Hello, Pilgrim

and no, that's not a John Wayne reference

Starting Small

When Hiro and I were in Japan during the spring of 2023, we were lucky to spend a few nights as guests of one of my dearest friends, Todd, and his husband, Shingo. Todd and I met in Japan in 1990 and immediately clicked. At the time, Todd was living in beautiful Hirosaki, a city in northern Japan, but he and Shingo now live just outside Fukuoka, at nearly the other end of the country.

During that visit, Todd asked if I remembered my Tōkyō pilgrimages. I went on two of them, both within beautiful neighborhoods—Yanaka and Asakusa—and both were dedicated to the same set of seven deities.

The Seven Gods of Good Fortune

This woodblock print triptych by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (public domain) depicts the seven gods playing with children. Not only do I love the pattern on Fukurokuju’s kimono (at top right), but I also love how he painted a face (with eyeglasses) on his big bald head! At top left is Bishamonten, below him is Hotei, at top center is Jurōjin, and below is Benzaiten, and in the lower right corner, making faces at each other, are Daikokuten (with his hammer set down beside him) and Ebisu.

When I first started investigating the where and how of pilgrimages for these seven deities, I was not particularly curious about their divine origins. However, the more I studied, the more fascinated I became.