It was the beer that did it, setting Habanobo on a new path as a Shukubo (temple lodging) focused on providing a unique individualized experience of Nichiren Shu practice for anybody coming to stay at the historic lodging in Minobusan. That and the COVID pandemic. Rev. Hayashi of Habanobo explains, “Nobody come to stay when the COVID panic hit in 2020 and our beer stock went past the pull date. I was going through it looking at all the waste and decided right there to go back to the basics, no alcohol, Shojin Ryori (Buddhist vegetarian cuisine) only, no TV and no groups.”
‘Nothing’ can be a sales point
Instead of the standard Shukubo routine of welcoming large groups of pilgrims, Rev. Hayashi decided to provide a tailored individualized program. “Habanobo is smaller than most other Bo, so catering to large groups of visiting pilgrims was never something we could offer even if we wanted to, offering ‘nothing’ compared to other Bo can be a sales point,” he explained. In a way it’s not really new. Habanobo has a long tradition of focusing on individuals rather than groups. Large groups of pilgrims visiting Minobusan did not happen until the Edo period. Before then there was much less foot traffic and the main route into Minobu was also different. Travelers would travel south via the Fuji river then take the north route that runs past the front of Habanobo, the entrance gate Shukubo reflected in their kanji character name. Today’s main southern route that leads to San Mon gate became popular in the Edo era.
Rev. Hayashi acts as a personal tour guide, instructing inbound visitors the basics of Bo life and ways of practice, such as explaining Buddhist and Nichiren Shu basics at evening service, including what we chant and how to offer incense. When I visited Habanobo in September 2024, room guides and food menus where meticulously translated into English with professional polish, as was their web site. This ‘backend’ service is provided by Otera Stay, a venture business that started in 2016 with the aim of connecting regular visitors with Bo outside of the traditional Buddhist temple member context.
A new business model
It’s an open secret the numbers of pilgrims and visitors coming to Minobusan has been declining for years, long before the COVID free fall, and that Kuonji is facing serious financial difficulties. The past won’t come back. Whether we like it or not change will come. Habanobo decided to try and change things on their own terms. Rev. Hayashi found Otera Stay through fellow Nichiren Shu priest Rev. Genjyun Kondo, who acts as a Otera Stay outreach advisor.
Otera Stay is part of the ShareWing organization created by Mai Sato who is also CEO. The Otera Stay idea gradually came to her from a longtime family friendship with the resident priest of a Zen Shukubo in Tokyo. Her family were not temple members, she stressed, “We were just family friends but whenever I visited the Bo I was always struck by its beauty and serenity, I thought how wonderful it would be for others to visit and enjoy it.” Unfortunately, casual access was hidden away from non-temple members.
One of the challenges for inbound visitors of staying at a Bo, or Temple Hotel as Otera Stay grandiloquently calls it, is that the system was traditionally centered on priests bringing groups of pilgrims for events. Arrangements were made directly
with the bo, not through travel agencies. Minobusan bo for example only started accepting online reservations in 2015, and there are still holdouts who prefer the traditional ways. Online reservations involve the risks of guests not showing up without canceling. The result is leftover prepared food and lost business from turning away other guests. There’s also the stress of taking care of international visitors who don’t speak Japanese with a tiny staff that is already busy taking care of established clientele.
Otera Stay attempts to solve all these challenges. Sato san calls it “Creating an experience by looking at the experience from the point of view of customers rather than temple members.” Building something of value she says. Otera Stay works with the Bo to create ‘the customer experience’: applying for Japanese government inbound tourist subsidies on their behalf, building a beautiful Japanese/English website and other necessary bilingual materials for guests, and creating English profiles for major online booking sites like booking.com, as well as providing their own multilingual reservation system. For reservations that come through the Otera Stay pipeline, they take a cut of the payment.
Otera Stay Bo also charge a higher rate for inbound tourist reservations. This is a common indsutry practice but it was hard to convince Buddhist based sto implement it. “There was a lot of resistance,” Sato san explained. “They are used to charging one set price for everybody but there’s more time and cost involved with international visitors.” Not all visitors want to pay a higher price for the Otera Stay experience, but a surprising number do: on average 70% of the Minobusan Bo visitors after COVID restrictions were lifted are inbound. The Takayama Otera Stay Bo is 90% inbound.
Not all the inbound friendly Minobusan Bo are Otera Stay. Kakurinbo for example has created their own outreach program that leverages a large staff of working holiday VISA Australians to take care of guests who are all inbound. That they come to a place as remote as Minobu is a small miracle by itself, but Kakurinbo offers Kyoto Gion-like tourist shows of Nichiren Shu culture such as Mando and Gagaku. Guests can wear kimono and eat meals while admiring the Japanese garden. Unlike Habanobo there is no practice and participating in the Kuonji morning service is a distant option.
Visitors seem to enjoy the experience. Feedback is positive. Susan Kanner had this to say of her Kakurinbo stay in 2024:“The thorough and thoughtful explanations provided [by Kakurinbo] helped me understand the Buddhist traditions and culinary delights…Dining as I gazed at the gardens truly added to the magic…I’m not a morning person but I certainly didn’t mind getting up and taking that beautiful stroll up the hill to [Kuonji] Temple. The sights and sounds, colors and movements were mesmerizing. They not only allowed but encouraged us to participate which made this spiritual experience even more memorable…Being able to observe and participate in their spiritual practice was incredible and moving and I very much appreciated the opportunity to experience it all.”
The Kakurinbo approach is somewhat controversial within the small community of Minobusan Shukubo. They put a lot of outreach effort to inbound visitors, but that effort doesn’t extend to cooperating with the surrounding shukubo. Their recent foray in microbrewing raised eyebrows when the Kakurinbo proprietress brazenly asked her Shukubo neighbors to buy her beer. It wasn’t a win-win proposition. One shukubo staffer expressed the general sentiment saying, “Why should we buy their beer when they are the ones making money off of us.?”
While there is nothing wrong with going all in with the inbound tourist business, there is a an unavoidable tradeoff: bringing in inbound tourists means losing Japanese customers. And once Japanese customers stop coming, they never come back. It’s an open secret that the Japanese pilgrim clientele who regularly stayed at Kakurinbo no longer go there. What do they do if the inbound tourist boom goes bust?
Hence the dilemma. Sato san says her basic goal of Otera Stay is “building something that can last.” A very worthy goal but a difficult one. The challenge of any crafted ‘experience’ comes down to this: what exactly do first time visitors to Minobusan take home with them? A nice memory and smartphone video clips to share with friends on social media, or a deeper sense of wanting to explore and experience more of the spiritual side of Nichiren Shu Buddhism? Is it sustainable when the novelty wears off, or the favorable cheap yen exchange rate disappears? Time well tell.
It’s healthy that Minobusan shukubo are trying different approaches. Each following a path they think is best for them. For example, Rev. Yosei Ikegami of Chijakubo focuses on providing a spiritual haven for those struggling with end-of-life issues. Rev. Kochi Uchino of Shimizubo focuses on taking care of pilgrimage groups.
In the face of a changing society, there is no other choice but to adapt. The original job of shukubo was to provide lodging for pilgrims and priests. Now there is the added responsibility of “outreach,” a socially acceptable non-religious way of saying propagation in our shallow social media era in which religion is often seen as something to be avoided. One size never fits all. To paraphrase Chapter 2 of the Lotus Sutra, the most important thing is working together, each according to their unique abilities, despite their differences to achieve that goal, as trial and error is only path to success.
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