The Way of the 88 Temples by Robert C. Sibley

Author:Robert C. Sibley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

5

Dreams

Pilgrim’s staff

I fill my mind

with emptiness.

—SHŪJI NIWANO

I draped the wet cloth on my head, closed my eyes, and lay back to let the Kami no Yu, the Water of the God, soothe me. Hot water lapped across my chest as I rested the back of my head against the rim of the pool. My sigh of pleasure must have been audible to the half-dozen other bathers in the Dōgo Onsen. I’d learned the pleasures of Japanese bathhouses a month earlier, and now, with fifty-one of the Henro Michi’s eighty-eight official temples visited, I was no longer self-conscious about sharing an oversized bathtub with a bunch of men. I now regarded sentō, or public bathhouses, as the hallmark of civilized life.

The sun poured through the skylight, bouncing off the gray marble walls and tiled floor, saturating the spacious room with light. Shards of sunlight danced on the surface of the bathing pool, a semi-circle rimmed with blue granite that stretched half the length of the room. A large stone fountain at one end overflowed into the pool. On the wall above the fountain a blue-tile mosaic depicted an ascetic-looking old man sitting in a forest grove with a couple of children at his feet.

Shūji and Jun, along with our new traveling companion, Yukuo Tanaka, a retired engineer from Tokyo, were squatting on stools in the washing area a few meters from the pool. Following Japanese bathhouse etiquette, they were scrubbing and rinsing off soap and shampoo before joining me in the water.

It had been a hot and muggy day, and the four of us had arrived drenched in sweat after a fifteen-kilometer hike from Joruri, a village on the outskirts of Matsuyama where we’d spent the night. Tanaka-san and Shūji had decided there was no way I could visit Matsuyama, one of the larger cities on Shikoku, without enjoying a bath and tea at the famous Dōgo Onsen. It is one of Japan’s oldest natural hot springs. The existing wooden bathhouse dates to 1894, but the onsen has been in use in one form or another since the sixth century when it was popular with Japanese nobility.

I was grateful to my companions for introducing me to it. And as far as I was concerned, the Dōgo Onsen was as close to heaven as I was likely to get on this side of the grave. Opening my eyes, I gazed around the pool. Three white-haired men sat across from me on the opposite side. I’d bowed to them earlier before stepping into the water. They’d smiled and returned the gesture, my politeness acknowledged and reciprocated. On my right, a muscular young man lay on his back, his stretched-out legs half-submerged in the water. He, too, had propped the back of his head on the rim of the pool and placed a washcloth over his face. On my left, another man sat on the pool’s edge, holding a baby on his knees. Every once in a while he leaned forward and lowered the infant into the water, smiling as she kicked her chubby legs.

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