Five years ago, Citizen writer Robert Sibley walked the 800-kilometre Camino de Santiago, one of the oldest pilgrimages in Christianity. Last spring, he set out on Japan's ancient Buddhist pilgrimage -- the 1,400-km Shikoku no Michi. You can follow his pilgrimage in coming weeks in the Weekly.

Update: In the previous episode, the writer strikes out on his own and, glimpsing the soul of Japan, begins to feel like a real pilgrim.

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I draped the cloth on my head and sank into the Kami No Yu, the Water of the God. The hot water lapped across my chest as I lay back against the blue granite rim of the pool. My sigh of pleasure must have been audible to the half-dozen other bathers in the Dogo Onsen.

I had been introduced to the pleasures of Japanese bathhouses a month earlier when I spent a night at a Buddhist temple on the third day of my two-month trek along the Shikoku no Michi, The Way of Shikiko, a 1,400-kilometre pilgrimage route that follows the legendary path of the ninth-century Buddhist saint Kobo Daishi around the Japanese island of Shikoku.

Now, a month later, with 51 of the route's 88 official temples visited, I was no longer self-conscious about sharing an oversized bathtub with a bunch of men. Besides, the Dogo Onsen, an ancient sento, or public bathhouse, in Matsuyama, was as close to heaven as I was likely to get.

The sun poured through the skylight, reflecting off the grey marble walls and tiled floor to saturate the spacious room in glowing light. Shards of sunlight glinted off the surface of the pool, a semi-circle of bluish granite that spanned the width of the room. A large stone fountain at one end overflowed into the pool. On the wall above the fountain a blue-tile mosaic pictured an ascetic-looking old man sitting in a forest grove with a couple of children at his feet.

too far from home

My companions, Shuji Niwano and his son Jun, with whom I had been travelling for the past month, and Yukuo Tanaka, a retired Tokyo engineer whom I had met only a week earlier, were squatted on stools in the shower area, scrubbing and rinsing off soap and shampoo before getting into the pool. In Japan, bathhouse etiquette requires that you rinse thoroughly before entering the onsen, or hot spring. A good thing, too. The four of us had arrived hot and sweaty after a 15-kilometre hike from Joruri, a village on the outskirts of Matsuyama where we had stayed the night.

Three white-haired men sat across from me on the other side of the pool. To their right, a muscular young man lay stretched on his back, his head propped on the rim of the pool. A washcloth covered his face. On my left, another man sat on the pool's edge, holding a baby in his hands. Every once in a while he leaned forward and lowered the infant into the water, smiling as the child kicked her chubby legs. I would never see anything like this in a North American city. The mongers of political correctness would be hysterical at the thought of naked men and naked children together in a bathhouse. The Japanese, however, still regard the neighbourhood sento as a community gathering place, an institution where young and old, friends and family, can soak and gossip together. I filed the tableau away in my memory, one more image from what had been an extraordinary five weeks in Japan.

The past week had been particularly enjoyable. I was walking without complaint, my legs strong, my feet without blisters. Sure, I would be weary and aching by the end of each day, but after a hot o-furo, or bath, a supper of sashimi, a bottle (or two) of cold Kirin beer and a solid night's sleep, I was eager to walk the next morning.

In the past eight days we had trekked some 180 kilometres and visited 11 temples. The hike had taken us across a series of mountains and valleys in southwestern Shikoku that are as remote and wild as you'll likely find in modern Japan. With the physical demands of the pilgrimage no longer a preoccupation, I felt myself letting go, absorbed by the walking, sinking into the landscape. There were moments when my "real" life -- family, job, mortgage -- seemed unreal. I had crossed into that psychic landscape where the pilgrimage had become my reality. I was too far from completing my journey to start thinking of home again; at the same time, I was too far from home, both in time and space, to feel its immediate claims.

Victor and Elizabeth Turner, in their book Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, point out that to undertake a pilgrimage is to move beyond the normal strictures of society and enter into what they call a liminal state; that is, a psychological condition in which you are no longer bound by the common constructions of social order, identity and belonging. In this state, a pilgrim acquires a new, if temporary, sense of identity and belonging that is juxtaposed to everyday life.

My liminal leanings, such as they were, were largely made possible by my companions. First, Shuji and Jun, and now, Tanaka-san provided me with a little community. I had a small repertoire of Japanese words and phrases that got me through encounters, but my companions made things a great deal easier by arranging accommodations, locating a drugstore on my map, or pointing out some local monument that I would otherwise have passed by in ignorance.

Soaking in the onsen, I mentally scrolled through the past few days -- especially the day at Kanjizaiji, Temple 40 -- when Shuji began dressing as a henro, or pilgrim. That was after we met Tanaka-san, and the two events were linked. But then, as I slipped even deeper into the Kami No Yu, I was beginning to think everything was connected.

everything changed

When I first met Shuji, he wore a baggy blue sweater, a shirt, khaki slacks, running shoes and a baseball cap. His son Jun dressed much the same. They didn't even carry the kongo-tsue, or walking stick. Until we reached Temple 40, the Temple of Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy who saves people from disaster, the only henro-related item Shuji had was a nokyo-cho, the brocade-covered book in which temples affix their seals as a testament to the pilgrim's visit. Everything changed the day Tanaka-san joined our pilgrim family.

We met Yukuo Tanaka at Enkoji, Temple 39. It was late morning and I had just finished my pilgrim rituals. I was sitting on a bench waiting for Shuji and Jun, eating an orange and watching a line of turtles sunbathing on a log in the temple pond.

"Sumimasen, henro-san." "Excuse me, pilgrim."

I looked up at a balding, round-faced man in glasses. He looked to be in his late 50s. He wore the white vest and held a pilgrim hat in his hand. He was neat and dapper, his vest clean and unstained -- unlike mine. I immediately assumed he was a bus henro, a member of some tour group driving the temple route.

His English was good, if stilted. "You are American?" he said.

"Iie," I said. "Kanadajin desu." "No, I'm Canadian."

"I have never been to Canada. I wanted to see the Aurora Borealis," he said, stumblingly on the Latin.

The reference to the northern lights surprised me. I'd spent much of my life in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon where the northern lights are a common sight. To have someone say out of the blue that he wanted to see a phenomenon I remembered from childhood was something I could not dismiss as mere coincidence.

I said I had often seen the northern lights and, yes, they are "totemo utsukushii," "very beautiful."

"Watakushi no namae Tanaka, Yukuo," he said, following the Japanese practice of placing the family name before his given name. He said he was from Tokyo.

"Hajimemashite," I said, introducing myself. "I am pleased to meet you."

Tanaka-san had been walking the Henro Michi for about four weeks, but I was the first henro gaikokujin, or foreign pilgrim, he had seen.

I tried my memorized responses. I was a journalist, a jaanarizumu, with a nikkan shinbun, or daily newspaper, in Canada and I was interested in Japanese culture. "Henro wo surutameni nihonni kimashita." "I came to Japan for the pilgrimage."

Shuji and Jun came out of the temple at that moment. "Tanaka-san o goshokai shimasu," I said to Shuji. "May I introduce Mr. Tanaka."

They bowed to each other and talked. From the way that they kept glancing at me I assumed Shuji was explaining how he came to be walking with a gaikokujin, an out-of-country person. Afterward, Tanaka-san asked if I had any objections to his walking with us. None at all, I said, suddenly aware that my Shikoku pilgrimage had taken another turn. Indeed, our foursome endured all the way to Temple 88, and beyond as it happened.

Tanaka-san's presence opened Japan for me. As much as I appreciated the company of Shuji and Jun, we were limited in what we could say to each other. Tanaka-san spoke better English. As a result, our dinnertime conversations became lessons in Japanese history, culture and current events, as well as an education in food, drink and table etiquette. I would ask questions -- "Do the majority of Japanese support having troops in Iraq?" "Are young people turning away from western influences?" -- that Tanaka-san translated for Shuji and Jun, and then translated their comments for me.

But Shuji benefitted even more from Tanaka-san's presence. That became evident at Temple 40, the first temple in Ehime Prefecture, the most westerly of Shikoku's four provinces. By tradition, Ehime is the bodai no dojo, "the arena for the attainment of wisdom." After walking through the two previous prefectures, Tokushima and Kochi, and visiting their 39 temples, the pilgrim is supposed to become aware of his longing for enlightenment. Ehime Prefecture, with its 26 temples, is where you are supposed to achieve wisdom.

confidence and pride

It took the four of us most of a day to hike to Temple 40, following a 30-kilometre path that led across mountains and valleys between Sukomo and Misho. Shuji and Tanaka-san walked most of the way together, while Jun and I hiked on our own, sometimes together, when we continued our language lessons, and sometimes apart. Tanaka-san told me later they mostly talked about Jun.

Shortly after I first met Shuji and his son, he'd explained that Jun had never fully recovered from a nervous breakdown suffered several years earlier. His 25-year-old son had effectively retreated to his room, isolating himself with music, movies and video games. Shuji and his wife Ikuko despaired. The arduous Shikoku pilgrimage was Shuji's attempt to get Jun back into the world. He hoped that Jun would regain confidence and pride. So far, Jun had been able to manage the walking, although he often insisted on long rest periods. And while he was a cheerful companion on the trail, he never took on the role of pilgrim, preferring to doze or smoke at the temples rather than offer prayers.

Shuji, however, seemed to undergo a conversion, judging by his behaviour after Kanjizaiji.

It had been a hard walk with a lot of steep climbing, and by the time we reached Misho and found the temple, we were sweaty and sore. After finishing the temple rituals -- I was making half-hearted efforts to recite the Hannya Shingyo, or Heart Sutra -- I strolled through the courtyard past the line of stone Buddhas below the main hall. I bought a couple of fat oranges at a fruit stall. I was slowly eating them, wedge by wedge, enjoying their sweetness, when I heard my companions descending the steps. I turned to see Shuji decked out in henro kit: the hakui, the white pilgrim vest, a straw hat, or kasa, plastic boxes for carrying name-slips, incense sticks and prayer candles, and, of course, the walking stick with the motto that symbolizes Kobo Daishi's presence, dogyo-ninin, "we two pilgrims, together."

Tanaka-san had convinced Shuji that if he wanted the benefits of the pilgrimage he had to be more diligent as a henro, and that included dressing the part. He must also be diligent about performing the Hannya Shingyo, which is said to encapsulate the essence of Buddhist teaching. It was as if Shuji had discovered the road to salvation.

That night, we stayed at the Ryokan Isoya on the outskirts of Misho. At dinner -- lobster, sashimi, poached salmon, cabbage-and-pork stew, egg soup -- I asked Tanaka-san why he was walking the Shikoku no Michi.

He looked at me for a few seconds and said: "There is a vacant space in my heart."

He explained, "My last big assignment before I retired was in Beijing. I lived in China for a couple of years, always working." One day, he came across a book of Buddhist writings. "They spoke to me. I felt an emptiness in my heart. I started to think about who I was and how I have spent my life."

In Japan, he explained, men of his generation, those who came of age in the 1960s when Japan was still recovering from the Second World War, devoted their lives to the company. He became an electrical engineer. Family life -- a wife and a son -- came second. "This was the lifestyle of Japan after the war. Family was secondary."

One of the Buddhist scriptures he read while in China was the Hannya Shingyo. He tried to recite it at least once a day. The Japanese recite it in all sorts of circumstances -- students chant it before an exam; businessmen invoke it before negotiating a contract. The constant recitation is said to awaken one's Buddha nature, one's potential for enlightenment. In Tanaka-san's case, the sutra stirred spiritual longings his career had suppressed. A year earlier, at 61, he decided to retire. And one of the first things he wanted to do was walk the Henro Michi.

"I want to find out if I can fill this empty place in my heart," Tanaka-san said, taking a final sip of tea. "Every day I walk and think and pray."

"Is your heart filled?" I said.

Tanaka-san laughed, adjusting the folds of his yakuta as he stood. "Not yet. I will let you know."

The next couple of weeks were certainly fulfilling as far as I was concerned. A 30-kilometre hike up and down mountains no longer exhausted me. I was eager to return to the road each morning, eager to disappear into the walking. The cherry blossoms were in bloom in the mountains. The rice fields in the valleys had their first blush of green shoots. Best of all, I was being absorbed by the pilgrimage. I was no longer walking the Shikoku no Michi; it was walking me.

mountain climbing

We left Misho the next morning at 7, following Highway 56 along the western coastline for about 10 kilometres before we turned inland and started climbing into the mountains. It took two hours to hike four kilometres. We didn't reach the 470-metre peak until close to noon. Just beyond, as we began our descent, the forest opened onto an ridge. The dark trees fell away, marching down a series of ridges to the brown-and-green rectangles of farm fields along the coastal plain. A small village, the buildings like bright cubes of dice, huddled on the edge of the sea. Overhead a castle of cumulus clouds, grey-bellied and white-fringed, parted like a theatre curtain to let the sun pour onto the blue waters of Bungo Strait.

We dropped our packs and unpacked our lunches. We ate in silence, taking in the panorama of sea and sky and land. After lunch, we lingered in the sun, sweat drying, muscles unknotting. I would have fallen asleep had we stayed longer, but we still had three hours of walking.

We reached Tsushima about 4, checking in to the Ryokan Yoshinoya. We had walked only 24 kilometres that day, but that included a lot of climbing.

'becoming japanese'

The next day we hiked 30 kilometres. The pilgrim path took us through Uwajima, a pretty city with wide, treed streets that were immaculately clean. We rested at a park and watched a few innings of baseball. We tried lunch at a McDonald's. After more than a month of miso soup, rice and raw fish I thought I would enjoy a Big Mac, but I couldn't eat it. I even abandoned the fries.

"You are becoming Japanese," Jun said, finishing the fries.

Beyond Uwajima, we tramped another 10 kilometres, following the incline of Highway 57 to Ryukoji, Temple 41, in Mima Town. Temple 42, Butsumokuji, was only a couple of kilometres down the road. The temples lie in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains and both reflect the concerns of farming communities. Temple 41 is dedicated to rice growing, while Temple 42 is devoted to animal husbandry. They do a steady business selling charms to keep crops and animals healthy.

According to Ian Reader, a British anthropologist, the Japanese are quick to proclaim themselves not religious. "It is almost as if many Japanese would like to convey the impression that Japan is a wholly secular society," he writes in Religion in Contemporary Japan. Paradoxically, though, the Japanese also "exhibit extremely high levels of religious activity and behaviour." So it seems. Whenever a busload of pilgrims arrived at a temple, they jammed the temple office to have their nokyo-chos and kake-jiku, the pilgrim stamp books and hanging scrolls, inscribed. In Buddhist tradition, the honzon's name contains the essence of the god's divinity. Thus, the pilgrim possesses the deity's essence in having the name inscribed in the stamp book. The scrolls and stamp books become treasured family heirlooms.

The temples encourage this idea, of course. The shelves of the temple offices, and the nearby souvenir shops, are well-stocked with o-mamori, protective amulets and talismans -- prayer beads, figurines of Kobo Daishi or Jizo, key chains promising healthy feet, pencils assuring success in exams, and prayer boards in brocaded cloth bags that can be carried or hung from a car mirror. These little pieces of wood offer anything from success at school to a prayer for safe driving. The idea, as Reader explains, is that in acquiring o-mamori you receive not a bit of wood, paper or plastic, but rather "a charged concretisation of power," the essence of the kami or deity represented by the charm. You carry these symbols to bring good luck and fend off misfortune.

I indulged in the occasional atavistic impulse, buying wooden votive plaques known as ema. With emas, you inscribe your name, the date and your prayer -- a cure for gambling, paying off a debt, getting into university, the health of aged parents -- on the small plaque and hang it on a special rack in the temple courtyard. The racks are always full. I liked resting in the courtyards and listening to the soft clack of ema caught in the wind. I imagined all those prayers rising to some ethereal realm where kami sat around a conference table saying yea or nay to the dreams and desires of mere mortals.

A fanciful notion, perhaps, but after so long on the road, surrounded by the quiet of the temples and the haunting forests of Shikoku, it was easy to let my western rationalist heritage slip-slide away like a loose sheet of shale breaking from a mountainside. At Temple 42, I bought five ema boards to hang on the prayer rack near the bell tower.

My first ema petitioned the kami to grant my son Daniel a long and fruitful life, another sought my wife Margret's health and happiness, while a third expressed similar hopes for my mother, Diana. I dedicated my fourth ema to old friends and lovers. As for the fifth ema, I asked for help in finding out what it was I wanted to find.

After Temple 42, we walked about a kilometre down the highway to the Ryokan Thobeya, where we had rooms booked. Lying on the futon in my room that night, I heard the wind come up and the rain falling on the tiled roof. Just before I fell asleep I imagined my emas rattling on the rack, their message wafting to the gods, wherever they might be.

temple half-hidden

The next day, we climbed in the rain over Long Tooth Pass through a forest of cedars, arriving at Temple 43, Meisikiji, late in the morning. The temple is half-hidden in the forest above the town of Uwa. After getting my nokyo-cho stamped, I sheltered under the eaves of the bell tower. I remembered a story from Oliver Statler's Japanese Pilgrimage about a young Japanese woman who, accompanied by an elderly man, walked the Henro Michi in the summer and fall of 1918, starting at Temple 43. Itsue Takamure wrote a series of newspaper articles about her trek, including a description of her first night sleeping at the temple. "We found shelter under a tree beneath the crags ... Removing only sandals and gaiters, we each rolled in a blanket and slept. During the night I woke to find ants, lizards and hairy caterpillars crawling on

me ... "

That night at the Park Hotel in Uwa I slept on a double-sized bed beneath clean sheets -- my first western-style bed after more than a month of futons. It rained through the night and I woke about 5 a.m. to the rattling windows. I don't know if the rainstorm or my dreams woke me. I had dreamed I was walking through a forest when I saw Itsue Takamure. She wore a white pilgrim vest and carried a walking stick. I tried to catch up to her. The path became incredibly steep. I was almost crawling on hands and knees. I yelled her name. She started to turn, but just as I was about to see her face, I woke.

My watch said it was 5:13. I wanted to go back to sleep, but sleep would not come. I showered and dressed. Then I sat at the window, sipping the remains of a bottle of Pocari Sweat, and stared out across the rooftops of Uwa to the bulk of the mountains in the distance and the dark clouds scudding across the peaks. I flipped through my journal and read some of the notes I had taken from Itsue Takamure's articles, pausing at her thoughts on a sleepless night 86 years earlier: "I began to think about our inevitable death, I felt a sickly shuddering and, no matter what, I couldn't sleep. Everyone has died. Boys, young men, and beautiful women; time has passed and they are all gone."

I sat at the window, watching the rain, waiting for the restaurant to open.

It is a three-day hike from Uwa to Taihoji, Temple 44, in the mountain town of Kuma. The pilgrim trail largely follows a river through a high valley. Just before Kuma, we reached a mountain summit that gave us a sweeping view of the wide plain sloping to the Inland Sea. The plain was obscured by haze but we could make out the buildings in Matsuyama. Below us was Kuma. The grey-tile roofs of Taihoji showed through a clearing on the mountainside above the town.

Our plan was to find the Hoteru Fuegataki where we would stay for two nights. In the morning, we intended to leave our packs at the inn and walk to Temple 44 and then on to Temple 45, Iwayaji, before returning to Kuma for a second night. While Taihoji was only a couple of kilometres from Kuma, Iwayaji was a steep and arduous 10-kilometre climb into some of the highest mountains on Shikoku. The temple itself is 670 metres above sea level.

The real pleasure in reaching Taihoji is knowing you have visited half of the 88 temples that make up the Henro Michi. But the hike to Iwayaji, the Temple of the Rocky Cave, was special. The pilgrim path wound through dense forests of cedar that formed tunnels over our heads. The bamboo had come into leaf, forming bright green cathedrals.

Along the edge of the trail, rows of flowers -- iris, rhododendrons, azalea, camellia --filled the cool air with a confusion of scent. The sakura were in blossom. To walk through a grove of pink-and-white cherry trees was to walk into enchantment.

Now and then we came out of the forest into a tiny hamlet. The villages, surrounded by citrus groves and rice fields, were little more than clusters of half-a-dozen wooden houses. If not for the utility poles and the spider-web of power lines, I could have been walking through ancient Japan.

Walking 20 to 30 kilometres a day for weeks on end not only affects you physically, but also mentally. The enforced slowness of walking forces the mind to slow down. You begin to hear another self, the self of memory and loss, sadness and joy, the self you have no time to hear when you are ensnared in the cacophony of the everyday. Long-distance walking shifts the relationship between inner and outer worlds. The constant presence of the physical -- stones and asphalt, mud and water, trees and flowers, rain and sun -- induces a psychic journey. Sometimes, as you walk, you take strange trips in your head.

On the hike to Iwayaji, I was content to let my companions get ahead of me, placing one foot in front of the other without thought, as though I had no other purpose than to walk. Somehow, I ended up approaching Temple 45 by the backdoor, stumbling down a steep incline through the forest to the rear entrance of the temple. About a kilometre from the temple, near two moss-covered wooden shrines, was a small graveyard. The gravestones had all but disappeared into the earth beneath a blanket of moss.

I'm not sure what impulse made me do what I did next, except that as I stood there I remembered a trip I had made with my mother to her hometown of Hanna. One hot afternoon, we drove out to the cemetery. We spent several hours cleaning my grandparents' graves, trimming the caragana hedge and washing the headstones.

I slipped off my pack, took my knife from a side pocket and crawled on my hands and knees into the graveyard. I picked a small obelisk half tilted into the ground and scraped away the moss until I saw the cold stone. I crouched lower, trying to see the ideographic marks but they were barely visible. I grabbed a bottle of water from my pack and washed the stone, rubbing away the remnants of moss and dirt until I could make out the faint markings. I couldn't decipher them, of course, but they would be discernable to anyone who could. I imagined the pilgrim whose gravestone I had cleaned being pleased at having his resting place restored to the eyes of some passerby, who might offer a prayer in remembrance. Until the moss grew back.

Ten minutes later I found my companions patiently waiting for me at the temple.

Iwayaji Temple, founded in 701, literally hangs on a cliffside above the valley of the Omogo River. The temple halls are built into the cliff face. Above the roofs of the temple, the rock face is pocked with caves once inhabited by ascetics and holy men. Ladders set into the stone connect the caves. I climbed one to squat in the mouth of a cave and stare at the rolling mountain ridges and the river below. I tried to imagine the men and women who had come to this mountain for more than a thousand years in hopes of gaining a glimpse of eternity. Nowadays, they would be seen as deluded, if not insane. I pulled my copy of Japanese Pilgrimage from my pack and read Oliver Statler's description of the Temple of the Rocky Cave: "One cannot stand dwarfed before this towering natural altar without knowing that it has been a sacred place since man first found it. A god resides here. And holy men have come to sojourn with him." I preferred Statler's judgment.

opened his heart

That night back at the Hoteru Fuegataki, we celebrated our half-completed pilgrimage with a couple bottles of shochu in Tanaka-san's room. Jun was wise enough to go to bed early after only a couple of glasses. We stayed up past midnight, talking and drinking. Despite the language difficulties, we probably said more than we intended, Shuji in particular. Halfway through the second bottle, he started talking about Jun, his despair at his son's condition, his grief at his wife's unhappiness, his fear for the future, especially as he and Ikuko got older. I sensed that he had been waiting a long time, maybe years, to say these things. He was speaking in Japanese, of course, but for some reason he was looking at me.

Tanaka-san translated: "Shuji-san is thanking you. For being such a good friend to Jun."

I was embarrassed and replied too glibly -- that's what friends are for.

Shuji, however, had more on his mind. Again, Tanaka-san relayed the words, although this time there was a startled look on his face. "Shuji says that he begs for forgiveness in his heart."

I wasn't following this: Forgiveness from whom? Not me, surely? "Wakarimashita." "I don't understand."

And that's when the Shuji tearfully opened his heart. Tanaka-san was as surprised as I was. As he told me later, "Japanese do not reveal their private lives outside the family." But that night Shuji gave me a glimpse of his private life. One reason he had taken Jun on pilgrimage was because his Ikuko felt she could no longer cope with Jun's behaviour at home, especially his violence toward his younger brother, Makoto, who, as I then discovered, was autistic.

Ikuko told Shuji she sometimes thought of killing Jun, poisoning him and then herself. No, he told her, if it came to that, it would be his duty.

A part of me didn't want to hear this. I was here to have a few modest esthetic epiphanies, enjoy the adventure. I didn't want to look into the dark abyss of another man's despair. Yet, like it or not, Shuji had chosen us to be the recipients of his secrets. I had no words of comfort, much less any wisdom. But maybe it was enough that Shuji had been able to share his burden. Watching his sad face, I detected the relief of a man who had just had an immense weight lifted from his shoulders. Besides, Shuji relieved us of the need for a response. "I am praying for forgiveness for these thoughts. I am saying Hannya Shingyo for forgiveness."

Now I understood Shuji's conversion to the pilgrim role and his sudden devotion to praying at the temples. Tanaka-san had told me it didn't matter if you couldn't understand the words to the sutra because the words are the embodiment of the Buddha in sound. To utter the words is to make the Buddha present in your mind. Shuji, I was suddenly aware, was the first man I had ever met to admit his desperate need for the guidance of gods.

Two days and six temples later, I was slipping into the Water of the God at the Dõgo Onsen. I must have soaked for nearly an hour before Shuji said “ikimashõ,” “let’s go.” He and Jun were going shopping; Jun needed a new pair of shoes. We would meet them later and walk to Temple 52. In the meantime, Tanaka-san and I had a post-bath pot of tea and engaged in chabanashi, or tea-sharing talk. Cha, or tea, as Richard Gage, a long-time student of Japan, once said, symbolizes three aspects of Japanese life: relaxation, hospitality and consolation. In times of distress the Japanese “are likely to suggest a cup of tea as a spiritual palliative.” Tanaka-san apparently had something like that in mind as we sipped tea and nibbled taruto, sweet-bean cakes.

“Niwano-san wants to thank you. He does not think they would have come this far without you. “

“I am glad Shuji feels I can help him. He is my tomodachi, my friend.”

Tanaka-san nodded and took another sip of tea. “The Henro Michi affects him very much now. He thanks you for this. He thanks Kõbõ Daishi for meeting you.”

What do you say when someone thinks you’re better than you know you are? I remembered once saying to Shuji after he told me he was worried Jun wanted to quit: “No excuses, no complaints. Just walk. That’s all a man can do.” I wasn’t sure I meant it, but Shuji took it seriously, writing the phrase in his notebook. I hadn’t given it any thought since. Now, though, I asked myself, was it a worthy motto for a pilgrim? The English word “pilgrim” comes from the Latin phrase per agrum, or “through the fields.” To the Romans, to be a peregrinus was to be an “alien” or “stranger,” to leave the security of home, family and community and wander into the unknown. In the unknown, of course, no pilgrim can be sure of what will happen to him. The only thing he can learn to control is how he responds.

I couldn’t think of a response to Tanaka-san. But then he said all that needed to be said: “In Japan we have another name for the Shikoku pilgrimage. It is called Shikoku byõin. Shikoku hospital. Shikoku heals those who follow Kõbõ Daishi.”

We finished our tea and went to meet Shuji and Jun in his new shoes. As we walked the 10 kilometres to Taizanji, Temple 52, and then on to the Uematsu Minshuku where we spent the night, I kept thinking about Tanaka-san’s image of the pilgrimage as a hospital. What I wanted to know, though, was: What is the illness for which pilgrimage is the cure?

The next episode of Robert Sibley’s pilgrimage will appear Aug. 21.