Kyoto Pilgrimage Past and Present

Abstract

Kyoto Pilgrimage Past and Present Pamela D. Winfield Introduction Kyoto, or Heian‐kyō as it was known for most of its history, is perhaps unlike other pilgrimage cities in the world. It has no one distinguishing landscape feature such as the Ganges in Benares which perennially draws pilgrims to its shores. It does have the Kamo, Katsura, and Uji rivers, but these waters have primarily attracted not pilgrims but rather poets, moon viewing parties and even double love‐suicides to its banks and bridges well into the modern period. Kyoto does not possess any single sacred site such as the sanctuary in Santiago de Compostela to which penitents progress on bended, bloodied knee. Rather, it boasts thousands of Buddhist temples, Shintō shrines, Daoist‐inspired gardens and sacred mountain climbs that are designed to elevate the spirit and cultivate the connection between nature, human nature and Buddha‐nature. It has numerous pilgrimage destinations within the contours of its urban landscape, but at the same time also participates in far‐reaching pilgrimage circuits that extend well beyond the metropolitan center. All roads may lead to Rome as the old adage goes, but in Kyoto’s case, roads run both ways, leading pilgrims as much out beyond the urban setting as drawing them in toward the city center. This essay, accordingly, will address pilgrimage itineraries in and around Kyoto from the perspective of a much larger matrix of pilgrimage activity in the Kansai region. In the process, it will revisit the false dichotomy between pilgrimage and tourism (a theme that Chaucer first brought to light over six‐hundred years ago), and hopefully shed new light on some contemporary pilgrimage practices in Japan by a whole host of players: tourists, school groups, tea aficionados, Reiki practitioners, scholars, and nature‐lovers alike. Mountain pilgrimages around the city Taking our cue from Victor Hugo’s famous bird’s‐eye view of Paris, let us broadly survey the topography and chronology of Kyoto à vol d’oiseau.1 Heian‐kyō (lit. the capital of peace and tranquility) was established in 794 by Emperor Kammu to escape the political intrigues of the Buddhist clergy in the old capital of Nara.2 After a disastrous decade at the short‐lived capital at Nagaoka (784‐794 CE), Heian‐kyō was sited in the flat plain of the Yamashiro basin according to Chinese principles of feng shui geomancy. Mountains (symbolizing the male yang aspect) surround the capital on three sides to the north, and its rivers (symbolizing the female yin aspect) flow south. Buddhist Mt. Hiei to the northeast and proto‐Shintō Mt. Kurama to the northwest protected the capital from evil influences that were believed to emanate from the north. Like most sacred mountains, these peaks were closed to women before the so‐called nyonin kekkai ban was lifted in the nineteenth century, but today both male and female pilgrims are able to make their way up the slopes by bus, funicular, or (rarely) by foot. Many Tendai Buddhist congregations and confraternities organize package tours to their head temple at Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei to pay homage to their founder Saichō (767‐822) and the great Tendai reformers of the medieval period.3 Perhaps the most impressive practice associated with the mountain is the Kaihōgyō or 1,000‐day austerity‐training performed by Tendai “marathon monks.”4 They circumambulate the mountain’s temple complex in sets of 100 or 200 days per year, incessantly chanting the mantra of Fudō myōō, the King of Immovable Wisdom. They run approximately thirty kilometers per day in straw sandals, stopping only to sleep, eat, or pause at approximately 260 worship stops. They culminate their pilgrimage in their seventh year by including the entire city of Kyoto in their circumambulation. On the other side of the city to the northwest, other less organized and less intense pilgrims hike Mt. Kurama to retrace the steps of Mikao Usui (1865‐1926). This modern‐day seeker reputedly discovered the hands‐on healing technique of Reiki in either 1914 or 1922 (the accounts differ) while in retreat on the mountain.5 Other visitors attend the annual Kurama fire festival here which commemorates the transfer and enshrinement of a kami...