Kyō Kaido II

 

 

It promised to be a hot day, so I set off at the just-dawn hour when the crows begin their murder ballads. It took a bit of squirreling around with non-cooperative maps until I was able to get myself back to the Kyō Kaidō, picking up where I'd left off a week or so ago.  I was happy to be led down the back-streets rather than the busy main drag up on the river berm,  but just as I was admiring a nice old Edō period house, I was nearly flattened by a car blasting by.  The hours between seven and nine are never good times to do road walks, a time when the oversleepers are inevitably racing by on their way to work.  I realized a moment later that the rising sun was behind me, beaming straight into their eyes.  

It was the work of destiny that I was here in the first place.  I had assumed that my intended rail station was an express stop.  It was literally at the station before that I realized that it wouldn't.  With a quick shuffle of trains I was able to auto-correct.  I was surprised because I had always thought that Iwashimizu-Hachimangu Station recieved all trains, due to the popular shrine on the hill above. The snarky side of my mind was wondering if they'd lost that status, as the surrounding neighborhoods were inhabited by the Japanese outcaste.  And I wonder if the little kids that I saw walking to school in their colorful caps realized that fact yet.  

I hadn't walked down here in quite awhile.  I'm sure that when I last did, it wasn't filled with these pre-fab homes plastic looking homes abutting the river's berm. What I recall from memory was older homes, poorer homes, which is what gave me a clue in the first place to the social status of the area's residents.  When I'd left the train earlier, a politician from the communist party was giving a campaign speech.  They certainly knew their audience.  

The next section around Hashimoto Station had the classical post road look, filled with old homes and even the old Yukaku inn, where one could stay for 3000 yen.  The glory of this former red light district inn began to fade after the ferry service was discontinued in 1962 (bridges previously unreliable due to frequent flooding), but a recent renovation had brought it a vibrant, retro look.  The traditional aesthetic of the area appeared to be further threatened, if indicated by a sign hanging before literally every house which stated opposition to a proposed five-story apartment block threatening to come in.    

I was fed onto a long stretch of busy highway that paralleled the rail line.  As there was no sidewalk, I hugged the grassy edge, trying to make myself visible to oncoming vehicles.   The land below I remember as rice fields, yet in a mere decade it had become a cramped suburb, complete with a small shopping mall.  Riding the train to Osaka each week to teach my yoga class, I always looked forward to seeing the old Kushuon-in temple that sat alone, surrounded by those rice fields.  Its symmetrical hall and front gate were lessons in aesthetic simplicity.  Now I could barely see it at all, but for a slice of pitched tile, its ancient form now choked by all that prefab housing.  Somewhere amidst the development was the site of the old Kuzuha river batteries, as well as some burial mounds.  But I could see nothing but progress.  

I left the highway and followed a quiet lane into Kuzuha, a town well marked by that enormous high-rise complete with heliport.  It must have really rock and rolled in the 2018 quake.  The map maker had me going straight across the railway tracks, which was physically, nay, legally impossible.  So I just followed what constituted the high street in this bed town, lined with small bars, down which commuters would stumble home after the red lamps went out.  It took some work to get back to the old road.  Kuzuha station multi-tasked as a large shopping mall, and I kept looking for ways back across the tracks.  But one after another proved to be dead ends.  Finally after a lot of backtracking, I was able to return to the road proper, which was sadly the busy Route 13. It was proof yet again that Japan is no longer built to human scale.

At least this stretch had a sidewalk.  The river was far away here, as the bank had been broadened to make room for a golf course.  It looked like the golfers will soon be playing in the shadow of a massive flyover, now under construction.  Oh, the hits just keep on coming. 

An old low-income housing estate looked abandoned, its residents most likely relocated to the row of high rises right next door.  The question remained:  had society begun to better care for its less-privileged members, or had their number increased to the point that more housing was needed.  I was tempted to ask one of the golfers, or perhaps the guy with the heliport.  

The map had me walking straight across a culvert, leading me to believe that the mapmaker himself was Jesus.  On the far bank I saw my first Jizo of the day, and a stone stele marking the old route back to the grand Iwashimizu Shrine.  Not far to Hirakata now, the real jewel along the Kyō Kaidō.  I appreciated that they made an effort to maintain a lot of the architecture, and I liked too how in those parts they hadn't, they'd built a arcade filled with charming shops that were still grounded in the needs of the local community.  The road was well marked and free of power lines.  After three hours near-nonstop walking, Hirakata returned the spring to my step.  Alas it was over all too soon. 

There was a feudal period house of a Edō vintage at the edge of town, but the glassed in upstairs hinted at Taishō renovations.  I popped into the Kagiya Museum not far off for a quick look at the exhibits, then continued along.  Just beyond, a spur line peeled off the true Kaidō.  As I'd already walked the latter, I moved along this spur, but aside from the occasional old home here and there, it led me deeper into suburb.   It eventually rejoined the main trunk route, which then stayed upon the bank of the Yodo river.  This section too I'd walked back in 2009, so decided to jump ahead, following a narrow path to the nearest train station, which cut between a small canal and a solid wall of ticky-tacky houses.

 

 

I left the Osaka monorail an hour later near the banks of broad Yodogawa, the only time I'd see it all day.  After a quick lunch under the a row of shade trees, I moved on through suburbs not much more inspiring than those before the train ride.  But somewhere along the way the scenery began to take on a new look, as it passed through an array of older communities.  Each train station was surrounded by what amounted to its own village, each worth exploring for half a day or more.  Moriguchi was the nicest of these, with old stone staircases running up and down the town's low hills.  It too cared for its history, the older structures renovated and given new life as shops or cafes.  

And the road continued on like this for the duration.  The vibrance of the surroundings distracted me from pain or fatigue, as the footfalls neared 30km.  Being past noon the heat was up, but each town had its own covered arcade, which brought respite and more than a little Showa retro charm.  I looked for a cafe for a stop and a rest, but my phone's battery was perilously low, and without the online map I might as well go home.  So I powered on.   

The signage was good here, far better cared for by Osaka than by Kyoto.  Stone markers stood reliably where the road turned. One arcade had a powerful smell that brought greater Asia immediately to mind: that olfactory cocktail of fish, fruit, incense, and diesel.   I lingered a moment in the doorway of a sword school that specialized in test cutting with live blades.  Its sensei sat proudly at the back of the dojō, while a student washed the floor by pushing a wet rag along its length.  I similarly paused before supermarkets, stealing a bit of second-hand AC leaking out from within the automated doors.      

The older look eventually stopped around Kyōbashi, and all that was left was a final push along busier thoroughfares overshadowed by Osaka Castle. Not long after bisecting the grounds of the old feudal Kyobashi fish market which had stood here until 1915, I was pleased to come upon the stone stele that marked the true start of the Kumano Kōdō.  Almost fifteen years ago I'd come up with the idea of following the waters from Kyoto to this point, trailing the boat journeys of Heian nobles a thousand years dead. Today I'd followed in the footsteps of the copycat Edō pilgrims five centuries later.  It's hard not to appreciate closure, particularly when one isn't seeking any.   

And then I was standing before the Riteigenpyō, reminiscent of  Nihonbashi in being shadowed by a overhead expressway.  And like its equivalent in Tokyo, this was the place from which distances were marked, if walking old kaidō like the Kumano Kiishū, the Chūgoku, and of course, the Kyō.  

The best walks tend to finish near a watering hole, and Yellow Ape Craft served that purpose more than adequately.  The day's heat made the first beer disappear near instantly, but while nursing the second I reflected on the walk, and how I could recommend nothing beyond a quick visit to Hirakata, and leapfrogging ahead by train to do that lovely stretch from Moriguchi to Kyōbashi.  Done of course, in a much cooler season... 

A map of the walk can be found here.

 

On the turntable: Her Name is Alive,  "Someday my Blues will Cover the Earth"