{Inter} Cultural Japan

Paradise Mountain lies here on earth, close to Hon-Nagashino on the Iida line out of Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture. Horai-zan, it is called, and Horai is the Land of Bliss of the Chinese Taoist tradition. In its original conception, it was conceived as a mountainous island in the wide ocean, in Japan it was applied to a mountain far from the sea, but blessed with great natural beauty. It became an an old temple mountain of the shugendo cult. Although there is not much of the temple left, the mountain is steep, craggy and still immersed in a mystic atmosphere.

[The crags of Mt Horai, Aichi Pref., Japan. Photo © Ad Blankestijn]

Early one summer morning I travel from Tokyo to Toyohashi, just inside Aichi Prefecture, and from there by the Iida Line to Hon-Nagashino station. I had expected to find a bus there to the mountain, but can’t even find a taxi. After asking directions, a street further down I manage to locate the bus station. A group of five rather boisterous, elderly women is waiting already and monopolizing the area of the bus stop that has been roofed over and thus offers protection from the sun that, at ten-thirty, already beats down fiercely.

A bus should come in just five minutes, and another one after an hour. I wait five minutes, ten, then a quarter of an hour. No bus - could there be such a delay, wasn’t this the station of departure? I walk away, to evade the noisy babble. But there is nowhere to go to. I first walk in the direction of a supermarket down the road, to buy some cans of cold tea for the coming walk, but the road stinks of gas and is full of blaring trucks. No coffee shop, no restaurant. Next I walk in the other direction, but here I find even less to divert me. I then return to the train station, to check the time of the trains back, just to have something to do.

And so I desperately kill time till finally a bus arrives, which is only after one hour. The elderly women are still chatting under their parasols, oblivious of time or environment, faces dripping with sweat. Bus companies in Japan have fallen into a vicious circle. In rural areas, people using the bus have dwindled, so services are cut back, with as a result that even less people use the bus, because it becomes an unattractive option for travelers. So the only customers left are a handful of pensioners, who depend on the one or two buses a day for their visits to the doctor.

Today there are even no pensioners. As if to make up for the lost hour, the bus tears away and only fifteen minutes later I am standing at the entrance of the pilgrimage path to Horaiji. Waiting has made me hungry, so I enter the only restaurant annex souvenir shop here, where the owner is chasing flies to kill time. Her face lights up when I sit at one of the dusty tables and she hastens to prepare an excellent meal.

Fortified, I follow a narrow asphalt road that is happily devoid of traffic. After two kilometers I see the reason for this peace: the road leads nowhere, but turns into a path of flagstones, the pilgrim’s way to Horaiji, the temple of Paradise. The path is quiet, some houses are closed - the area looks as if it has been more lively before. I am the only passerby.

With interest I look into a few shops where the specialty of the region is being sold: ink stones, for grinding and mixing the ink used in calligraphy. The artisans are sitting at the window plying their craft, but there are no buyers anymore. Then the long, steep staircase starts, and here my walk becomes earnest.

[The pilgrim’s path on Mt Horai. Photo © Ad Blankestijn]

The pilgrim’s path
The steps are roughly hewn blocks of heavy stone. Steadily I climb into the forest, that stands mighty and solemn around me. It is cool under the trees, but I have to work so hard that sweat drips down from my face and soaks my shirt. After every twenty or thirty steps there is flat space, that allows me to regain my breath.

But it is healthy work. Step by step I ascend towards the Buddhist paradise. My mind, my whole being is concentrated on the act of climbing. I climb out of my daily stress, with every step up some worries fall away. I step out of the smallness of the world and slowly regain wholeness.

That is the purpose of a pilgrimage, of ascending a mountain. It is the act of climbing that counts, the final arriving is not important. Not the temple itself is my aim, but the way that leads to it. This is a form of spiritual training. The real pilgrims of two centuries ago would have laughed at me, because they were used to walking the whole day, for many, many days on end, while I just walk for a few hours. But even that little, in our modern lives, is enough to recover a healthy balance.

And I am not the only traveler - Basho was here, too, climbing this same path. He was feeling ill that day and only made it to the Niomon Gate, where a haiku stone stands with the poem he wrote that chilly day.

When I get higher, the steps are narrower and steeper. During the whole walk of one hour and a half to the mountain top, I meet only one other human being, a hiker, and he is going down. I am looking forward to finding a small and very quiet temple on the top.

The last staircase, the trees fall away. A relatively new and uninteresting temple hall stands under a steep cliff. Nature is imposing enough, but the temple is small, and far from quiet. To my shock, there are at least a hundred people here, most of them gathered on benches in a kind of lookout point opposite the temple. From this position there is a great view of the valley from which I have come. People are eating, drinking, snapping photo’s, shouting, laughing, in short, they are having fun.

There is nothing against this, of course. But it is a far cry from the solemn mountain temple I expected to find. Indeed, the joy was in the going and not in the arriving. I walk on and soon discover the reason for the crowds on the mountain. In the distance I see the glare of metal and glass: a car park. The air reverberates above the hot tarmac.

Apparently, there is a new driveway up the mountain that brings all the Sunday drivers of the region to the view, if not the temple. They glide up the mountain in their air conditioned cubicles, eye the landscape through metal lenses, have a snack, take a picture, and glide back. There is no way for them to come into contact with the mountain.

They don’t tread on the rough steps, they don’t exert themselves, they don’t sweat, and - what they don’t realize - they have no new experience that helps them forget their cares. They stay in their own private compartments, that are chockfull with their own worries. There is no act of going, only a simple arriving, at nowhere at all.

Mass media have simplified life into a few hyped highlights. To enjoy such highlights, no effort is required. It is enough to press your foot lightly on the gas pedal and turn the wheel a few times. But there is no satisfaction either. It is the life quality of a programmed robot.

[The temple on Mt Horai. Photo © Ad Blankestijn]

The path again
Walking the mountain is real life. I visit the grand Toshogu Shrine that sits next to the temple, and then search for an alternative way down. There must be a path on the other side of the mountain. It is certainly not the road for the cars. Anyway, a prohibitive signs announces that this road is strictly forbidden for walkers. Not that I fancy walking in exhaust smells. It is a question of principle that annoys me: the mountain, once the paradise of the religious monks, has been annexed by Mr. Toyota, for the enjoyment of his robot-like customers.

Happily I find the old pilgrim’s path again. No staircase this time, but a narrow path that meanders through the wood, down and sometimes up again. At a crossroads stand some weathered Buddhist statues. Here I meet a few hikers, but again most of the time I have the forest to myself. The car people are far away indeed.

A bird cries, time and again, perhaps it is the Bupposo for which this mountain is famous. The trees rustle, sigh, an animal passes by. The smell of resin assails my nostrils, a smell that reminds me of the forests close to the village where I was born. And just like in my youth, there is also the vague fear for something lurking in the rustling wood. But the wood gets thinner, I pass some abandoned rice fields, enter a small town and lumber yards. Here is a station, and after a while a train, that carries me back, leisurely, through the hills that glow in the late afternoon sun.

Horaizan means ‘paradise mountain,’ but of course there was no heaven to be found at the top. Nirvana was in the trek up and down the mountain, nirvana was in myself.

It was that discovery that made my visit worthwhile.

Access: 15 min. by bus from Hon-Nagashino Station on the Iida Line (Hon-Nagashino is a 50 min. ride from Toyohashi) and then a walk of about 1 hour over a 1,400 steps high staircase ascending through the forest. The bus station lies a few minutes from the station, in the direction of the main road.
Suggestion: Also visit Toshogu on the mountain, close to Horaiji. On the way back to Toyohashi, drop off in Toyokawa to see the enormous Toyokawa Inari (Myogonji), an interesting combination of temple and shrine (with a branch in Tokyo’s Akasaka).
Also read the haiku Basho wrote on Mt. Horai.

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