Settai

Settai has two general meanings in Japanese: welcome or reception and service or offering. While both seem to apply to the use of settai in relation to the Henro Pilgrimage, the second is definitely the more important. People give pilgrims things (money, food, gifts, etc) in order to participate in the pilgrimage and to earn some of the Buddhist merit associated with it.

This picture was taken in the store at Temple #2 where I bought the Buddist equipment that is needed for the trip. The woman on the left had just given me settai by reducing the price, once I had collected everything. I know that it was settai because she told me so. She also made sure that we did not buy anything that we did not need - not your usual store.
The same thing happened in other stores, and not just at those associated with a temple. At one business hotel where we stayed, when we paid our bill, the clerk erased the cost of the four cups of coffee that I had drank and specifically stated that it was settai. The caretaker at the lodge at Kongochoji, Temple #26, gave Ian and I each a keychain compass, again saying that it was settai.

Some of the commercial ryokan and business hotels that we stayed in gave us settai in the form of lunch to carry with us or a reduction in price. We stopped in one small market and bought candy and a pair of gloves (my hands were becoming sunburned). After we had paid and left the building, one of the clerks came running out and gave us each a bottle of milk, saying that it was the best milk in the area and that it had just arrived. It was delicious and certainly helped us along our way. I am pretty sure that the milk was worth more than our meager purchases.

One instance of settai that sticks in my mind concerned three sisters that we kept running into over a period of a couple of days. They were sitting by the road eating mikans and as we walked by they offered us some. Ian and I sat down with them and enjoyed the freshly picked fruit. The sisters said that a man we could see working in a field near us had given them the mikans, but there were too many so they wanted to share them with us as settai. Their break over, they got up and moved on. We continued sitting and eating mikans. The man from the field walk by us with speaking and went into a nearby house. A couple of minutes later he returned and handed each of us a package of potato chips, saying simply that it was settai. He turned and left, going back to work.

Another case that was particularly revealing was when a car, at the head of a fairly long line of cars, slowed to a stop beside us, causing all the other cars to stop, too. The window rolled down and we were each given a handful of candy as settai. What I found interesting was that the drivers of the other cars did not seem distrubed by the wait, but rather many of them bowed or waved as they finally started moving again.

Our own reaction to receiving settai changed as we progressed through the sequence of temples. At first it seemed like something that was being given to us personally and receiving settai gave us a warm feeling. However, as we continued, I gradually realized that settai had nothing to do with me personally. The giver was not giving me a present, the giver was vicariously participating in the pilgrimage by supporting a pilgrim, and thus earning merit. This gave me an even warmer feeling as I knew that I was giving the giver something of great value in return for the small gift.