A man on the train has what I first think is a shinai in a cloth case, but as I step closer I realize that it is a wooden staff. As we walk away from Myōji Station I ask him where he's going, and he tells me that he's going to take the Chōishi-michi up to Koya. He smiles as he says this, his eyes bright over his white Van dyke beard, giving him a stereotypical wizened look. I'm a little surprised, as it is just about noon and he's got a good seven hours of climbing ahead. He'll have a long day.
My own day was half complete. It started with a taxi driver taking me to a place he knew, not the place I wanted to go. But in fact it started well before that, back on January 20, when my wife saw something brewing in Wuhan, and talked me into cancelling our mid-April trip to China. What went next was all my guide work for the spring, followed by the inevitable school closures. My daughter went to visit granny in Hiroshima for 10 days, and with no work or daughter in town, and my wife in self-isolation down in Singapore, I decided to head for the mountains.
I stepped out of the taxi at Eisan-ji, nestled between the Yoshino river and a low bank of hills. It all smelt of spring. In the car park there were a number of kayaks stacked beside a Montbell shop. This must be a popular stretch of river. The temple was founded in 719, five hundred years before the adjacent shrine that brought the place favor with the gods. Both held their age, particularly the hexagon prayer hall at one end of the compound. I truly love this part of the world.
I was forced to walk the old road out front that brought me back to the present day for a while, despite it being part of the old Kōya Kaidō, the route that brought pilgrims down from Osaka and the old capital. After far too long on a highway running through the busy town of Gōjō, I finally detoured off to the town's older main street, which kept some faith to an older feudal look, but for being spectacularly draped with powerlines. I popped back onto the highway again at the far end, and after a quick visit to the Inukaisan Tenhorin-ji (itself draped in the spreading canopy of sakura), I wended my way through a quiet rural stretch before arriving at a small unmanned train station. I sat on the platform with my simple lunch, until a light drizzle relocated me onto the old wooden benches within.
The rain is going to be a problem. I'd been fretting about the weeklong forecast of rain, unfortunately timed to fall between long parades of sun marks. I'd been tempted to push the trip back a week, but then I'd be away after my daughter was back. More worryingly, Japan appeared ready to go into lockdown any day. The latter concern would be a steady companion through the entire eight days I was away, the plans formulating and reformulating every twelve hours.
I leave the wizened old pilgrim and move over a long bridge that spans the Kii river. I remember crossing a similar span ten years ago, as my ex-wife and I began our long ramble into the Kumano region. Today the rain begins to increase, but I remain optimistic, refusing an umbrella kindly held offered me by a shopkeeper I pass. By the time I arrive at an old shrine around the corner, the weather clears. Nyusakado Shrine is the "male" in a pair of shrines on this side of the mountain. I'll spend the next couple of hours getting to its "female" companion. This climb begins up a narrow concrete slope, slippery with muck. The steep hillside is covered with orchards, and along the way I'll pass a number of rock formations, including one long staff atop which another rock perches like a propeller. As expected, this bizarre Kasa-ishi, along with the nearby Hakotate-ishi, are remnants of Kobo Daishi's own pilgrimage up the
mountain.
I curse the concrete as I climb. Who decided it was a good idea to pave mountain paths? I move along at about half my stride so as not to slip. These little mincing steps are wearing me out. Though much like as with a headache, it is gone before I realize it. Matō-iwa is just off trail, a stone cube emblazoned with two ancient Buddhas. I am tempted to sit in its quiet and splendor, but the threat of rain drives me on. I move upward, past stonework suggesting the teahouses that once lined the path.
Rain falls lightly again just after arriving at the female Niutsuhime Shrine, erected by Kobo Daishi in honor of the female deity of the mountain. The grounds are quiet, shaded by massive trees and with a tall arched bridge that acts as approach. Around the side is a quiet grove that has tall stone stele commemorating important shugenja from nearby Ōmine-san, including founder En-no-Gyoja.
The rain is falling in earnest as I walk over to the old hut that once served as hermitage for Saichō, the founder of the Tendai sect of Buddhism. Though the hut has been obviously rebuilt, the graves of his wife and daughter just below are most certainly real. It is a lonely place, and I'll pass another ancient grave as I undergo yet another steep, concrete covered ascent to a pass.
Futatsu-torii is true to its name; the two tall stone gates have been here since 1649, replacing older wooden ones erected by Kobo Daishi 800 years before. I take a rest in a covered shelter nearly, recharging with chocolate as the clouds close in over the scenery below. I race on, trying to beat the inevitable rain. Luckily it is all descent into the adjacent valley. As I make my way down one of those earthen half-pipe landscapes that define most older mountain routes, I meet the earlier pilgrim from the train, now engarbed in white and striding strongly uphill with his staff.
I find my trail junction, which drops quickly down a set of steep switchbacks. Once at the valley floor, I am amazed by a massive wild boar trap. I've seen many before made of steel, but this one is all thin cedar trucks, open to the air like a corral. It isn't long before I get to a village, and across the valley, I see a train pulling away from the station. It'll be an hour until the next one. The landscape forces me to drop all the way down to the river, then climb steeply to the station. I'd hate to be a villager here, to do this climb every time. And I'm hating to be myself at the moment, as the sky completely and definitively opens. I'm far too close to want to stop to pull out on my rain gear, but the pitch of the path slows me and I'm soon drenched. Once inside, I sit awhile, my shivering marking cadence until my train pulls out.
On the turntable: Horace Silver Trio and Art Blakey, "Sabu"
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