369: Japanese folklore: Pilgrims

This week, on Myths and Legends, there are two stories of pilgrimages.

On the first, we'll meet a forlorn former samurai whose wife has a secret.

On the second, we'll see about doing whatever it takes for kindness.

On the creature of the week, we'll learn how that coat you thought was made up of a thousand tiny amphibian skins might actually be carcinogenic.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 369: Pilgrims.

This is a podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore.

Some are incredibly popular stories you might think you know, but with surprising origins.

Others are tales that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen.

We are back in Japanese folklore with two stories of people on pilgrimages, but maybe not in the way you think.

On the first, we'll see a man, a former samurai, grapple with an unforeseen problem.

What is she doing with him?

So why she heard everything?

Maybe they didn't think he could.

Maybe they didn't care.

As he felt his way down the street each morning, to a different client's house to work his trade as a masseuse, he could feel the silence that followed like a bubble around him.

A lord.

Doing this sort of work?

He knew his wife was beautiful, yes, in the physical ways, but also in the ways that mattered.

In the past few years though, especially after the move to this village on the mountainside, they had been...

difficult.

He hadn't been himself after the duel that took his eyes.

He had once been confident, strong.

He had always known death was a possibility.

So Y Chi knew that that was the price of service to his lord, and he had always lived like he was already dead.

He had never considered this.

A slash across the face and he fell.

His challenger simply chuckled and left him there.

His right eye was gone already.

His left became infected.

A few minutes later, all he could see were shadows, then nothing at all.

He was despondent.

He didn't need to leave Kyoto, but he wanted to.

He had trained a lifetime to be a samurai.

Still, he and Osato, his wife, needed to eat.

So he needed to work.

To make her go to work for both of them was like being afflicted twice.

So he did what he must.

It's a bit of a trope now, I guess, but the idea of a person who was blind being a masseuse was very prominent during the Tokugawa shogunate.

In fact, during that time, only people who were blind could practice a certain type of massage that had supposed medical benefits.

Some people who are blind went to certain medical schools to learn the massage.

I guess during the occupation of Japan by US General MacArthur after World War II, the practice of this type of massage was banned, and it prevented the blind community from earning a living until Helen Keller learned of it and interceded with the U.S.

government to lift the ban.

So Ichi, even though he had put himself through all of that to make a life, a new one, another one, it was not the life he had strived for, not the life he wanted.

He had had urged them to move from Kyoto where he had grown up, from the capital, to the mountains.

Partially because he didn't want to compete with the monsieurs of the city, partially because he didn't want to face the people he had coasted above his whole life.

He would never see their faces, but he knew how they looked at him.

And after everything, he just couldn't bear it.

So they moved.

They moved up into the mountains, to a place where no one knew his name.

No one knew the man he had been, only the one he was now.

And he did a good job.

He left early in the morning before the break of dawn and found clients around the village and countryside.

There were many people who worked hard and as such, many that needed him.

Despite the changes, there was still a part of him who, resolved to do something, couldn't help but do it to the best of his ability.

He returned early one morning and called out a greeting to Osato, but she didn't answer.

He was confused.

He felt around the house, and it was empty.

Hm.

A thought began to take root.

It found fertile ground in his already melancholic mind, and it was confirmed when, canceling his morning appointment the following day, and the day after, he found the house empty.

After a month, his suspicion had not merely grown, but blossomed.

His wife was taking advantage of the one time she was sure he was out.

She was with another man.

The saddest thing was

he understood.

He hadn't been himself after the accident.

The story says he was as thin as the string of a chamisin.

His face was scarred.

That day, he waited until she came home.

She was out of breath, and she was surprised when he called out from the other room.

Home early.

I

understand,

he said, when she greeted him.

He could smell the dewy sweat on her.

He could hear her her awkward smile as she repeated that she

she didn't know what he was talking about.

I don't need to know who he is.

I understand

why.

I'm only hurt that you would keep this from me.

We have always been close.

We were friends before we were lovers, and I have known you longer than I can remember.

I understand that I'm different now.

That this life was not what you were promised when we were married.

I know.

I know why you would choose another.

I will not be jealous, just please, don't lie to to me.

So I Chi swallowed his tears.

There was a long silence.

I'm going to slap you now, he heard.

And then he felt.

His face stung.

Why did she do that and why warn him?

She said the latter because it felt cruel to hit him without the warning, for the former because what type of person did he think she was?

He was her husband, no matter what.

Even though they lived in poverty, even though she wasn't the wife of a samurai, she was still his wife.

She would stay by his side, no matter what happened, no matter how much he changed, in this life and the next, she was with him.

The tears fell from Suaichi's eyes, but this time for a different reason.

I'm not going to meet up with a lover.

I'm leaving...

for you.

It was then he learned of the temple far up in the mountain, Tsubasaka.

She went there every morning to pray for his sight to return for him.

She didn't want to tell him because she knew how much he was still dealing with.

But if the gods were listening and if they were kind, this was all she knew she could do.

Soaichi broke down, and Osato embraced him.

They held each other for a long time until Soaichi could speak.

He said, She prayed for him every day on this temple on a nearby mountain.

He could feel her nod.

Saichi's back straightened.

He would like to go to this temple.

Osato exhaled sharply.

It was so far away, though.

It was up in the mountains.

The paths were narrow and difficult for someone who could see clearly.

But Osato knew.

She knew her husband.

Like being a Masseuse or a samurai before that, once he decided on a course of action, he followed it to the end.

He always gave everything, and there would be no talking him out of this.

If she didn't take him, he would find a way to go on his own.

Yes, yes, okay, Osato said.

They could leave in the morning

She always told him she didn't care if he could see or not, and that was the truth.

What was the hardest was his despondency, having to give up on a dream he had worked his whole life to achieve because of one bad fight.

The early storms washed mud down from the mountains, and despite wanting to go each day, Osato had been forced to postpone not just her own prayers, but leading Sawachi up as well.

And Sawachi was pensive.

Anxiety churned within Osato, telling her that he didn't believe her.

But he would see.

When they made it up to the mountain temple, they knew her.

He would hear the prayers she said for him.

It would be okay.

They could finally brave the mountain on the third day, after the rains.

Their shoes would stick a bit in the mud, but they would find sure footing.

Sorry, you have to be careful up ahead.

You can't see it, but there's no side to the path.

There's only sky.

We're far up now, Osato warned.

I'm always careful.

Soaichi strode forward, not a foot's width from the edge, yet unafraid.

There was a reason for praying at Subasaka, Osato explained.

Back in the reign of the 50th Emperor, the Emperor himself began to lose his sight.

Soon, like Sawichi, his world was shadows, but when the abbot prayed for one hundred and seven days, the emperor's eyes were healed.

There was a long silence as she saw the temple on the mountainside up ahead.

She didn't say that she had been praying for over 300 days, that she was beginning to hate the goddess Canon.

Whether it was some action of her husband, something she did, or just the cruelty of the gods, she didn't know.

But Cannon had not heard her prayers or seen her tears.

and if the goddess had, well, that was worse than anything, because there had been a multitude of both prayers and tears.

She watched Suwaichi's face when the monks greeted him, explaining how, before the sun was up each day, his wife came to the cannon hall to pray for him, just as they taught her.

He nodded with the same solemnity that he reserved for everything else now, and asked to be shown where his wife prayed.

They removed their shoes.

She took him by the arm, and the monks walked them to the spot.

The floor had been worn worn shiny by the trickle of supplicants over the decades.

Whether or not they received what they begged from the gods was known likely only to them.

Soaichi found the spot and lowered himself to his knees.

He took a deep breath and asked his wife to kneel by his side.

Could she teach him the prayer?

We'll see Sawaichi the praying machine, but that will be right after this.

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Sawaichi was a machine, a praying machine.

She only usually prayed for a few hours and then left well before noon.

Come nightfall, Sawaichi showed no sign of slowing.

The chants continued into through the night until the first light of the morning showed in the window to the right.

Sawaichi stopped praying for the first time in nearly twenty hours to turn to his wife.

The next three days would determine everything for them.

Her eyes widened.

Three days, but they only brought enough provisions for a single hike.

They couldn't burden the monks, they would starve up here.

Sawaichi smiled the first smile Osato had seen in months, maybe longer.

He said he felt good.

He was optimistic.

He had hope.

Osato rose.

She would be right back.

He should follow this feeling, keep praying.

She would be back with provisions.

They would stay here for three days or three hundred, however long it took.

He held out his hand and she gripped it.

But she came close with a gentle pull.

He put his hand on her face and smiled again.

Thank you.

Thank you for everything.

I love you, Sawaichi said to his wife.

She had cried a lot of tears in that temple, but these were the first tears of joy.

She shuffled past the monks and ran down the mountain.

The monks she passed listened to the chanting in the back part of the temple for roughly twenty more minutes, when it stopped abruptly.

There was a shuffling and a grunting and the click of a cane on the temple floor.

Hey, is there anything we can get you?

They asked Saichi as he walked past with purpose, his walking stick tapping the floor.

Um okay, then, the monk said, as Sawaichi found his shoes and left the temple.

After Sawaichi had left, they turned to each other.

Should

he be doing that?

It wasn't difficult to find the spot.

He had counted paces on the way up to be sure, and he heard the thundering river below.

He knew the monks hadn't followed, and that's why she had been listening for them.

He took off his shoes

and felt.

She was kind.

She was loving.

He wouldn't do this to her anymore.

He knew she was still beautiful.

The people in the village marveled at her beauty.

She was smart and infinitely curious and amazing.

He wouldn't hold her back with

how he was.

His death might begin to repay his debt to her.

Maybe in the next life, he would be different.

When his toes curled over the edges of the rock and his walking stick found only the open air, he knew he found the right place.

He stepped back, set his walking stick down next to his shoes, and then stepped forward.

Mosato dropped the supplies and ran.

The monks told her that Sawachi had left, that he walked off by himself without a word.

She hadn't passed him on the road.

The light was failing when she finally began her ascent.

She hadn't seen the shoes and the cane, both on the edge of the cliff.

Oh, no.

She rushed to the edge, and while in the twilight she could barely make out the bottom, the crumpled body of her husband was clear enough.

She dropped to her knees and sobbed.

For years, for years she had prayed.

She knew his pain.

She only wanted to help, but he hid it from her, keeping it, not realizing that by being strong, he was hurting both of them.

She had prayed, and it had been for nothing.

She was alone now.

A widow.

She could remarry, of course, but she didn't want to remarry.

She loved her beautiful, broken husband.

She wanted to heal with him so they could live happily together, heal in whatever form that took.

Now he was gone.

He had left his own darkness of this world, for the darkness of death.

Her hands dropped to her side, and her fingers grazed the cane.

He had left his walking stick.

Who would take his hand?

Who would guide him in the next world?

She rose, picking the cane up from the ground.

As Osato, too,

stepped from the rocky outcropping, chanting a prayer, she was surprised by how little fear she felt.

The darkness took her, like it had taken Sawachi before her.

Osato, Sawaichi, come on, wake up.

Sawichi heard a booming voice command, clapping.

Sawaichi rose to his feet.

The river was quieter this morning.

He blinked and saw the most beautiful sunrise in the valley.

He turned and saw Osato sleeping peacefully on the ground.

She really was beautiful and

wait.

There he is.

I wonder when you would notice, he heard behind him.

Running to shake Osato awake, Sawaichi knelt and saw Canon, the Bodhisattva, and in some places the goddess.

Then he rose.

Wait.

The woman hovering above the water smiled.

All coming together?

But he...

He should be dead.

Not just you, Kanon pointed.

He turned to see Osato, also waking up.

She...

It had been years since he had seen her.

He almost didn't recognize her.

So Waichi helped her up.

She, too, was confused by the clear morning and the woman floating above the water.

She they

had died.

Yes, you had, Cannon said.

Yesterday was the day they died.

It was always fated to happen.

So Waichi would jump, and the Nosato would jump after him.

Sawaichi straightened up.

Faded.

So he was always fated to lose his eyes.

Instead of mourning the past, which couldn't be changed, he should have been focused on the present, on the lives around him.

Wait, why are we here?

Why are we alive?

I followed him into the darkness.

Osato's pain was still raw.

Cannon pointed at Sawachi.

He thought his story was over, and he closed the book, thinking that he knew better than the gods.

Saichi looked to his feet.

But, Canon said that she would have her due.

She had heard Osato's prayers from over the years, and she would bless the couple, even if it meant dragging them back from death to do it.

And she wouldn't hear any protests.

So I Chi asked, why would they protest that?

Oh, got it.

Okay, it was a good thing.

Kennon looked on the couple, but there was something of an imbalance now.

The wife's merit in praying for her husband had led to heaven bringing back his sight, but there was still the issue of all this.

Canon pointed to the them being alive thing.

The couple bowed low.

They would do anything for this gift, serve her in any way possible.

Oh, you will, Cannon said.

They were going to go on a pilgrimage.

33 temples, all around the land.

The story of what happened here would ring out in every corner of Japan.

So Aichi said, 33 temples, that could take the rest of their lives.

No, no, no, Cannon said, not your lives.

My lives.

They belong to me now.

And you're right, it's going to take years.

So you're going to spend them together, traveling from place to place, experiencing the wondrous natural beauty of this world, and telling the world of my kindness and mercy.

Both Sawaichi and Asato, foreheads back on the ground, said that they would do their best to fulfill this duty and pay their debt.

They couldn't hold back their smiles.

It was a tragedy.

What happened to the couple that lived in the village, the people acknowledged.

Their bodies must have been washed away by the river because all that was found of them were his shoes.

There was, however, word of a couple, similar to them, who was making a pilgrimage to dozens of temples, telling of the wisdom of canon.

But the people agreed that that couldn't possibly be them, not only for the obvious reason that the man was capable of sight, but that they were so happy, vibrant, and full of life, appreciating each day, so different from the people who had lived in the village, that there was no way they could be the same.

Canon is an extremely popular bodhisattva in Japan.

She's related to Buddhism, though sometimes worshipped as a goddess, and many people pray to her in hopes of gaining her compassion and mercy.

In certain branches of Buddhism, she is actually one of the Buddhas.

We've mentioned her before, and canon is a distinctly Japanese entity.

It's also a translation of sorts.

The bodhisattva canon is translated from a more widely known name.

That name?

Well, that's the Bodhisattva Guang Yin.

The story was originally a kabuki play, and I found a few different versions.

Some versions don't mention why he was blind, others that he was born blind.

The samurai bit was, unless I'm misremembering a version I read, my edition.

I wanted his sadness to stem from his mourning of the life that he had worked so hard for, but which had been taken from him, and the hopes that would never be.

I didn't want his blindness to be the problem, but rather have it be a symptom of what was really crushing to him, having to leave his dreams behind and start again.

We'll be right back with another story, but that will be read after this.

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I know what you did, the medium whispered to the Shinto priest.

The priest knew it.

He was unclean, polluted.

All of it had started with the best intentions.

Nearly three months prior, the Shinto priest, the scholar, would make 100 pilgrimages, one each day, from his temple in Kyoto to the Hiei Shrine.

Maybe.

There are a couple different versions of this story.

In one, he's making the pilgrimage from Kyoto to the Hiei Shrine, which is in modern-day Tokyo, unless there's a Hiei Shrine I can't find in Kyoto.

To go from Kyoto to Tokyo and back in a day is physically impossible.

It's nearly 600 miles, or almost a thousand kilometers.

Another version omits Kyoto and just says he visited the Hiei Shrine every day.

My initial reading of it was that he did a round trip between Kyoto and Tokyo, stopping at the shrines along the way.

It all doesn't change the story in a big way, but it is confusing.

We'll go with visiting the Hiei Shrine every day and just leave Kyoto out of it.

The priest would make the long walk, contemplating existence, feeling the flow of nature and the life in all things, the kami, the gods, all around him.

He was happy.

He was pure.

Brimming with peace.

On the morning of the 80th day, he began the walk to the Hie shrine when there was a cry from the road ahead.

The priest checked the position of the sun.

It was getting close to midday and he's still at the shrine.

The cry had devolved to sobbing at that point.

The priest noticed how the road went right by the woman.

Well, you know, maybe she didn't need aid.

Maybe she had just been cutting onions.

This is terrible, terrible, she cried out as he passed.

He sighed.

He asked, okay, what was the matter?

She waved her hands.

No!

She could see that he was a priest.

She wouldn't burden him with this.

Oh, okay, the priest said, but couldn't take three more steps before the woman cried out that her mother had died.

The priest froze.

Kigare.

Death, impurity, defilement.

He stepped away from her.

The kami, the gods, needed to be protected.

He needed to be protected.

If he stayed here much longer, he couldn't even keep his pilgrimage going.

He could be defiled even being present in this place.

But he saw the sorrow.

The woman said her mother had been sick for so long, and this morning she finally died.

The woman didn't know what she was going to do with her mother's body.

She needed help, but none of her neighbors could help her.

All of them were avoiding her and her house.

But you you're a priest.

I can't ask this of you.

I know it's taboo.

The woman looked down, forlorn.

She just, if her mother didn't get buried, she didn't know what she was going to do.

The priest, seeing his pilgrimage fly away like grass on the wind, all of his peace and understanding, he took the woman's hand in his and said he would help.

She led him inside.

As far as I understand it, the process for a Shinto funeral is a lengthy one, and I listed one explanation in the show notes.

But the role the priest took is to purify the ground and offer the prayers.

He cleansed the house and offered comfort to the mourners, even though he feared taboo.

When the sun came up the following day, he knew he had missed his visit to the shrine and defiled himself when he did so.

Still, he walked.

He continued on to the Hie shrine, but

there was a crowd today.

That was unusual.

He spotted someone.

His heart began to beat faster.

It was a medium.

A medium stood at the temple, a medium that communicated the the will and knowledge of the gods, the kami, and the gods knew that he was polluted, so that meant that she knew, and he would just wait a little ways off, a little farther, comfortably in some bushes.

You there, the medium cried out.

You, priest.

It was a shrine.

There were so many priests.

You, priest, hiding in the bushes.

That could still be anybody.

The one who's pretending not to hear me, the priest pretended not to hear, but to his alarm, the voice grew louder.

Closer.

Hello, priest, the medium said.

The priest swallowed high.

He tucked his hands in his robe, for fear that he would touch this person and defile her too.

I know what you did,

the medium whispered in the priest's ear, and she beckoned him toward not the shrine, but a quiet spot in a grove.

When the people

Yeah.

You're solid, she said.

But he said he invited defilement.

Death.

The priest still wasn't following.

Oh, yes.

Always avoid defilement.

Always.

Unless, the woman trailed off.

The priest said always meant always.

You can't qualify always with unless, because then it ceases to be always.

The woman sighed.

He was one of those.

Okay.

You should always follow the decrees of the law and avoid taboo unless it would be more compassionate to not follow those laws.

Rules exist to guide people to be compassionate, kind, and just.

He broke his oath.

He defiled himself, but it was out of deep mercy.

It's not the rules that count.

It's the person.

She informed them that the gods had been watching him, seeing him wrestle with his defilement, but he would come to realize, according to the Ted Ed version of the story I linked in the show notes, that contamination and corruption are two very different things.

She then took his hands into her own, showing what she thought of his defilement.

He thanked her.

She cautioned him that this was really a lesson for a priest, though, and he should keep it to himself.

He had great faith and training, but if regular people get it in their head that they can just disregard laws and common taboos in the name of what they see as justice, the whole thing kind of breaks down.

Just keep it to yourself.

Maybe don't mention it on a podcast.

The priest, relieved, was moved to tears.

He finished his pilgrimage, and the story tells us that, after,

he saw the spiritual beauty in all places, not just the serene or the sacred, and he was moved to acts of great compassion toward people, no matter the cost.

That's it for the stories this time.

Next week is our first foray into fables, the ones told by the fabulous fabulous Aesop.

The creature this time is the salamander from Europe.

The salamander is, of course, from kind of everywhere.

It's a real animal.

It's also magic.

Salamanders, if you didn't know, are impervious to fire.

Does that mean you should go around tossing amphibians in a fire to see if they burn?

Please don't.

That's not a good or healthy thing to do.

And I'm not calling into question the blanket assertions of thousands of years of folklore because I would never do anything like that.

But there is a thought that the idea that salamanders are fireproof came from people tossing a log they found in the forest onto a fire.

And And because salamanders like to live in rotting logs, it ran out of the fire when things started heating up, leading people to believe that salamanders were fireproof.

This goes all the way back to the first century when Pliny, a Roman writer, claimed that the salamander was so intensely cold that it could extinguish fire on contact.

Not sure who was putting out candles with living amphibians at the time to inspire that paragraph, but we'll move on.

Because Them being able to extinguish fire is also probably why people skinned them.

Salamanders are generally only four to six inches long, unless it's the deeply unnerving giant salamander.

So I can't begin to imagine just how many salamanders it would take to make a cloak of salamander skin.

Thankfully, I can't seem to find an image of a salamander skin cloak, which means that people either don't know about this totally real attribute of a common animal, they think it might be fake, who's to say, or they realize that even though the cloak might be fireproof, it's not insulated, so you're really just giving the dragon breathing fire at you a nice warm burrito.

Catching salamanders was dangerous business though, because they were so poisonous that, by sitting on a tree, their poison would seep into the fruit of the tree and be able to kill anyone who ate of it.

If they fell into a well and wanted to take a nice contained swim, the well water would poison anyone who drank it.

Pope Alexander III reportedly had a salamander skin cloak, or so he thought.

Later analysis showed that it was not made out of the possibly toxic salamander skins, but the absolutely toxic asbestos, something that was mistaken for salamander nest hair.

So actually, Pope Alexander III's cloak was both fireproof and toxic, but not for the reasons everyone thought.

That's it for this time.

Myths and Legends is by Jason and Carissa Weiser.

Our theme song is by Broke for Free, and the Creature of the Week music is by Steve Colmes.

There are links to even more of the music we used in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time.

Today, we're exploring deep in the North American wilderness among nature's wildest plants, animals, and

cows.

Uh, you're actually on an Organic Valley dairy farm where nutritious, delicious organic food gets its start.

But there's so much nature.

Exactly.

Organic Valley's small family farms protect the land and the plants and animals that call it home.

Extraordinary.

Sure is.

Organic Valley, protecting where your food comes from.

Learn more about their delicious dairy at ov.coop.

Nestled between summer's happy chaos and the holiday hustle-bustle is Scottsdale's best-kept secret, opulent autumn.

It's the perfect time to reset, find your balance, and embrace the thrill of new discoveries.

From sunny cinnamon desert hikes and pampering spa treatments to culinary delights from our celebrity chefs, Scottsdale has all the ingredients for a luxe, relaxing getaway.

And if you'd like to add a little holiday sparkle, we've got that too.

Visit unlined and scottsdale.com today.

Clean up your skincare routine with Primale Pure Natural Skincare Products, offering cleansers, moisturizers, and masks, plus deodorants and tallow-based items.

Organic, wild-crafted, and regeneratively grown whenever possible, Primale Pure's products contain no chemicals, fragrances, or fillers.

Just pure, clean beauty.

Head to primallypure.com.

That's P-R-I-M-A-L-L-Y-P-U-R-E.com and experience skincare that nourishes you within.