Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (69 page)

“Oh,” she misunderstood. “You are going on a pilgrimage. Why don’t I hold your bags for you? I won’t be closing any time soon,” she said. “Come back when you are ready. Take my card so you have the store number, in case you get lost.”

I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t actually making a pilgrimage;
I just wanted to see the statues. But this seemed unnecessary in the face of her kindness, so I thanked her, and began the climb.

Y
OU HAVE TO
climb up hundreds of steps to reach Kiyomizu temple. Whether you take a small side path or follow the main road all the way, you will be confronted with numerous shops and restaurants that showcase the sheer delight people in Japan have for making, selling, and buying something new. There are traditional things to eat like chilled cucumbers and bean cakes. Then there are T-shirts for sale with edgy modern designs beside three-hundred-year-old porcelain shops. It can take a long time to get to Kiyomizu temple, and it’s perhaps no surprise that one of the first gods inside the temple proper is Daikokuten, the god of money.

One reason why I wanted to go to Kiyomizu was because my guidebook had listed Obon as one of the few times of the year when the temple’s treasured Buddha would be on view on the main altar; the rest of the year it was kept shut in a box. I asked a man who looked like he was on the staff of the temple where I could go see the “statues that are normally not on view.” He pointed to a staircase that went underground. Gamely, I took off my shoes and descended. Before turning a corner into a darkened corridor, I saw a sign that read, “No light. No photo.” Then I was in the dark. Literally. A thick dark. I knew it was the kind of dark that was intended as a test of faith, or perhaps a testament to faith, but I was furious. I was winding around in this underground labyrinth, with no sense of where I was going. The women ahead of me were laughing nervously.

Apparently my question—where can I see the things that are not usually on display—had led me here, to this subterranean chamber, where up ahead a massive stone that was perhaps five feet in diameter
was slowly rotating under a very focused light as people reached over to give it a turn. On top was some Buddhist Sanskrit lettering. I touched it, felt its surface, which had been smoothed by countless hands that had come before mine. I made my usual prayer and was soon swept along by the tide of people heading for more darkened corridors, until we all stumbled outside into the light.

Kiyomizu is full of sidetracks like this. There is a Shint
shrine in which one must walk blindfolded from one rock to another in a test of “true love.” If you reach the second rock, then you will find your true love—if you haven’t already. There’s another spot where you can write down angry feelings on a piece of paper shaped like a doll, then drop the paper in water and watch it dissolve. Below the grand Kiyomizu structure is a waterfall, and if you drink the water from these falls (via a community cup, which has been sterilized in a self-serve ultraviolet sterilization unit), you will receive enlightenment. And while all this is entertaining, the skeptic in me can’t help but feel that such things are an awfully convenient way to make money, and that Kiyomizu, despite being an impressive architectural wonder, has also become a kind of Disneyland for Buddhism.

The pilgrimage we were on now was said to last for a thousand days, which meant if I could make it into the main part of the temple to pray, I’d be blessed for just over three years, after which I could come back again. Not for the first time, I was reminded of how practical the Japanese can be, even when it comes to providing a manageable expiration and renewal date for good luck.

When we finally arrived to the correct part of Kiyomizu—which looks so different in daylight—a man with a megaphone herded us to a place where we waited patiently beside ropes for the people ahead of us to remove their shoes. Dozens of small bronze bells had been hung over the walkway, and they sang to us in the breeze. Off to the side was a man waiting to collect more money from us
and to write down the names of our loved ones on small strips of paper, to call home the souls of the dead in case we hadn’t managed to do so yet.

Inside the temple, we were swept up again by the flurry of people on their pilgrimages, and it became impossible to focus solely on the artwork. Before we could even get into the altar area, we were supposed to write down our wishes on a candle, and we had to wait in line to get our own candle. Then there was a line to use the pen to write on the candle, and even when I got to the pen, there was another wait to put the candle on a candle holder. I couldn’t help but think that this pilgrimage was about as enjoyable as trying to shop at Whole Foods in Manhattan on a Friday evening. But I dove in. For in all the jockeying, the twisting around, and the slow passage through the corridor to the candle, the pen, and the burner, there was nothing but a patient and persistent kind of focus. Everyone knew what everyone else wanted and needed, and cooperated accordingly, a little like the exercise at Eiheiji in which we had to finish eating at the same time.

When I finally got to the candle and then the pen, I couldn’t decide what to write. I looked at the other candles to see what other people had written. They wanted to fall in love. They wanted someone to fall back in love with them. They very much wished to do well on exams. They wanted their father to get better. They wanted a healthy child.

Once I had wanted these things too, but now I had new wants. I wanted to be able to write a good book. I wanted my son to grow up healthy and happy. I wanted Japan to recover from the March 11 disaster. And I wanted what I had asked my grandparents and my father to help me with the night before. I wanted to rebalance the equation of sadness and happiness in my life. I wanted my body to be less bitter.

I wrote this down, set my candle on a spike where a predecessor
had burned away, then surrendered to the tide of pilgrims circling the gallery. There were candles all the way through the hallway. And because there was no breeze, all the heat from the people and the candles made everything very hot. At last we tumbled around the corner. And there they were, the pantheon of gods and Buddhas waiting for us to look them in the eye.

A young boy asked his mother, “What do we do? What do we do now? What do we do?”

I heard her hiss: “Do not ask that kind of question in a place like this! You look at what other people are doing, and then you just do it.”

All of a sudden, there was an expert pilgrim whose gestures rang with the clarity of authority. She bowed, gave incense, rang a bell, and prayed. The person behind her copied this example. The little family moved forward to take their turn, and I went too, trusting that there would be someone else behind me who knew what to do and order would be restored again for a little while.

I turned my head up toward the Buddhas, then down ahead of me so I could keep pace with the crowd, then up again. I asked for the same things I had been asking for the past twenty-four hours. “I would like to be more happy than sad.” Then we all moved on and out onto the landing. I hadn’t been successful in getting a good, long art historian’s look at the statues, but as had been the case at Eiheiji and S
jiji, I found myself moved by the experience of sharing an activity with so many anonymous people.

G
RAVEYARDS ARE BUSY
during Obon, particularly at night, when people are off from work and temperatures drop. Depending on your family’s sect or belief, you might need to perform your “great receiving” on the grave of your ancestors. Even if you don’t, you will want to make sure the grave is clean and tidy, so everyone—including the
dead—knows that you are conscientious. One of the most stunning cemeteries during Obon is the hillside Higashi
tani Cemetery. For three days during Obon, ten thousand lanterns are lit above the tombstones in the graveyard, to help signpost the “way home” for returning spirits of the dead. The immediate effect of so many lanterns at once is that they themselves seem to be souls, and you realize how crowded the cemetery is and how many people are beloved but not forgotten.

I went to the Higashi cemetery at night to find the grave of Shinran, the founder of the Pure Land sect, the sect to which the Higashi cemetery belongs. Sometimes I passed a tombstone where someone had lit a candle and incense, a traditional way both to honor an ancestor and to “call him home.”

Plenty of tourists were also picking their way through the tombstones and trying to read dates and perhaps a few names. When I finally did find Shinran’s grave, it was full of candles and incense—and a bouquet of flowers that included the lotus blossom—a recurring element in the décor for it is from the muddy depths of a lake-bed floor that the lotus flower blooms, a reminder that something beautiful can come up even from the dirt.

I
N THE DAYS
leading up to Obon, family members often travel home to be together, and airports and train stations are crowded, not unlike the days surrounding Thanksgiving and Christmas in the United States. Trains are full of people leaving the great cities of
saka and T
ky
for the countryside, and if you don’t buy your ticket early enough, you might not get a seat and will be forced to stand or sit in between cars. At home, families have their own traditions—just as every Western family has a slightly different take on Christmas Day—but most center on eating and enjoying the art of being together. Then, usually on August 16, Obon is celebrated
and the souls of the ancestors are sent home via Okuribi, or “the great sending-off day.”