My Henro bag

One of the things that we carried with us was this special bag. I call it my Henro bag; I have no idea what it is called in Japanese. The primary use was to carry the various things that we used at the temples and which I will discuss in later entries, but we also used it to carry things that we needed while walking: for example, the book of maps, food, and things we bought along the way. The only problem with it was that it leaked in the rain so I covered my with a plastic bag and Ian taped his shut. Ian's method worked better, kept out the rain well, but was inconvenient because he could not open it. My method was convenient. I could get things out whenever I wanted, but it leaked a little around the edges.

The writing on the bag is essentially three different things: a Sanskrit character in the middle of the top row, the two Chinese characters in the top row, and the four characters in the bottom row.

I am not at all sure about the implications of the Sanskrit. According to a Japanese book I have about writing Sanskrit, the character is pronounced /yu/ which is a seed syllable representing Maitreya, a Buddhist bodhisattva. I have yet to discover what connection Maitreya, or Miroku in Japanese, has to the Henro Pilgrimage, but I am going to continue investigating.

The two characters in the top row are pronounced /hounou/ (/hono/ as in Santa's "ho ho ho" with both vowels drawn out long). According to the dictionary hounou is a noun that means dedication, offering, presentation (to a deity), or oblation. They are commonly seen in both temples and shrines. While it would be possible to write a long essay on the various implications of this word in relation to the Henro Pilgrimage, I think it is safe to say that the Pilgrimage itself is the offering. Exactly who it is being offered to would take another long discussion.

The four characters at the bottom have the most direct relation to the Henro Pilgrimage. They are pronounced /dou gyou ni nin/. The first two mean going together and the second two mean two people. This refers to the idea that you are not alone while on the Pilgrimage. Kobodaishi is walking with you, at least in spirit, since he has been dead for a thousand years. These four characters appear on many things related to the Pilgrimage and they will appear again when I discuss the walking stick that we carried.