Tohoku Sketches

...The sky was cloudy,  the weather and the landscape reminiscent of the British moor, open expanses of grass stretching away.  I was surprised at the amount of grass up here, far more than farther south.  New flowers pushed color toward the sky.  The dullness of stone found solidarity in the hues of the sky.   These itabi stones are new to me, these petitions for divine intervention, these appeals catholic in their pathos.  I'll run into them throughout my travels to the Far North.  Amongst them is the Tagajo stone, this little piece of the 8th Century that Basho so famously misread.  Tagajo Castle itself was on the hillock above, now bare but for a long flight of steps and foundation stones.  I sit atop the steps and eat lunch, reflecting on the passage of time and how the Passage of Time is itself passing.  Hard to imagine this Nara period outpost, on the edge of the Emishi wilderness, back in the days when Japan had a wilderness.  I find myself becoming quite intrigued by the Emishi.  I'll devour tales of their culture, their wars against the Yamato, as I pass through their lands, though the only real threat today are the bears that the signs are so ready to scare me with...

...Throughout Tohoku there is the palatable feel of the tsunami.  As I buy a coffee at the ferry terminal in Shiogama, I imagine what the jovial woman who hands me the cup experienced that day, in her shop mere meters from the sea.  Ironically, the islands of Matsushima Bay fared better with the rising water than they did with Japan Inc., who have left so many concrete monuments to wealth that the view is spoiled for me.  Matsushima town itself has erected marble stele and handwritten wooden signs showing the extent of the tsunami.  The quiet pine-lined entrance to Zuiganji is now the color of mud.  Looking at the caves here all I can imagine are the rakan statues treading water.  While walking along the sea earlier this morning, I met a carpenter involved in the long restoration project at the temple.  He tells me that the completion date has been pushed back a few years, since most the region's carpenters are involved in rebuilding the  communities destroyed along the coast... 

...In the lobby of my hotel are photos of the damage that it took two years ago.  And in the bath, I talk with a man who has come back for a memorial service.  It dawns on me that by the Japanese way of counting, this is the third anniversary of the deaths of the victims.  With such a large number of dead, the priests who themselves survived the disaster will be performing the 3-year memorial services daily for the better part of the year.  

...And the reminders continue as I move inland.  At train stations along the route are posters with information about bus services that have been created in order to replace the train lines that have washed away.  On the narrow roads, trucks rumble past, their trailers piled high with debris.  At my inn at Akakura Onsen, I chat with a group of old timers who take the baths as relief against age-related ailments.  They are warm and jovial, and all come from towns that no longer exist...

...the forest of ihai for the tsunami victims at Haguro-san, the song of the tsutsudori like the beat of the mokugyo, an accompaniment for the prayer in my heart.  I sit in similar silence out at Minamidani, taking in the chant of the frogs... 


On the turntable: "The Rough Guide to the Music of Iran"