ABSTRACT
In the middle of autumn at about three in the morning, I stepped off the boat to set foot on Shikoku.1 I keenly felt a marvelous freshness in the clean, cold air, a sensation that reached into the corners of my heart, and then I sensed something like a powerful force from afar that seemed to be pulling my body in its direction. My legs moved as if on their own. As I left the passengers’ waiting room, a woman approached and asked encouragingly, ‘Do you need to hire a car? If I can get another rider we can go right away.’ I promptly declined saying, ‘I will walk.’ I felt in my own clear words the power of my own strength. In the form of a pilgrim, with only the strength of the pilgrim’s staff, I stepped Þ rmly on the earth, and strode through the long, long town of Muya in the darkness. Dawn was at last beginning to break at last when I drew near the Shūhandaishi Temple.
