Priest making 600-km disaster pilgrimage

Masatoshi Yamada / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Renjo Miura, a Nichiren Buddhist priest, prays for disaster victims as he walks in Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture.

RIKUZEN-TAKATA, Iwate--A Buddhist priest of the Nichiren sect has been making a 600-kilometer pilgrimage on foot to console the souls of those who died in the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

Renjo Miura, 43, a priest in the Miyagino district of Sendai, began his journey on June 18, the disaster's 100-day anniversary, in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, one of the affected parts of the Kanto region.

With fellow priests joining him on different sections of his pilgrimage route, Miura been walking north along the Pacific coastline through devastated areas, skirting the no-entry zone around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, while reciting passages from the sutras of the Nichiren sect for the sake of the repose of the disaster victims in places covered with rubble.

Miura is scheduled to arrive in Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, the destination of his pilgrimage, on Saturday. He plans to chant a final sutra at Jodogahama beach in the city.

At 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Miura picked up a piece of wood from rubble washed ashore at a beach near the Takata Matsubara pine forest, where about 70,000 pine trees were leveled by the tsunami in Rikuzen-Takata.

Miura wrote a sutra passage on the wood and chanted for about 10 minutes while beating a flat, circular drum.

"I heard many bodies were found in this area," he said. "I'd like to pray for their souls."

Miura, who became a priest when he was 20, has been asking passersby for alms in front of JR Sendai Station for the past seven years. Although his own home was partly damaged by the earthquake, he headed for a mortuary in a neighboring town immediately after he learned from TV broadcasts that many people had been killed or went missing in the disaster and started to chant sutras for the victims.

During the Golden Week holiday period, he volunteered to listen to devastated people's worries at an evacuation center in Shichigahamamachi, Miyagi Prefecture. However, no one confessed their deepest worries to a priest they had never met before.

Miura asked himself what else he could do, and thought he should try to understand the terrible situation in the disaster-stricken areas for himself and pray for the victims.

He chanted sutras about 150 times in devastated areas and he wrote sutra passages on 20,000 slips of paper which he then threw into the sea.

Yoko Abe, 59, who ran a supermarket in Minami-Sanrikucho, Miyagi Prefecture, was one of the people for whom Miura chanted. The tsunami gutted her store, leaving only the framework and roof. Several of her neighbors died. She was really impressed with the chant by Miura who she encountered by chance.

"I don't think much progress has been made on restoration, but [Miura's chant] encouraged me. It made me think, 'I'd like to be of help to people again,'" Abe said. The next morning, as a token of her gratitude, she delivered rice balls to Miura, who was to leave the town on that day.

Wherever Miura goes, he listens to what people want to say and preaches the doctrines of Buddha. "I think [places damaged by] the disaster are gradually being restored. But somebody should continue to be there for victims," Miura said. When his journey is over, he plans to visit the mortuary again.