Morning journal and courier., 1891-11-20
Japanese Pilgrims.

[Lafcadio Hearn in the Atlantic Monthly.l
 Here come band of pilgrims, with yell low straw overcoats, "rain- coats' (mino), and enormous yellow straw hats. mush- room-shsped, of which the down-curving rim partly hides the fnce. All carry staffs and wear their robes we'll girded up so as to leave free the lower limbs, which are inclosed in white cotton leggings of a pe- culiar and indescribable kind. Precisely the same sort of costume was worn by the same class of travellers many centuries ago; and just as you now see them troop ing by,-whole families wandering togeth- CT, the pilgrim child clinging to the fsth- CTS hand ,-so may you see them pass in quaint procession across the faded pages of Japanese picture books many hundred years old.
 At intervals they halt before some shop front to look at the many curious things, which they greatly enjoy seeing, but which they have no money to buy.
 myself have become so accustomed to surprises, to interesting or extraordinary sights, that when day happens to pass during which nothing remarkable has been heard or seen I feel vaguely discon- tented. But such blank days are rare: they occur in my own case only when the weather is too detesta5le to permit going out of doors. For with ever so little mon ey one can always obtain the pleasure of looking at curious things. And this has been one of the chief pleasures of the people in Japan for centuries and centu- ries, for the nation has passed its genera | tions of lives in making or seeking such | things. To divert one's self seems, in deed, the main purpose of Japanese exis- tence, beginning with the opening of the | bsby's pretty oblique eyes. The faces of the people have an indescribable look of patient expectancy,-the air of waiting for something interesting to make it's ap- pearance. If it fail to appear they will | travel to find it: they are astonishing be | destrians and tireless pilgrims, and think | they make pilgrimsges not more for the sake of pleasing the gods than of pleasing themselves by the sight of rare and pretty things. For every temple is museum, and every hill and valley throughout the land has its temple and its wonders.
 | Even the poorest farmer, one so poor that he cannot afford to eat grain of his own rice, can afford to make pilgrimage of a months duration; and during that season when the growing rice needs least stten- ton hundreds of thousands of the poorest go on pilgrimages. This is possible, be- cause from ancient times it has been the custom for everybody to help pilgrims a little; and they can always find rest and shelter at particular inns Qkichinysdo) which receive pilgrims only, and where they are charged merely the cost of the | wood ussd to cook their food.
 But multitudes of the poor undertake pilgrimages requiring much more than 8 month to perform, such as the pilgrimage to the thirty-three great temples of Kwan- non, or that to the eighty-eight temples of Kobodaishi; and these, though years be needed to accomplish them, are as nothing compared to the enormous Sengsji, the pilgrimage to the thousand temples of the Nichiren sect. The time of generation may pass ere this can be made. One may begin it in early youth and complete il only when youth is long past. Yet there are several in Matsue, men and women
 who have made this tremendous pilgrim. age, seeing all Japan, and supporting themselves not merely by begging, but by some kinds of itinerant peddling.
 The pilgrim who desires to perform this pilgrimage carries on his shoulders a small box, shaped like a Buddhist shrine, in which ke keeps his spare clothes and food
 He also carries little brszen gong, which he constantly sounds while passing through city or village, at the same time chanting the Namu-mvo- -ho-ren-ge-kyo; and he al
 ways bears with him 8 little blank book, in which the priest of every temple visited stamps the temple seal in red ink. The
 pilgrimage over, this book, with its one thousand seal impressions, becomes ar heirloom in the family of the pilgrim.