Hokkaido Highway Blues

and, instead of becoming a Buddha, chooses instead to stay on this earth to help others make the same journey.
    As Kūkai, he was a charismatic, hardworking, progressive priest. As Kōbō Daishi, he became something more, a divine figure, a source of miracles and wonders. Legends about the Daishi grew: he gathered disciples, he cured the sick, he healed the lame, and he gave sight to the blind. (Any of this sound familiar?) And when the Daishi struck his staff against the ground, fresh mountain water gushed out. Indeed, you can’t turn around anywhere in Shikoku, or even Japan for that matter, without stumbling upon a spring created by Kōbō Daishi. He is also credited—apocryphally—with inventing the kana, Japan’s phonetic writing system. The kana, simplistic yet beautiful, freed Japan from some of the restraints inherent in the ill-suited, yet doggedly preserved, system of Chinese kanji characters. In this, too, he helped separate Japan from China and set it on a markedly different course.
    After Kōbō Daishi’s death, a pilgrimage route slowly took shape on Shikoku. It has been followed by the faithful ever since. The Eighty-eight Temple Route, as it is known, more or less follows the coast clockwise, in a circle that begins and ends north of Tokushima City. Because it is a circle, one needn’t begin at the first temple. You can join at any point, and you can even complete the journey counterclockwise. It covers twelve hundred kilometers (seven hundred forty miles) and takes two or three months on foot, though in older times it took much longer and the route was harsher. The anonymous graves of pilgrims who died on the journey litter the way.
    The Daishi only founded a handful of the Eighty-eight Temples, and for the most part he was following even older paths. Ancient pilgrim routes were absorbed into the larger circuit, which remained a somewhat disjointed collection of holy sites until they were united in the journey of a man named Emon Saburō, the first true pilgrim. Emon was the Saul/Paul to Kōbō Daishi’s Christ.
    Emon Saburō was a greedy man, coldhearted and sly, who had grown rich and fat on the work of others. Having reached his middle years, he surveyed his domain and was satisfied. Life—in its most ephemeral, illusionary aspect— had been good to him. Then a beggar appeared, asking for alms. Emon chased him away. The next day the beggar returned and again Emon chased him away. When the beggar returned the next day, Emon struck him, and when the beggar returned yet again Emon relented. “Give me your begging bowl,” he said, “and I will fill it for you.” He handed it back full of his own excrement. “There!” he laughed. “That will get rid of you.” But again the beggar returned. Furious, Emon smashed the bowl to the ground and it shattered into eight equal parts. The monk came no more.
    Having rejected the spiritual, Emon Saburō returned to the bloated satisfaction of his life. But it was a life built on illusions and one by one the certainties passed. His sons died, his fields withered, sickness came, and all the money in the world could not stave off old age or death. It was then that Emon remembered the beggar monk that he had driven away.
    Emon set out to locate the monk. He following the monk’s route from temple to temple, and at every turn, Emon left a paper with his name written on it (something which persists to this day in a sort of spiritual graffiti; temples across Japan are plastered with visitors’ names). Many times Emon arrived only moments after the monk had departed. Sometimes only footsteps after him, then only heartbeats, yet never did he overtake the beggar monk, and eventually he arrived back where he had started. He had closed the circle and still, nothing. By now he knew with certainty who it was he was following; he was chasing the spirit of Kōbō Daishi himself. Again, Emon set out and again he followed the path around Shikoku, and again he returned without reaching the Daishi. Emon was now living on alms, for he had given up his possessions and ambitions. He pursued the Daishi for more than four years, coming closer and closer yet never succeeding. He even circled it the other way, in the hopes of intercepting the Daishi coming back, but to no avail. After twenty-one circuits, his health was failing. He stopped, sank down on the rocky path, and, weeping, he conceded defeat. And it was only then that Kōbō Daishi appeared...
    At that moment,