Cluster Twenty-Four:
Haiku in Ishiteji Temple

Ishiteji, in the outskirts of Matsuyama, and not far from Dogo Onsen, is one of the temples on the Shikoku Pilgrimage. It dates its founding to 728 and also claims a restoration by Kukai (Kobo Daishi), the saintly founder of Shingon Buddhism in whose honor the pilgrimage route was established. The temple has a Niomon Gate from 1318 that has been registered as a National Treasure. There is also a beautiful Kamakura-period pagoda. The grounds are always filled with the scent of incense and white-clad pilgrims saying their prayers.

The name of the temple, "Stone Hand," goes back to a rather cruel legend. A stingy landlord, Emon Saburo, refused to give alms to Kukai and even broke the begging bowl of the priest. As punishment, all his ons died one after the other from an mysterious illness. Desperate for salvation, Emon gave away all his possessions and went in search of Kukai. He circled Shikoku twenty times, thereby becoming the first Shikoku pilgrim and immediately setting a record for others, but Kukai always eluded him. Finally, he walked the pilgrimage in the opposite direction, hoping to come face to face with Kukai. And indeed, exhausted, he met the priest and died at his feet. His dying wish was to be reborn as an influential person so that he might do good works. Kukai took a stone on which he wrote "Emon Saburo reborn" and gave that to the dying man. Nine months later, the wife of the lord of the province gave birth to a baby that clenched this very stone in his hand. The temple museum museum displays a smooth, egg-like stone it claims to be the very one Emon received from Kukai.

Not only the legend, but also the grounds of the temple are not really "clean." Although there are several interesting haiku stones and other stone steles, there are also many monuments that are rather extravagant or even surrealistic. Sometimes the religious mind is like a bad TV program in its pedestrian extravagance. Behind the main hall are tunnels with modern Buddhas and flashing lights, ending in a three-dimensional mandala. This craziness is perhaps the result of temples having too much money because they do not pay taxes...

But when Shiki visited here, there were only the pagoda and old gate, sitting in the green countryside..

Shiki wrote in the preface to this haiku, that in the afternoon of September 20, 1895, he enticed his friend Rokudo (Yanagihara Kyokudo), who had come to Gudabutsuan Hermitage, to visit Ishiteji Temple together. The poem is a simple greeting of the temple, standing in the green rice fields. Kobo Daishi or Kukai (774-835) is the supposed founder of the temple; he is one of the most important figures in Japanese Buddhism and honored in the Shikoku Pilgrimage.

Shiki wrote this haiku during the same visit to Ishiteji as the previous one. As people often do when they visit a temple in Japan, he drew a fortune slip - probably half-jokingly. Usually, after paying a small sum of money, one shakes an oblong box containing bamboo sticks until one stick emerges from a small hole in the bottom. The stick bears a number that corresponds with a fortune slip one then takes from a small drawer. On the slip one's fortune is written in archaic language under such categories as health, love, travel and finances. The slip Shiki drew read "Misfortune," and contained the warning that his illness would last, but that there would be no danger for his life. This was quite a coincidence as he had just been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Shiki seems to have been quite shocked. By the way, in his diary Shiki wrote that he found the fortune slip when he sat down on the veranda of the temple hall - he did not draw it, but it was blown to him by the autumn wind.

This is a haiku by Maeda Goken, composed when he visited Ishiteji Temple. The temple bell dates from 1251, the bell tower from 1333 - both are from the so-called Kamakura period. The sound of the old bell brings the past vividly to life. Goken was born in 1889 in Sakaide, also on Shikoku, but he moved to Matsuyama where he worked for the Iyo Railway Co.

The stone stele this haiku speaks of is a monument standing at the northern side of the three-storied pagoda in Ishiteji Temple: a two meter high pillar, dating from 1882, and with inscribed on it "Mound to worship Basho." Below it, a kaishi, a folded paper with a linked verse by Basho and five others was buried. The pillar itself is not a kuhi, but the hokku by Basho goes as follows:

come closer
look for the flower vase
plum and camellia

uchi-yorite | hana-ire sagurite | ume tsubaki

The humor is in the flower vase: normally people would be asked to come closer and "look for" a flower in the garden or in nature.

The present haiku stone stands next to the Basho monument and comments on it: the stone monument stands in the sweeping winter rain. The haiku was written by Utsunomiya Tankikaku.

We return to Shiki for the final haiku of this section. This is a beautiful evocation of the Shikoku Pilgrimage: the old Nio Gate of the temple with its classical guardian statues, the landscape in spring and a white-clad group of pilgrims with their staffs and tinkling bells. They sit together in the grounds and are eating their luncheon, perhaps rice balls brought from the inn where they stayed the night.

Shiki wrote more haiku about Ishiteji, and I close with one that has not been engraved on a kuhi, but that aptly describes the pagoda:

looking up
to the tall pagoda -
autumn sky

mi agureba | to no takasa yo | aki no sora