Wandering with Basho: A Journey Around the Saigoku 33 Temples of Kannon Pilgrimage

200 Pages·2013·2.51 MB·English

by  Craig McLachlan

Wandering with Bashō
by Craig McLachlan
Text copyright © 2013 Craig McLachlan
All Rights Reserved

Published by:
Paradise Promotions Ltd
PO Box 574, Queenstown, New Zealand

www.craigmclachlan.com
For my exceptionally beautiful wife Yuriko and our boys, Riki and Ben.
“Toshi kurenu kasa kite waraji hakinagara”
Matsuo Bashō, 1685

“Another year is gone –
a traveler’s hat on my head,
straw sandals on my feet.”
Introduction
Thank you for buying this book!
I would like to point out, before anyone starts reading it, that Paul and I are in
no way comparing our adventure in journeying around the Saigoku 33 Temples
of Kannon pilgrimage to the wanderings of the great poet and traveler, Matsuo
Bashō. We are both Bashō fans, and the reason that quotes from Bashō appear in
this book, is that we would like to point out just how relevant Bashō’s haiku is in
the modern world. His genius should not be cast aside and forgotten just because
his poems were written over 300 years ago.
Paul becomes Bashō in this book, but hopefully the great man would take no
offence to this use of his name. We both have great admiration for Matsuo
Bashō, and mean him no disrespect.
We also mean no disrespect to Kannon when she is recognized as ‘the deity of
golf’, and none for Jizō, when he is mentioned as ‘Kannon’s caddy’.
This book is neither a history book nor a guidebook. It is simply the
experiences of a pair of gaijin pilgrims out making an effort!

Craig McLachlan
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 1
On Ancient Trails
Seaigantoji to Totsugawa Onsen

“Shibaraku wa taki ni komoru ya ge no hajime”
Matsuo Bashō, 1689

“For a while I sit
meditating by the falls –
start of a summer retreat.”

Paul lives in a van. He parks it up the Manoa Valley, above the University of
Hawai’i, and when he meets girls who ask him where he lives, he simply says
‘Manoa’. This usually impresses them, as Manoa is full of some of Honolulu’s
most expensive and impressive homes. It’s not until the third or fourth date that
they find out he lives in a van. It’s at this point that Paul discovers how much
they really like him. All are intrigued, but some are less impressed than others.
As vans go, it’s a nice van. It has a double bed in the back, tinted windows and
great ventilation. Each morning when he gets up, Paul hops on his motorbike,
rides down to the university gym, where he takes a shower, then heads over to
his local coffee shop for ‘a brew’. After that, he walks to the university where he
works, studies and teaches. He plays tennis on Tuesday evenings, sails on a
yachting team on Fridays and hangs out with his mates over the weekend.
He has plenty of female admirers who are constantly trying to walk him down
the aisle, but none have pinned him down as yet. Single men over forty who are
straight are in hot demand in Honolulu.
Each evening, Paul rides back to his Manoa ‘apartment’ on which he has to
pay no land taxes! His life is all nicely worked out.

We’ve been friends for nearly twenty years, since Paul visited New Zealand
and stayed with my family during his seven-year world sojourn. He went
everywhere and did everything. Or so it seemed. He kept talking about going to
Japan and walking around Shikoku. Around the 88 Sacred Temples of Shikoku.
Back in 1981, I’d never heard of the pilgrimage, let alone the great saint,
Kōbōdaishi. As a university student in New Zealand, I was too interested in
Kiwi girls, rugby and beer.
Before I went to walk around the Shikoku pilgrimage in 1995, I wrote to Paul
to see if he’d like to join me. After all, it was his idea.
“You bastard! I’ve always wanted to do that! And now you’re going to do it
without me! Can’t go this year. Too busy!” was the reply.
“Well don’t worry. We’ll figure out another pilgrimage to go on sometime,” I
replied, not really expecting to go on another pilgrimage and not even knowing
of any.
The year 2000 rolled around. Somehow, with Paul’s help and a lot of luck, I
received a scholarship to the University of Hawai’i to study for a Master of
Business Administration graduate degree. It was a fully-paid scholarship with
living expenses included. 37-year old, married, fathers-of-two rarely get such an
opportunity. My wife and kids liked the idea of a year in Hawai’i, so we jumped
at the opportunity. And of course, Paul was there, living in his van.

“So which pilgrimage are we going on?” he asked when we arrived in
Hawai’i.
“Aah …. how about the Saigoku 33 Temples of Kannon pilgrimage?” I
replied, coming up with the only other pilgrimage in Japan I knew the name of.
“Ok, sounds good. What do you know about it?”
“Not much.”
“I’ll find out,” he replied. The University of Hawai’i has a huge reference
library when it comes to Japan and Asia, and with the East-West Center on
campus, is proud of its Asian Studies Department.
“We might even be able to get some funding. If you can disguise yourself as
an academic, that is!”
“Can’t be that hard,” I replied, “you’ve been doing it for years!”

We gathered together some information. I had a friend in Japan mail me a
guidebook and some maps, and Paul scoured the university for anything
relevant. His greatest find was a copy of ‘The History of Japan’ by Englebert
Kaempfer, published in London in 1727 in two volumes. It was an original, and
so old and brittle that we could only look at it on special request. Kaempfer was
a German doctor with the Dutch in Nagasaki, who made trips to Tokyo and back
in 1691 and 1692 to pay homage to the Shōgun. His vivid descriptions of
Tokugawa Japan are intriguing, and were what Europeans used as a base for
their knowledge of Japan for the next century and a half. Some of his
observations of pilgrimages are absolutely fascinating.
We found some funding. Not much, but enough to make the plan become
feasible. The Asian Studies Department found a scholarship fund with some cash
in it and came to the party.
“As long as you’re happy to ‘sleep out’ almost every night, we should be able
to do it within our budget,” I ascertained, having already determined that we
were looking at a twenty-five day adventure. My wife and kids would stay at her
parents’ place in Osaka while Paul and I were ‘on the road’.
“Hey, I live in a van,” Paul replied. “I can sleep anywhere!”
“You may have to!”

Timing was tricky. The stifling Japanese summer was the only time we could
go.
“I’ve got a three week gap between finishing classes here in Hawai’i, and
starting my internship in Osaka,” I said. My MBA course included twelve
months of classes in Hawai’i, followed by a three-month internship in Japan.
“Maybe they’ll let me go early if I write a paper about the pilgrimage. We need
twenty-five days. And it’s going to be mid-summer you know. It’s going to be
bloody hot! Not the best time to do it, but ….”
“But we’ll do it anyway.”
“Right!”

Paul introduced me to the appropriate professor, who agreed to oversee the
paper I would write, and then I got the necessary permission to leave the
university two weeks early in mid-July. I’d have to complete a batch of papers
for the business school before I left, but since the ‘adventure’ was now disguised
as some sort of ‘academic fieldwork’, the permission was forthcoming.
“When do you think they’ll discover that I’m not really an academic?” I asked
Paul.
“I think they already know,” he replied, grinning.

And that’s how we got to be standing at the bottom of the steps that lead up to