the principles of govornment, history, poetry, filial piety and loyalty. What he had been searching for was the ultimate truth.
Then he happened to meet a Buddhist monk, who taught him to practice a meditation called Kokuzo-gumonjiho - to invoke Kokuzo, a deity of space whose wisdom is as vast as space, through mantra-reciting one million times according to the proper method - which was to enable him to acquire a phenomenal memory of teachings and principles. This made him choose Buddhism and the priesthood rather than Confucianism and bureaucracy. He left the university. It was a very hard decision for him, because he was turning his back on the tradition and expectations of his own clan. Yet he had to.
For many years he applied himsalf alternately to the intense study of Buddhist texts and to meditation deep in the mountains. At 19, in a cave at Cape Muroto, the southeastern tip of Shikoku Island, he finally succeeded in attaining enlightenment through performing Kokuzo-gumonjiho. What he had been seeing all the while was the sky and the sea - the Pacific Ocean. In memory of this great moment, he decided to call himself Kukai-Sky and Sea.
At 24, he finished Sango Shiiki, a drama in which he compared the three principles he had already mastered - Confucianism, Buddhism sand Taoism - to demonstrate the supremacy of Buddhism. It was his final declaration of turning to Buddhism.
Yet Kukai was not satisfied with the Buddhism of those days in Japan. He was searching for something like the unity of the Buddha's teachings. Then he found the sutra that presented the Buddha Mahavairocana as idealizing the truth of the universe. But there were passages so mysterious that no one in Japan could tell him anything about them. So he decided to go to China. At 31 he succeeded in accompanying the envoy to T'ang China.
At the Chinese Capital, Ch'ang-an, the greatest cosmopolitan city at that time, he met Abbot Hui-kuo, the 7th patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism, who had already had no less than one thousand disciples. The moment he set eyes on the young man from Japan, the abbot knew he was the very person he had long been waiting for as his successor. All those years of hard study and ascetic practices had brought him so close to his Chinese master that, after three months of study under the abbot, Kukai was ordained as the 8th patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism.
At the end of the year (805), Abbot Hui-kuo passed away. Before his death, he had told Kukai to return to Japan as soon as possible to spread the teachings to increase the happiness of the people there. But how could he return soon? There were 18 years before another Japanese mission was to come to China...
Then the Emperor of the T'ang Dynasty died and a Japanese delegation came to Ch'ang-an to attend his funeral. Kukai was allowed to join their return journey. It was fortunate for the Japanese to have him back so soon, considering his great achievements in the ensuing years. In fact it was not until 34 years later that another envoy sent to China returned to Japan. Three years earlier Kukai had passed away.
After 16 month in Ch'ang-an, Kukai brought home from China 247 scrolls of precious sutras, 44 scrolls of Sanskrit mantras and stotras, 170 scrolls of scriptural commentaries, 9 kinds of ritual implements, and a number of religious images and objects. There must have also been some Chinese works of literature, language, medicine, calligraphy and art. It is generally believed that Kukai introduced measures and rules, Chinese-type medicines, varieties of seeds, as well as the arts of dyeing, of making Indian ink and writing brushes, and of building Chinese temples, bridges and embankments. He is said to have been the first Japanese to grow tea and process it, to use coal and petrol, and to make Chinese cakes and candies.
He brought all these thinds to firmly take root in the soil of Japan, greatly raising her religious and cultural standard, until at last she began to produce her own Buddhism and her own culture. This accounts for why Kukai is often credited as a father of Japanese culture.
In fact, the first thing he did when he came back to Japan was to reread all those enormous volumes of sutras, trying to unite the two kinds of esoteric Buddhism - Kongokai (the spiritual principle) and Taizokai (the physical principle) - into one. Thus he finally created a new esoteric Buddhism which he called the Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon.
Kukai was also fortunate enough to have the Emperor Saga, a scholar, poet and admirer of advanced culture from the Continent, as his patron and longtime friend. He was granted possession of Mt. Koya in Kii (Wakayama Pref.), where he founded a monastic center for students of meditation. It was also his spiritual home, where he wrote many books of immense value, one of which was JujuShinron in which he examined all the philosophies and religions known at that time in the Eastern world, comparing them with his own Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon.
Later the Emperor presented him with a state temple, Toji in Kyoto, as his headquarters in propagating his Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon. It focuses on this life, saying that men and women have the seed of Buddhahood within them, and that by following its precepts and practices, anyone can achieve enlightenment in this lifetime.
Then Kukai founded the first school in Japan open to the poor as well as to the rich. A dictionary in 30 volumes which he compiled for the pupils there was the first of its kind in Japan.
It is widely believed that Kobo Daishi invented hiragana (the Japanese phonetic syllabary) and created katakana (another syllabary) through his knowledge of Sanskrit. Until then, reading and writing were restricted to scholars and aristocrats who could spend years learning thousands of Chinese characters. Now kana syllabaries enabled even common people to write their language phonetically. Noblewomen also took up kana, producing fine novels, essays, diaries and poems. It was with this kana that Lady Murasaki wrote perhaps the world's first great novel, The Tale of Genji.
There are about 3,000 folktales and legends about Kobo Daishi (kukai) told and retold all over the country. No other person in Japan has ever commanded such devotion. Many of the tales are about how he saved people by bringing forth a spring, digging a well, taming an unruly river, divining a hot spring, healing the sick, giving the blind sight, the crippled ability to walk, and so on. these stories are based on the fact that he never tired of putting the profound ideas of his religion into practice to bring happiness to people.
After his passing away in 835, those who believed in his nyujo or entering into a plane of meditation, began to make the rounds of his memorial places in Shikoku. This is considered to be the origin of the Shikoku Pilgrimage. Even today formal pilgrims will start from Koyasan, and after making the circuit of 88 temples, will return to Koyasan via Temple No.1, just as the first disciples of Kobo Daishi did long ago.
In 921 the man who called himself Priest Kukai was posthumously canonized as Kobo Daishi. "Daishi" means "Great Saint," a title bestowed by the Imperial Court upon Buddhist priests of the highest virtue. "Kobo" means "to spread widely the Teachings." There are 23saints who have been conferred the title of Daishi. But as a popular saying goes: "Kobo made off with the title of Daishi." That is, when one speaks of the Daishi there is no queestion whom one means. Yet in Shikoku people often call this saint of saints "O-Daishi-san" as if he were one of their neighbors, revealing their affectionate love of him and their belief that he is still here.
Usually the pilgrimage is made clockwise. But some people deliberately make a counterclockwise circuit as Emon Saburo did until he finally succeeded in meeting the Daishi (p.80). The number 88 represents the number of evil passions identified by Buddhist doctrine, and ideally it is believed that one can get rid of all evil passions by visiting each of the 88 temples. In that sense, visiting even one temple is better than none.
Temple No.1 is where pilgrims are given the Buddhist Ten Commandments to follow at least during the Pilgrimage: Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not connit adultery. Do not tell a lie. Do not use flowery language. Do not speak ill of others. Do not be double-tongued. Do not be covetous. Do not be angry. Do not be perverse.
Same temples are comparatively accessible. But many of them are located in or atop mountains or in remote villages, as Kukai chose such places for his ascetic practices. Until only about 20 years ago, some temples were really hard to reach, though nowadays newly-built roads and ropeways have made them less forbidding.
The most authentic pilgrims go on foot all the way, spending about two mouths, because walking is closest to following in the Daishi's footsteps. Some young people go by bicycle or motorbike. Some family groups drive their cars, while others hire a taxi. still others ride the nearest trains, buses and ropeways to the temples on their own (20 days or more are required). Nowadays many people like to join the conducted bus tours (12 days: about 170,000 yen including 3 meals a day). Reservations are necessary.
Traditionally there are two pilgrimage seasons, spring and autumn, with the equinoxes as the climax, when pilgrims are generously presented with o-settai (free gifts of food and drink)*1 by local people at the temples. But all year round visitors are seen at the temples.
People usually go in sportswear or everyday clothes, in sneakers and sun visors. But not a few wear the formal costumes of Shikoku Pilgrims - the sedge hat, the wooden staff, the white suit and pouches, all bearing their motto written in calligraphy dogyo ninin meaning "Daishi and I, going together" or Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo meaning "I put my faith in Daishi, the Universal Adamantine Illuminator."
Of all the equipment, the most important is the staff. It is not just for practical use when one hikes along rugged paths in the mountains, but it is a holy symbol of the Daishi himself. So pilgrims always treat it with utmost care and reverence.
I n former days the same staff became one's grave post if one died on the way,as was often the case in those days when everyone had to walk all the way. That is why the top of the staff is designed like a Buddhist grave post. In fact, the white suit itself was and still is nothing but death garments. If the temple has a bell tower, one is expected to strike the bell announcing one's arrival to the temple divinities and Kobo Daishi. The multi-storied pagodas are derived from Buddha's tombs containing holy pieces of his bones. At each temple one should visit at least two halls - the main hall housing the principal image and the Daishi-do Hall dedicated to the Daishi. One may drop a coin into the grate-covered offering boxes placed in front of the halls. Pilgrims offer their osamefuda paper name card at each hall. White osamefuda are used by those on their first to ninth pilgrimage, red for the tenth to nineteenth, silver for the twentieth to twenty-ninth and gold for the thirtieth and more.
Most pilgrims go to an office called Nokyo-sho in or around the main hall to have the temple's signature inscribed in fine calligraphy and its vermilion seal stamped in their album or scroll or on their white jacket (about 200 yen). In this area there are maps showing how to get to the nearest temples.
Accommodations are adequate in or around the temples (4,000 yen or so a night with two meals). Of the 88 temples, 46 have their own lodges for pilgrims. For the pilgrimage season, reservations at least a week in advance are necessary; at other times one is expected to call on the previous day. There are also minshuku, Kokumin Shukusha, Youth Hostels or pilgrims' inns available near almost all the 88 temples*2.
*1 In former days begging was an important part of the Shikoku Pilgrim-age as ascetic practice. Even the rich of high rank had to beg from time to time. That tradition did enable even the penniless to make a pilgrimage, living on donations or what is called o-settai from local people.
*2 There was a custom of zengon-yado or giving a pilgrim free bed and board. In the evening a child of the house was sent out to the nearest temple to pick up one or two pilgrims to take in that night. All the host expected from them was a piece of osamefuda name card, for he was doing it for Daishi himself.
The Seto Inland Sea narrowly separates three main islands of Japan, stretching about 440 km from east to west, and 5 to 55 km from north to south. The calm waters, dotted with pine-covered islands and islets, provide a variety of scenery all the year round. The island hold various livelihoods, some serving as orchards or pastures, others as bases for fishing or shipping, yet others are known for producing fishing nets and fishing boats. Some are predominantly religious, others were port towns, while yet others have been known for the production of granite. Today some are turning to aquaculture or tourism, many of the 800 inhabited islands offering cosy summer resorts along their usually unpolluted beaches. Not a few of them are of historical interest, still retaining legends, relics and monuments from the long past of the Inland Sea as an artery of Japan's cultural, political and economic development. The following are some of the island well-knoown for their specialities: 1 awajishima 2 Shodoshima 3 Honjima 4 Omishima 5 Ikuchijima 6 miyajima
The Seto Inland Sea as a Witness of Japan's History
the climate in the Inland Sea area was relatively mild and the sea was calm and bountiful. Thus iys coastal areas cradled some of the earlist civilizations in Japan. From around 300 AD advanced cultures arrived from China and Korea, introducing ironware, bronzrware, weaving and rice- growing. Those who succeeded in crossing the treacherous Japan Sea or the China Sea continued along the Inland Sea up to the early capitals in Naniwa (Osaka) or Yamato (Nara) . During the centuries after that, Chinese writing and Buddhism followed the same route.
Meanwhile the seamen of the Inland Sea area were acquiring knowledge of tides and currents, navigating expertise and ship-building skills. Some early Emperors enlisted them for military expeditions as far as the Korean Peninsula. On the other hand, the cultures and human resources from ancient Korea - Pekche, Koguryo and Silla - greatly influenced the cultural, political and economic development of ancient Japan. In 646 the Taika Reform