Tracking the Kamo II

I waited three days for the rains to subside.  And once again, the rivers were scaturient.  I removed my mask and sat a moment to enjoy the strong scent of wet moss, of damp.  Then I turned my feet toward town. 

Moving back toward the city seemed a fitting metaphor.  During the time of Corona, I'd spent a large percentage of my time in the mountains, climbing two or three peaks a week, taking advantage of the good weather of spring, and partly to stave off the ennui of staying home. And with things appearing to calm somewhat, I was making my way out of the hills, and back to a peopled land. 

The bus, the first public transit I'd used in over three months, dropped me where I finished my last hike, at Iwayabashi.  Aside from the tidy inn, it was a pretty ramshackle hamlet up here, and an single glimpse was not enough to tell whether or not some of the houses had occupants.  A few of the homes were tidy, with neat little gardens girded against animal raids. Atop a hillock at the bend in the Kamagawa stood a small temple, and the number of graves out back hinted that this area had once been more prosperous. 

The river, which had been concreted beneath the hamlet, now began to again run wild.  It began to pick up speed as it dropped considerably into a deepening gorge.  The valley was cut deep here, and the road, hardly wider than a single vehicle, hung to the eastern edge of the hills. In places where the valley broadened stood the inevitable house, or two.  A few people were out in their gardens, well tended and as lush as the surrounding vegetation and trees.  The largest and most well-kept house was home to a cafe that offered simple lodging, which would make a pleasant place to watch fireflies on a clear summer night.  

At Hakubai-bashi, the Kamogawa made an almost 90 degree turn to the east.  In this nook, someone had built an archery range, utilized by the university clubs in town.  The surrounding houses were almost fortress-like, taking advantage of the breadth of the valley.  Among them was a stone marker that claimed this as the headwaters of the Kamogawa. I knew different.  

This attractive little hamlet seemed well-looked after by the gods of the nearby Itsukushima Jinja. The roots of the shrine went back to the mid Heian period, when it bore the impossibly Hawaiian-sounding name of Amastuiwatowakewakahime Shrine.   These villages, then and now, supplied the old capital with lumber.  With the downsizing of local gods during the Meiji period, many ancient shrines and gods were consolidated here, and the shrine's name had been changed in order to hide the Buddhist connections, at a time when that religion was being suppressed by the new regime.

But Buddhism went on to survive, as attested by Koun-ji, a zen temple just up the road.  As I was climbing the steep flight of moss-covered stone steps I realized I had been here before.  This village of Kumo-ga-hata holds it own fire festival in late August, when the adjacent hillside is set blaze to reveal a Chinese character, in a mini-version of Kyoto's famous okuribi.  I visited this in 2007, as written in the first half of this post.  And this village might have taken on a greater role in my life, as we nearly moved here upon our return to Japan in early 2012 (as detailed in the last paragraph here).  I'd thought at that time that I would try to study here at this temple. Today I saw no evidence of a priest, though the temple building looked sound, and a brief chat with a friendly woman in the house below assured me that the festival is still held.        

I descended to where I remembered that old house as being, and was shocked to find that while it still stood, it was currently being used as a dumping ground of sorts, with rubbish stacked high all around the grounds.  I remember the house as being beautiful, with the character of age.  As I walked away, shocked, I began to play, as I do, the game of alternative existences.  I imagined that training in Zen.  I imagined helping carry the old Omikoshi that I'd seen inside the shrine. I imagined my daughter going to school just up the road.  But at the time it had been impossible, as I would be traveling a lot for work, and the little Mokumoku bus that wended its way along this narrow road only ran twice a day.  My daughter's mother would have felt terribly isolated, particularly with an infant in the house.  It's a bit sad really, thinking that we could have brought more life to the place. And I wonder what impact it would have had on our marriage itself.  For that, much like the house itself, didn't survive either.         

In the next hamlet I spied a young family, perhaps living in the house with the large banner that faced the road, admonishing us all to protect the beleaguered Article 9 Peace Clause in the Japanese Constitution.  The government has just as aggressively been going after the forest here too, as right at the edge of the houses here is the first of the clear-cuts I'll come to today.

The dotted hamlets of Kumogahata were behind me.  The road curved and bent to follow the twists of the river.  It was well below me now, its white form easily seen through the dark green, rain-sodden ceders.  Along the way, the Kamogawa made a complete elbow bend. A sign here warned of bears.  Little wonder, as the forest above was now gone.   Even without the bears, I was rarely alone. Bicyclists and runners had been sliding past all morning, one of the later stopping to soak his head under a pipe extending from a small rivulet that flowed into the Kamo.

The road dropped steadily as I drew closer to town, eventually reaching a certain equilibrium with the river.  All along here were small shacks piled with bags of salt.  And the third cut was the deepest.  Most of this may have come down in a storm, as higher up were the tell-tale cross hatching trunks.  Below this though all had been shorn, even those bedecked with tape, which are usually designated as those to be left standing.  But there was comfort in the fact that the new growth was coming in lush and varied.

The clear cut remained above me for a good twenty minutes as I carried on.  Some men were working on replacing the electrical lines.  Another group was either widening or shoring up the road,  liberally pouring concrete.  There was more lining the riverbed, perhaps in conjunction with a structure that looked to be a small hydroelectric plant.

Where the forest began again, the Tokai Shizen Hōdō dropped in from the left, descending from Yonaki-goe Pass.  So apparently I'd walked the stretch before, as the TSH went all the way down to the city.  There was a bit more traffic now, though from where I couldn't say.  Not long afterward, the Kyoto Isshu Trail joined us.  There was a small party of hikers here trying to make out the route, but they quickly disappeared into the trees again.   

The road from Iwakura similarly came in, then turned to follow the Kamogawa into town.  Here too, the river dictated where the road would go, its swollen waters running nearly as fast as the cars above.  Finally the broad Kyoto river valley opened up before me.  The Kamo and I had reached the city proper.    

On opposite banks, schoolboys were playing a game of baseball.  Here the river suddenly slows and becomes a popular place for families to take a cool dip in summer. It was humid but not too hot today, so there weren't that many people in the water.  During my first hot summer in Kyoto, I too enjoyed the waters here.  A friend and I had biked upriver, under the assumption that to get as far north as we could, we would be above any pollutants.  But I hadn't liked the smell on me when I toweled off, and it was only later that I learnt of the euphemistic "Clean Center" rubbish incinerator hidden in the hills just above.      

Just below this calm stretch of river, the waters dropped over a set of double falls. This Hiragino Dam was erected in 1941 to control sediment build-up, after a flood a decade earlier had washed away thirty-two of Kyoto's forty-one bridges.  Occasionally you'll see older boys daringly playing in the foam between.   Some of them probably live in the dense tangle of suburban homes that begin here.  Many homes facing the river were made up to resemble cozy Western cottages.  But no matter how nice the domicile, it would be impossible to ignore the ugly factory across the water.  This seemed a double insult in that the pair of hills behind stands the Okunokiya, or inner sanctum of Kyoto's important Kamigamo shrine.

On the far banks I saw the familiar training grounds for what they call "Cinematic Horses," which never fails to bring to mind the ending of the film, Kagemusha.   Nearby stood a pair of rice polishing machines, probably to service the odd rice fields that still exists between the new-fab homes.  Thirty, perhaps even twenty, years ago, this would have all been rice fields.  One industrious person kept in touch with their inner farmer, selling tomatoes in little coin lockers in front one their house.  

The riverfront trails now began, one on either side.  Life was beginning to appear.  A pair of old men sat on benches in the shade.  A woman plucked a shamisen.  A middle aged man lay sunbathing on one of those wooden decks that appear from time to time.  I came to the first of the Kamogawa's many bridges, the Nishikamogawa-bashi, which looked somewhat French in its design.  A number of people crossing above wore black, heading to a similarly faux-French wedding hall behind the trees on the east bank. 

The river moved fast through its now concrete bed.  The frequent sets of waterfalls served as brakes, but still the usually towering reeds now lay flat, as they often do during rainy season.   One set of benches had Auduban type drawings of the river fowl, though conspicuously missing was the grey heron, which, besides the Kamogawa namesake duck, is the bird most often seen here.  And all along, the river was lined with the spikily lush deutzia bushes that bloom a eye-catching bridal veil white in May.

A black lab scooted down an embankment to fetch a bobbing ball that someone had lost in an eddy.  He shook himself, spraying water across the first of the Kamogawa's many distance markers.  Sixteen kilometers until the end at the Katsuragawa.  I still had a good ways to go.  

The grand trees of Kamigamo Jinja appeared to the east.  The city has been widening the bridge that leads to the shrine, probably to accommodate the coaches that serve as a sort of pulse of the tourist boom in the city.  I was always puzzled as to why they'd widen this bridge to four lanes, when the road immediately narrows again to two on either end, hemmed in by the businesses that line those sections.  It felt to me that this will simply lead to more congestion.  I wondered if even the shrine's eight myriad gods could comprehend Japanese bureaucracy.  

What I did know is that I would stop here today.  I'd already walked the next stretch two years ago with Chris.  More precisely, while my feet would continue to carry me home, it was here that I'd stop my brush, to paraphrase Basho.  I'd pick things up again down at the confluence with the Takano-gawa, at Demachiyanagi.      


On the turntable:  The Moody Blues, "This is The Moody Blues"