Hokkaido Highway Blues

naturally). Another temple had imagery embroidered in human hair donated by one hundred thousand people, including past prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru. Another had once been a nursery for a captive tiger, another had as its altar a piece of Buddhist statuary that washed up on shore from the bottom of the sea in 1651. There was even a newly erected giant statue of Kannon, several stories high, with stairs inside it for devout pilgrim’s to scramble up, and look out at the world through the eyes of enlightenment (literally).
    However, the sakura had begun to scatter and it was time to move on. Shuhō took me to Fukuda Port to catch a late-night ferry and—convinced that we were late—he flew along at a breakneck speed, taking American risks on narrow Japanese roads, using the center line as a crosshairs. Shuhō was right. We were late, but fortunately, at some point we hit Warp Speed and managed to arrive five minutes before the ferry set out. Convoys of graniteladen trucks were already filing on as Shuhō came zooming in, and I scrambled on board, my pack having grown even heavier in the interim. Shuhō waved from the dock as the ropes were tossed down.
    A Transformer Priest. A San Francisco farewell. Sad rocks, a Greek shrine, and a Mediterranean landscape. None of it made any sense. Since we go astray, the three worlds are castles. Since we are enlightened, all the directions are nonexistent.
     
    * * *
     
    The ferry slid free of the island and into the night, past the peaks of drowned mountains, other islands. Somewhere to the east was the churning whirlpool of Naruto, where currents meet and collide just below the surface.
    There is one last story of Shōdo to tell, and it is appropriate to save it for now, for it was on a night like this, on a ferry departing Shōdo for the mainland that an eighty-four-year-old man—a pilgrim—walked out onto the deck and, quietly, unobtrusively, slipped away. His name was Ichikawa Danzo VIII, a Kabuki actor of note, and in his death he gave his last and greatest performance, a performance that would assure him immortality.
    Ichikawa first appeared on stage as a child in arms. When he retired in April 1965, it was celebrated as eighty-two years on stage. After the fetes and final farewell performance, he traveled to Shikoku and set off, alone, to follow the Eighty-eight Temple Route of Kōbō Daishi. It was a remarkable undertaking for a man in his late years, and there are suggestions that he never expected to finish the pilgrimage, that he expected to die on the road. But Ichikawa finished his trek at the end of May, after the sakura had fallen and the circle had closed. He was at a loss over what to do. He sailed for Shōdo, apparently to complete that island’s pilgrimage as well—but something changed his mind.
    Why he chose to leave the final circle unfinished remains a mystery. Perhaps he was simply tired. He spent the last days of his life alone in a small inn on Shōdo before boarding a midnight ferry for Osaka. Rain was washing across the deck as Ichikawa made his way to the stern and stepped over the guardrail into a dark sea. He was never seen again. It was as though his body had vanished. He had chosen the moment of his exit carefully; the ferry was crossing the strong eastern currents of the Inland Sea and he was swept away into the whirlpool of Naruto—and the endless circles it spins.
    Ichikawa’s death became legend, the ultimate act of autonomy, the pilgrim deciding for himself how the journey would end. In Japanese Pilgrimage , Oliver Statler writes, “His was not an act of desperation but of resolution. He walked out of life as he had walked off the stage, with composure.”
    Which is not quite how I intend to go when my own circle comes to a close. I plan on being dragged into that great abyss by my fingernails, screaming and kicking all the way. Ichikawa, you’re a better man than I am.
    As the darkness fell on the ship’s deck, I retreated inside, looking for voices and well-lit rooms.
     

 
     

 
     

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    On THE FERRY to Honshu, I had the misfortune of making friends with a group of truck drivers. They were huddled in the empty cafeteria on the ferry’s upper deck drinking beer. The cafeteria itself was long closed but the vending machines were still running, and the truckers were sitting about eating dried fish and kicking back the beer. They soon spotted me, and I was hailed like a returning general. “Oi! Gaijin!”
    They