What's in a Name

 

 

In the twelve years since I began walking the Hōkkoku Kaidō, I was never really sure of the name.  I similarly saw it referred to as the Hokuriku-dō, but was unable to definitively distinguish between the two.  To complicate matters, there is another Hōkkoku Kaidō far to the east in Shinshū, and most books and websites deal with that one, no doubt due to its proximity to the capital.  But the internet finally caught up with me, and I recently learned that the name Hōkkoku refers only to the section that leaves the Nakasendō at Toriimoto, to cross the Tochinoki Pass before terminating at Imajō.  From there it takes the sole moniker, Hokuriku-dō.

And there was a second clue.  Somewhere in north Shiga I picked up an map of old battlefields and ruined castles.  It was my guide through the summer of '21, as I did a dozen day trips exploring a variety of sites before a cooling dip in Lake Biwa.  The map clearly reiterated the Hōkkoku as passing through Kinomoto and continuing north.  All along I had thought it led south from Tsuruga, a route I walked back in 2013.  But apparently I was wrong.  

So it was that I boarded a train in the winter-dawn darkness of Kyoto station.  A waiting taxi drove the dull concrete highway from Imajō to the cobblestone entrance to Itadori-juku, whose thatch roofed houses impressed me as much on this frigid morning as they had when I'd passed through in 2009.   Most of the previous week's snowfall had melted off, but everything still hung cold and wet.  Unlike my previous visit, I turned left to return to Route 365, before following a smaller road that paralleled the highway.

Route 365 continued on above me, though apparently not much traveled here, to judge from all the broken rubbish that had been launched from it.  There was a preponderance of pre-2011 television sets, and weirdly, a bag of unopened bread.  A road-closed sign had me slightly worried, a worry which was quickly amplified when I saw the barricade that had been built midway along.  I scrambled up and over, through thick weeds that sometimes sprang back to slap me in the face.  I suppose that's one way to wake up on a crisp winter morn.  

Where I rejoined the main road I found another barricade, the twisting route beyond now closed.  There was massive construction going on, the concreting of what had been a beautiful, fast-moving river further down.  Much equipment lay about, heavy and light, and the sign here told me that it was to help deal with the snows of future years.  Luckily it was just before working hours, no flag-wavers around to tell me I couldn't carry on.  So I pushed toward the pass, the black ice of the previous night now aglow with the coming rays of the sun.  

This old route continued on awhile, until reaching a set of switchbacks that folded the road near completely back on itself.  I knew that the old Hōkkoku would not have done this, and would have continued along the riverbank.  At the first bend, I sought what could have been part of the ancient highway, then pushed myself up a slick ridge along what was little more than animal trail now.  After a few days of rain, the earth was beginning to give way beneath my feet, forcing me to clutch clumps of grass near ground level where it was stronger.  

With a bit of labor, I made it back up to the road.  The absence of cars made for easy walking, down the center strip.  The iconic Heart Rock I mistook for concrete.  From this height, I could see a lovely open patch beside the creek down in the valley.  This creek fed the dam which I had determined impassible.  That was probably the old road.  I carried on up the tarmac with my eyes aimed down into that valley, trying to maintain sight of that old path, or what I took for old path.  I hate moments like these, when I find my quest for authenticity has been diluted by the modern world. I knew that trail would continue to haunt me over the coming months and years, until in a wild spur of the moment I'd return to walk it. 

Patches of snow colonized the shady northwest corners of the road where it curled to hug the mountain face. This culminated in a small ski resort at the pass, still devoid of snow but with the lifts rotating beneath blue skies.  A few workmen were around, tinkering with this and that, one of them painting his truck with a paintbrush.  As I knew this place was meant to open in about a week, they'd soon begin to turn the green hillsides white with artificial snow.      

I walked over to where the old road would have met the pass, and the faint trail was camouflaged by wave upon wave of high, dense grass.  I'd thought about descending a bit to see how it all connected, but it was damn near impenetrable.  So I instead turned and continued down the other side of the pass, along a road now open.  Here and there the road broadened into overflow parking, but I couldn't imagine the resort got much traffic anymore.  As if to validate this, an old snowboard shop stood shuttered and collapsing into itself.  In fact there was little else here but hills on one side and a strip of open grassland on the other.  A BMW streaked past up to the resort and then back again.  As I knew I'd come to no other structures or hamlets for at least an hour, I thought I'd try to hitch.  But nothing else came.  So I pushed on, popping my earbuds in to distract myself from the monotony with a recording of an old Lenny Bruce performance.     

I finally arrived at a small settlement, at the heart of which was the towering trees of Hiromine Shrine.  The water gods too were active here, in the form of a spring that left the hillside to fill my bottle.  I found myself climbing again, and just before the road entered tunnel I diverted down the old highway, it too closed and traffic-free.  It was lovely, gentle climb beside a small stream before reaching a pair of small Jizo statues and a trio of A-frame cabins that marked the pass.  Down the other side the views opened up for the first time, and I sat awhile against a now useless guardrail, enjoying lunch and Lake Biwa far off in the distance.   

 

A scattering of deer bones in one of those old snow tunnels was a hint of what was to come.  Rounding a bend, I saw a buck thrashing beside the roadside.  He'd caught his foreleg in a tangle of cable that had peeled off the concreted hillside behind him.  The violence in his movements indicated it had just happened, and when he eventually saw me he went into a frenzy, somersaulting numerous times as he tried to escape. 

I put down my pack and pulled out the wire-cutters of my multi-tool, talking softly and gently to him as I approached.  He continued to pitch and buck as I got up behind him.  As I attempted to cut the wire a meter or so from his leg, he kept trying to gut me with his antlers, lowering his head again and again. The candelabra of sharp points on his head would have gone right through me had he made contact.  I could only imagine both of us dying there that night, side by side on the road.  

I moved a few steps uphill, just out of range and began to cut.  I don't imagine he could understand what I was doing, but seemed to calm some.  Once I'd finished the cutting, he dropped to lay in the mud of the roadside.  I returned to my pack and shouted a few times to get him to run off. But he simply lay there, breathing heavily, and watching me. Probably exhausted from adrenaline, and the struggle.  I'm sure I am anthropomorphizing when I say that I saw almost understanding in his eyes.  

A hamlet stood where I rejoined the main road.  I knew it was some distance to the next one so tried to hitch.  It wasn't long before a car came by, which slowed, then seeing my masked but foreign face, sped off again.  I swore and gestured as he did, thrashing about just as much as the deer had a little earlier. 

The road crossed the Hokuriku expressway, and just below, an older tunnel of stone cut beneath both.  It was here that I finally thumbed my ride. They were an ancient couple, the husband more so than the wife.  He was hard of hearing, forcing me to repeat myself numerous times, and finally leaning forward a bit, which I'd wanted to avoid so as not to create any Covid-related anxiety.  In doing so, I completely missed where I wanted to be dropped off. I laughed as I backtracked about half the distance of my five minute ride. I suppose I was destined to walk the whole thing today.  

Energy flagging, I pushed on through a chain of little hamlets, each increasing in size the closer we got to Kinomoto.  There was the odd explanatory sign, the occasional old Meiji-era building, as we all marched into the future.  And with my arrival at Kinomoto station, the Hōkkoku Kaidō was finally, and definitively, walked.   

 

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On the turntable:  Badfinger, "No Dice" 

On the nighttable: Mitch Cullin, Tideland"