Taya Cave: A Pilgrimage by Candlelight

Travelling light

The equipment for the journey was a candle on a wooden holder. Photography is forbidden inside the cave, which remains a place of Buddhist practice. The notice outside made the rule clear, at least in Japanese. The English version was more poetic: “One in the cave gives up smoking photography prohibited.” The wooden holders were lined up beneath it.

For once, a candle was more useful to me than a camera.

A pilgrimage inside a hillside

Inside, the walls and ceilings bear around 250 reliefs, including Buddhist figures, mandalas and scenes from religious stories. They give the underground journey its geography. Images associated with the 88 temples of the Shikoku pilgrimage are joined by those of the Saigoku, Bandō and Chichibu Kannon pilgrimages, which together account for another 100 temples. Kannon is the Buddhist figure of compassion.

Here, worshippers can make a symbolic pilgrimage to those distant sacred sites within a single hillside. The images are places to pray as well as things to look at.

A shorter walk for the pilgrim had meant a rather longer assignment for someone with a chisel.

Tradition traces the cave back to Japan’s medieval Kamakura period, when monks are said to have dug it as a place of Shingon practice, chanting sutras as they worked. Their chisel marks remain. The carvings are later: most date from the Edo period onwards, and one wall bears the date 1862.

With a candle in my hand, I walked through the cool, quiet passages and felt my mind settle. There was plenty to take in, but none of it had to become a photograph.

The temple’s devotional life was visible above ground too, in details small enough to hold in your hands.