Surveying the Kingdom

The girl on the train is standing, an English copy of War of the Worlds open in her hands.  I too am standing, and looking over her shoulder I notice the print is large and that she has highlighted words here and there. I wonder if she had particular trouble with the name of one of the characters:  Elphinstone.  

I disembark at Tenri, like many times before, and yet again push quickly through the old arcade (one of the healthiest in Japan) to Isonokami Jinja.  Rather than turn right as usual onto the Yama-no-be, I continue straight, through a few small hamlets until I see the sign for the falls.  I begin to climb.

Coming across the okunomiya for Isonokami shrine surprises.  Smoke still wafts from the remnants of a fire in the courtyard.  Momoo no Taki falls are just above.  At least a dozen Fudō Myoō statues mark this isolated sanctuary, each one a masterpiece.  Further on still, more statues line the steep path up to Taishinji.  The heads of many of these deities are turned toward the side, something new to me.   In the courtyard is a tall, flat rock stele commemorating the temple's founding during the Namboku Wars of the late 14th century.  I can almost picture the day when the stone was raised, the incredible labor involved, not only to erect the stone, to to raise the funds in order to do so.  Nobody in the crowd that day would have assumed that not many decades later the temple itself would become abandoned.  Further up in the forest, I come to the priest's residence.  It too empty and forlorn.  Directly in front is a clue:  two newish graves, with one for the priest, now 12 years gone.      

Crumbling log bridges lead to a steep trail that will climb to bisect massive stones.  Then I'm at the crest of Ōkunimiyama, which true to its name, overlooks the valley where the Japanese shifted from hunter/gatherers to sedentary farmers, supporting an Imperial system just finding its legs. And even from these heights, the future of this system, and of these people, is less than clear...


On the turntable:  Jean-Luc Ponty, The Gift of Time"