Book Review: “Walking With Buddha” by CW Lockhart

When you cannot walk, you do armchair travel. Or so it goes. Living vigourously though someone else’s pilgrimage is definitely a way to enjoy it, and although managed to travel part of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, I did not now if and when I could continue.

While the first half of this year was filled with studying the Japanese language in my spare time, I tried to broaden my casual Japan studies after my first quarter-pilgrimage in June. Coming home feeling inspired and grateful for the positive turn on our family’s health, I tried to branch out on learning more about the Shikoku Pilgrimage. And not just that – I also seriously considered returning to university for Japan Studies. I started looking for Japan Studies books beyond guidebooks and language books.

But regarding full-time study at university, I quickly realised that the Japanese language classes alone would be incompatible with my work schedule and appointments already booked well into next year. So, I returned to the casual Japan studies for the time being. I ordered a bunch of books as an educational birthday present to myself, and signed up to a community college online Japanese class.

Let’s just say the hard science reading is not going that well, given I am too knackered after work most days. The Japanese lessons leave a lot to be desired. I made rather good progress with pilgrimage-related books. I only took this one out of its brown Amazon envelope a couple weeks ago – my first Amazon order this year – and read it quickly. But I should have known better… I read it, and here is my honest opinion. All I can say is… look out for AI publications and shoddy Print on Demand reprints of many pilgrimage-related books at online booksellers. This book is obviously not written by AI, as the many good reviews testify.

I am going to spare you the photos of the actual book here and share a few of my own pilgrimage shots instead because I have not reviewed books in a while and I am concerned this text isn’t exactly riveting.

About the Book

“Walking with Buddha” is a first-person account of an American lady pilgrims walking pilgrimage some time in the late 2010’s -probably before Japan experienced its upsurge in tourism. According to Amazon, the book was published in paperback in 2021 (ISBN-10 0578864266) and possibly in hardback in 2024, although the title photo is identical, but they got different ISBN-13’s. Both editions were published by “Labrador &. Lockheart” and shame on me I did not look at the descriptions on Amazon properly, for this got really favourable reviews, so I thought this is a serious book that has undergone watertight editing.

However, when I excitedly unwrapped my Amazon order, I held what looked very much like a self-published book – same cheap paper and binding as with my recent damp squib. At least it wasn’t quite as cheaply printed as the other book I ordered, Takashi Nagai’s “Bells of Nagasaki” (unrelated to pilgrimage). Anyway, I think I am cured of Amazon Shopping for the foreseeable future, and now it makes sense why these books did not appear to be available anywhere else…

So, let’s talk about book quality. Thankfully, I only paid a bit over 16 Euro, but it’s still expensive for an oversized paperback of very questionable quality. My edition of the book is printed by Amazon in Erfurt, Germany, and the overall quality was terrible. After half an hour of reading the front cover already lifts up and the foil separates slightly from the paper base. The pages are only half filled with print – there are huge spaces on each side… I mean, it’s not the kind of book for lots of marginalia.

“God, this book is so going back” I thought when I first glanced at it. Then, I noticed that the writing is fairly pleasant. Upon reading the first few pages, I immediately felt chummy, kinda being in the same age group and mobility challenged and all.

And honestly, I am no self-publishing snob. I have self-published a couple books with my colleagues. Even after fifteen years, the print is still crisp and the cover still lies flat, and it’s not like we were spending a bomb on printing. Printing books in the cheapest, shittiest quality is doing nothing for the survival of the physical book. The contrast to the wonderfully bound secondhand books from the 1980’s and 1990s that arrived on the same day from a second-hand bookseller could not have been bigger.

But, let’s move on to the actual content of the book.

About the Author

Christine W Lockhart is a US-American English Professor with an impressive travelling career spanning the USA, Japan and Europe. Like many Shikoku pilgrims, the completed at least one Camino de Santiago pilgrimage before embarking on the Shikoku Pilgrimage. She also served in the US Army, have five kids, worked in the Coast Guard… completed a PhD and carved a career as a professor, teaching in Europe and Japan. This information was is freely available from reading the this book , which is the most autobiographical of all Shikoku Pilgrimage books I have read so far.

With the author coming from a scientific background in the Humanities (English, I think), I expected background, historical context, and some filling out of the sometimes sparse information one reads online about the temples on the route, details on the customs and traditions and a ton of information packed into a nicely to digest tale. Like you know, in Paul Theroux’s travelogues. I’ve not read everything by him, and found his novels middling, but his travel books on Asia and the Mediterranean… they they are a bit of a Gold Standard of “serious” Travel Writing to me.

My Review

As far as first-person accounts of a walking pilgrimage by a Western pilgrim go, this is quite a nice tale. Easy to read. Nicely structured although the messy typesetting does a great job in trying to make it a harder job on your eyes and brain.

For those who have never been on a pilgrimage, it offers a gentle introduction on what this pilgrimage is about, and what to expect as a visitor to Shikoku. From the first few pages, there are practicalities interwoven with her personal experiences, and you will learn on the first few pages that the pilgrimage is a 100+km trek mainly on sealed roads, the purpose of the pilgrimage, how to get your gear, the kind of accommodation and that it is essential to travel light.

It is very light on any historical facts or analyses, and therefore as lightweight as the authors Japanese backpack.

After an initial “This book is going back!!!” because of the poor quality of the physical book, I thought I should at least try to sample the text. The first section of the book, titled like the sections of the pilgrimage and therefore called “Awakening” was, although bumpy, quite nice. Thin on historical and cultural background, but pleasant to read. I read it after long and heavy days at work and enjoyed it at first. Many encounters with other pilgrims, both foreign and Japanese and anecdotes that are mildly interesting.

But also… this book reads like a personal diary at times. I now some diaries can be sparkling, and well worth put into print, but I am afraid this isn’t one of them. I feel all the solidarity for middle-aged ladies at a pivotal point in their careers and family lives, to log off from everyday life and seek experiences to reflect and restructure their lives, but I am not sure I want to read about them, unless they convey a message beyond their personal self-improvement. The author meets people on her pilgrimage, mostly many other foreign pilgrims, but the story always loops back to herself, and, with very few exceptions, we learn little about the other pilgrims.

As soon as the author appears to arrive in Kochi Prefecture, all the temples meld into one mega-episode of chanting and meeting several fellow pilgrims, and three chapters later, I has trouble remembering the temples or the actual walking. It began feeling very much “Dear Diary” but in expensive self-published book form. Getting to Temple 60, I was ready to give up, but limped through the remaining pages just to say that I finished reading the book. Later in the book, there was too much autobiography woven into it as well, and it became from nice travelogue to a somewhat self-centred essay.

I have little to compare it with other Shikoku Pilgrimage accounts yet. I vividly remember the first time I ever read about the pilgrimage, in Will Ferguson’s “Hokkaido Highway Blues”, and even that short chapter was more vibrant and stuck to the memory than this entire book.

Read this book if you…

…Would like to read a relatively recent first-person account by a solo woman traveller. You can learn some background knowledge on the pilgrimage, but it is rather slim on substance. As far as I am aware, there are many self-published autobiographical pilgrimage tails about, with more available for free in blog form on the internet. I like a pretty old one, called “Following the Arrows” (2013) and there was another one by an Australian I believe, around 2016, but I cannot find it any more… even DuckDuckGo is a bit crap and shows a lot of generic Shikoku Pilgrimage blog posts now. Both were relatively matter- of-fact, to get an idea of the practicality of the pilgrimage. I also liked MrsMarmitelovers account on Substack – much shorter, but full of dry wit.

I also dislike the poor quality book that is obviously not by “a Small Press” quality issue but printed and produced by Amazon, so for me, the book is not a keeper, nor is it a recommendation.

For a similar personal account, which is more elegantly written and weaves in some history and cultural studies as well, I would suggest “The Way of the 88 Temples” even though its about 20 years older, and the demographics of the pilgrimage have shifted. Review to come!

Last not least, bit of housekeeping: I am not putting in Amazon links here, because I try not to buy from them any more, so why trying to monetize through something I don’t use myself. I tend to buy used, or from a German bookshop called Thalia, but want to buy more from independent bookshops in the future, so I am looking into geniallokal and uk.bookshop.org.

If you can , please support your local bookshop or independent booksellers and buy from there or buy secondhand!

And, in true budget classy fashion, I like to give you links on where you might be able to read this for free, but there is no such thing as a free recent publication. If you use audiobook formats, you may get this as an audiobook cheaply.