Chapter X: Some Holy Places of Japan

The Japanese go to church quite as much as do most other peoples. In their case, however, it is really to the temple, for while there are thousands of Japanese Christians, there are more than a hundred and fifty times as many who are not Christians. Sunday is not different from any other day in the temples of Japan. On certain days of the year special celebrations or festivals bring larger crowds, but most temples have their worshipers every day of the week. Very seldom is there anything like a sermon, or what we would call a service, and hymns are not sung.

Instead, the Japanese boy or girl who goes to a temple finds priests in long robe-like kimonos, generally with shaven heads, sitting or strolling in various parts of the great building. They sell prayers written on tissue paper, and other religious things which the worshipers may want to buy. Sometimes they do hold a kind of service, at which they chant. But such a service is usually for themselves, with few if any in the “congregation.” Each worshiper himself calls upon the gods, which are represented by great gaudy images, some of them gigantic. In many of the temples there are wooden slats in the floor before the altar. The man or woman, and even the child, who is about to pray to one of these gods claps his hands three times to call the god’s attention, drops a copper coin between the slats into the hollow underneath, and then bows low several times and goes away, perhaps to pray to another god farther on.

Most of the Japanese are Buddhists or Confucianists, that is, followers of the Hindu philosopher Buddha, or the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who lived thousands of years ago. But they are also nearly all Shintoists, seeing no reason why they should not have two religions. Shintoism is really patriotism turned into a religion. The Mikado or Emperor is called the Son of Heaven, and many of the Japanese still believe that their ruler is descended from the gods. Just how sacred they hold their Mikado is shown by the proclamation issued in Formosa, the most southern island of Japan, when Crown Prince Hirohito, who became Emperor in 1926, stopped there. The people were ordered:

Not to get sick and start an epidemic during the imperial visit.

To fly the Japanese flag from every building along the Prince’s route.

To dress neatly, to wear their stockings and geta, to take off their
hats when the procession was passing, and not to use spyglasses or
look down upon the Prince from upstairs or any other elevation.

Famous Temples of Kyoto

Kyoto, which means “western capital,” as Tokyo means “eastern capital,” has the finest temples in Japan. No one who visits the Japanese at home should fail to see that splendid city of sacred buildings; and you may be sure we did not. For all its size, it is a quiet, gentle city, that center of the Buddhist faith in Japan. Formerly the mikados lived there, and travelers are allowed to visit the imperial palace, now seldom used. A great wall and moat surround it, and there are large gardens with many trees and flowers. The palace itself is also large, though much simpler than we expect emperors’ palaces to be. The floors are covered with thick mats, like any other Japanese floor, and on the paper or frail wooden walls are painted bamboos and trees and flowers, with birds here and there. Even the room where the Emperor or the Crown Prince sleeps when he comes to Kyoto contains nothing that Westerners would consider furniture.

Within the grounds of the finest of Kyoto’s temples.
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But the temples, some of them with one great tile roof above a lower one, are the chief sights of Kyoto. In them are some of the most artistic things in Japan—big, richly colored statues of the gods, or of the disciples of Buddha. These disciples correspond to the saints in the Christian religion. The altars of carved wood, the great pillars, the brightly colored yet restful interiors, are all worth going a long way to see, and we were tempted to stay longer than we should. There are gnarled pine trees, spreading cherry trees said to be hundreds of years old, thousands of goldfish swimming in the sacred ponds. All in all, the ancient capital is a place where the days seem to slip past without regrets.

Not far from Kyoto there is a mountain river with many rapids down which it is great sport to shoot, in little boats cleverly handled by expert Japanese boatmen. Nor should one leave the region of the city of magnificent temples without a trip to Lake Biwa, returning by canal. This canal runs straight through a mountain, and for nearly half an hour you can imagine yourself in the heart of the earth, or in a gigantic watermain, riding along as smoothly and pleasantly as if on an outdoor river.

My small son still remembers Nara, another city of pine forests and many temples, an hour or two by train south of Kyoto. Nara is noted for its tame deer, and one of these in a playful mood bowled the boy over and gave him the scare of his young life. It is forbidden to harm the pretty brown deer of Nara in any way, for they are considered sacred. Up in the shaded hills of Nara is one of those enormous bells that are to be found among the temples of Japan. I cannot tell you just how many tons it weighs, but it is so large that half a dozen of you could crowd together inside it. This bell is rung by striking it with a great pole, like the mast of a ship, suspended horizontally beside it, and its boom can be heard for many miles in every direction.

Shinto Temples

In Nara the sacred deer run everywhere about the town. They have been
so carefully protected and are so well treated that they are as tame
as pet dogs.
]

By accident I came to Yamada-Ise, the Shinto center of Japan, just in time for a great celebration that takes place only once in twenty-one years. I could hardly have waited around for the next celebration if I had missed this one. Many thousands of pilgrims were already there and thousands more were arriving on the trains. In general, the Japanese are great travelers, often going on pilgrimages to their holy places. Even school children go on pilgrimages, and, far from trying to stop them, the government helps them by offering very low excursion rates on the railroads. The rulers of Japan are wise in considering travel an important part of education.

The Shinto temples of Yamada-Ise are made of wood, and in theory they are rebuilt every twenty-one years. The thousands of pilgrims had come to see, and take part in, this important ceremony. Those who had come on foot, as true pilgrims are supposed to do, were washing their weary feet in wooden tubs in the many small inns. In the street in front of these inns, and in the shops selling food and sacred relics, were men who acted like “barkers” at our American fairs, all shouting for customers at the top of their voices. You can imagine what an uproar there was in this placid village that had suddenly become an overcrowded city.

The holy city of Yamada-Ise is divided into twenty-one wards, and the people of each division vie with those of the other wards in doing all they can for the rebuilding ceremony. Each ward makes a great cart with solid wooden wheels on which to haul logs from the river to the temples that are to be rebuilt or repaired. I came upon one of these soon after I arrived, a cart so heavy that it seemed to crush the cobblestones in the streets. A huge rope, nearly a quarter of a mile long, was attached to it, and on this nearly all the inhabitants of the ward were pulling. First there were little girls, then larger girls, then little boys and larger boys, then hundreds of men, pulling for all they were worth. Yet even so the cart moved very slowly. It was gaily decorated, but not yet loaded, for the logs were still down on the bank of the river on which they had been floated from the imperial forests farther upstream.

One of the many sacred timbers at Yamada-Ise, each carried on a huge
cart, and pulled by the united strength of many men.
]

A Great Celebration

That evening each ward paraded with a great float. In some of them men and women and children stood motionless, grouped in tableaux. In others there were musicians, playing and singing as they were pulled along; or sometimes they were only pretending to be pulled along as they walked inside the float. The musicians and those in the tableaux wore costumes such as were worn in Japan hundreds of years ago. In the morning nearly all the people of the town, but especially the boys and girls, appeared in queer, gay garments. Some of the girls had big baskets of flowers on their heads in place of hats. Most boys carried one of the symbols of Shintoism, a stick with a bundle of torn papers attached to one end of it—somewhat resembling a feather duster.

A family in the town of Yamada-Ise dressed up for the celebration
which takes place there every twenty-one years.
]

There are two great shrines, miles apart, at Yamada-Ise, each with many old and new temples among great pine and cryptomeria forests. Just inside the outer gates of the most important shrine flows a sacred river, and every pilgrim stops to wash in it before going on to the temples. These are huge structures, made entirely of wood. In a way Shintoism holds forests sacred, and the Japanese are very wise in conserving their great woods. When the forests begin to thin out, trees from nurseries are brought and replanted. This shrine at the base of a mountain was in a park of immense trees, bigger than any we have outside California. Because superstitious Japanese believe that the bark of these trees is a protection against evil spirits, the government has erected tree guards, similar to those in our parks, but made of bamboo splints instead of wire. These make it difficult for pilgrims to injure the trees.

The temples must not be painted, and the builders of new ones must follow the old architecture. For this reason, not only the aged and weather-blackened temples but the gleaming new ones just built look very old-fashioned indeed. In one of the temples there was a sacred horse. Once you have seen how scarce horses are and how much horse-work the Japanese peasant has to do himself, you do not wonder that many Japanese almost worship them. But the pilgrims did not bow down before this horse, or do any of the other things which the more superstitious Hindus do before their sacred bulls. They only halted to buy and feed him a penny’s worth of beans, much as you might offer peanuts to a monkey or an elephant at the zoo. I wonder if travelers from far-off lands who see Americans doing that suppose we worship elephants and monkeys.

Hauling Logs for the Temple

Two girls of Yamada-Ise, the sacred Shinto city of Japan, dressed for
the great log-hauling festival. Their hats are covered with real
flowers.
]

When I got back to the town of Yamada itself early that afternoon the great festival was at its height. Each ward had taken its ponderous cart down to the river, stripped off all the decorations, and loaded one of the logs for the rebuilding of the temples. These great logs are of _hinoki_ wood, cut in the imperial forests, and they are considered so sacred that they were all wrapped in grass mats to keep them from being injured. Not only the carts but even the people pulling them had done away with their finery and looked very serious and determined. The small girls and boys, who might have been more hindrance than help, were no longer pulling. But all the larger boys and young men in the ward were tugging at the great rope. Clouds of dust surrounded them. Sweat poured down their grimy faces. The great carts ground over the cobblestones, groaning under their heavy loads. The crowd of people was so great that policemen had to drive them back often—and those same policemen tried to prevent me from taking photographs.

At the foot of the sacred mountain of Koya-san this Japanese boy asked
for the job of carrying my baggage to the top, thus earning a _yen_,
worth about half an American dollar.
]

Finally each cart was dragged into the grounds of the second most important shrine of Yamada-Ise, and the pullers could lie down on their backs and rest. But the next day and the next would be the same, for this ceremony lasts a full week. Then the pilgrims recede, like a retreating tidal wave, and leave the village of Yamada to twenty-one more years of quiet.

Pilgrims to Koya-san

Not very far away from sacred Yamada-Ise is another very holy place. It is Koya-san, or as we might say “Mount Koya,” at the top of which is the most venerated shrine of Buddhism in Japan. I climbed the mountain on foot, along with hundreds of pilgrims. But those who do not like three or four hours of steady climbing have to be carried up in a sort of hammock swung from a big bamboo pole that is carried on two men’s shoulders. Most of the pilgrims walked, but the more wealthy ones at least hired a porter to carry their baggage. There were many of these porters, women and boys as well as men, ready for such a job anywhere along the foot of the mountain.

Japanese women reaching the top of the long climb to the sacred
Buddhist shrine of Koya-san, in _kagos_, or mountain chairs borne on
the shoulders of stout coolies.
]

Two pilgrims to Koya-san. The one on the left has just arrived by
train at the foot of the sacred mountain and is about to begin the
ascent. The pilgrim on the right has equipment consisting of a staff
with bell, a sack for food, and a box of sacred images. See how well
the hats protect their wearers from the sun.
]

Before I finished my pilgrimage to Koya-san I found that there were all kinds of people among the pilgrims—doctors, professors, business men from Osaka, steamship managers from Kobe. But you could hardly have guessed it from their appearance, for they all wore queer pilgrim costumes that made them look like peasants on a holiday. On every little piece of projecting ground along the mountain road stood a tea house or an outdoor restaurant, where climbers could rest in the cool breeze and look down upon the great carpet of rice fields far below.

Beggars sat here and there asking for charity. Some of them were badly crippled or had dreadful diseases, but they were not so unfortunate as thousands we saw later along the way to pilgrimage places in China. Some of them were comedians, and tried to win coppers by amusing the pilgrims. One fellow wearing white fingerless “mitts” had slung around his neck a great wooden box with a coin-slot in it, and walked on _geta_ so high as to be almost like stilts.

Entertained by Buddhist Priests

Before I reached the top of the mountain I had made friends with some pilgrims from Osaka, and not far from the summit we were all met by a young Buddhist priest, who invited us to come to his monastery. Formerly no women were allowed to enter Koya-san; they had to say their prayers and turn back from the ancient gate. Now women are gaining more freedom in Japan, and the two in our party went on to the monastery with us.

The rooms where we were invited to take off our shoes and squat on cushions were much like those of a good Japanese hotel. In fact, some of the monasteries of Koya-san might be considered hotels, for though the monks invite pilgrims to be their guests they expect them to pay. After a very good Japanese dinner, which of course I had to eat with chopsticks, two of the young priests took us on a tour of the place. There were many aged temples, rather different from the Shinto temple at Yamada-Ise. Some of them contained wonderful examples of old Japanese art. There were tapestries, paintings, illuminated texts, carvings by a famous man named Unkei who lived hundreds of years ago. But most of the summit of Koya-san is a great cemetery. It did not look much like our cemeteries. Not only are Japanese tombstones different from ours, but most of these had been standing since long before our forefathers came to America. So, of course, they were blackened with time, and some looked ready to drop of old age.

Every great man of old Japan, from mikados to famous monks and priests, has a tomb at Koya-san. This does not mean that they all are buried there, but that in memory of each a tomb has been erected under the great cryptomeria trees. Since even the ordinary Japanese likes the idea of having some reminder of himself in this sacred spot after his death, a _Kotsu-do_, or “Hall of Bones,” is provided where every year a bone, or perhaps only a lock of hair, of each of thousands of dead Japanese is thrown. Thus they also have a share in the great national Buddhist graveyard beside the remains of the monk who founded this sanctuary of Koya-san nearly eleven hundred years ago.

One of the beggars on the climb to Koya-san wore a strange costume and
high _geta_ having one support instead of two, in order to appeal to
the charitable.
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But life is not all funereal at the great cemetery of Koya-san. The young monks in my temple had their jokes and their games, much like youths in other parts of the world. One of them was the tennis champion of all Koya-san; for there were a number of tennis courts among the monasteries. The young monks were very friendly, too, and sat, or rather squatted, with me in my room until bedtime, telling me stories in the little English that some of them knew.

Next morning, however, they were very solemn during the early service that I had been invited to attend. Dressed in their most religious robes they paraded with the older monks round and round an altar, some of them ringing bells and all of them chanting old Buddhist texts. Sometimes they all sat down on their heels before the altar, and then got up and slowly marched around it again. There were only a few pilgrims at this ceremony, and toward the end of it their names were called out one by one and each stepped up to the altar and sprinkled a pinch of incense into a bowl where more incense was burning. If I understood the explanation of one of the young monks who spoke a little English, these pilgrims were saying prayers for the souls of their ancestors.

Then we had breakfast back in my room, and half a dozen of the younger monks put on their sandals and went with me to the beginning of the road down the mountain. During the ceremony and in the guest rooms they had, of course, been in their stocking feet. They all bowed low and bade me _sayonara_ (good-by), and then shook hands in our Western fashion. This “strange foreign custom,” as it naturally seems to the Japanese, made several of them giggle with amusement. But as I made my way down through the splendid forest toward the rice field plain below, I could not help wondering if American boys would have been as kind and hospitable to a stray Japanese traveler who visited one of our out-of-the-way villages.