Sunday Papers: Richard Burton

 

"Soul is not a thing, it is a state of things"

  

On the turntable:  Roxy Music, "Heart Still Beating"

Leap-frogging along the Iseji IV

 

 

It felt earlier than it was, with the cool of dawn, due to a light breeze blowing off the bay, and the shade of the canopy spreading massively above us.  

A couple of the camphors of Asuka Jinja would have been saplings around the time that the nobility began passing by in their finery.  It was shirtsleeves for us as we listened to one of the local old-timers run down some statistics about the area's depopulation.  The most startling fact was that this village of Kata had gone nineteen years without a single birth.  It explains in some way why the beautiful old school that once stood nearby here had recently been razed, replaced by a bland new structure now serving as a community center for the elderly.  A similar fate could befall more of this pleasant little place, as one in six houses stand empty.    

But there was still a vitality here.  The old shrine gave a feeling of being somewhere in mainland Asia rather than Japan.  A timelessness, a placelessness.  It was pan-Asian somehow, a feeling that you get anywhere across the continent, in a pristine environment far older than man.

The sea was part of it.  Fishing communities anywhere have a universal rhythm, one dictated by the fickleties and moods of nature.   This one had a number of fishing charters, including one couple who lived on their floating dock, behind a long dead coffee shop.  Their linked flotillas were crawling with mewing cats, and a cluster of tinnies on the table betrayed what was probably a usual part of life out here.  No doubt we'll eventually empty a few tinnies ourselves, for it is here that future tour groups will shower and have lunch, after kayaking across the bay itself.   

The kayak guides were with us, and we found that we shared many commonalities, including yoga and taiko.  It was like members of my community 15 years ago, when my life more revolved around those things.  They led us through the village to the start of our climb, up Hobo-tōge, and I smiled at the homonymic pun.  

My smile left me soon enough.  The climb was steep and yet again, rocky.  I could never picture the royals doing some of these tougher trails, but the evidence is surely there. The local man earlier had mentioned that they've found traces of a path older than this one.  And closer to the next village, one older still.  But we, as had they, took a long rest at the site of the old teahouses situated at what I took to be the top.  But the path continued to rise, then fall, and rise again, a trick repeated a number of times.  I've mentioned that in coming from this direction, the descents are longer than the ascents.  But this one deceived in continuing to rise, and one could never let down one's guard.  

Finally, on the true descent, the sharply dropping trail took us past a number of chest-high stone walls that had been built in older times in order to keep out foraging deer and marauding colonies of boar.  These served the same function as today's electric fences, yet had a look and feel that were very ancient.  The name Kosrae came often to mind, a place I've not yet been.  

After an unceremonious passage across a concrete bypass road, our feet again met sea-level, down a quiet back alley on the edge of town.  This was Nigishima, the shooting location (no pun intended) for one of my favorite Japanese films.  Himatsuri (Fire Festival) is the study of local people living in harmony, and sometimes at odds, with their natural environment.  It is beautiful and lyrical at times, though I hate the ending, which ironically, is the reason the film was made in the first place. 

I wanted to linger, but the train we needed was leaving literally in minutes.  No matter, I'll take a closer look when I return to finish the road sections of the Ise-ji. (I'd stay a night here but there are no inns.)  Then the train swept us up and immediately entered a tunnel that bore us through the very mountain on which we'd so laboriously passed our morning. 

 

On the turntable:  Julee Cruise, "The Voice of Love"

 

Leap-frogging along the Iseji III

 

 

Kii-no-Matsushima had been our quiet base for the night.  Dinner proved particularly entertaining, as our hostess regaled us with charming stories.  Good manners dictate that one doesn't eat while being addressed like this, but you could drink.  With each sip of my beer I was laughing inside, thinking that perhaps this is a ploy.  The longer she talked, the longer you'd drink, and ultimately would need another in order to wash down the immensity of courses that was dinner.  A clever strategy I thought.  And it paid off in our ordering not one more sake, but two. 

I woke early and well rested, so decided to have a look at the town, still asleep at the dawn hour. The beach was quiet and had the day been hotter, I'd have started it with a dip.  I regretted missing the town's onsen, which sat in a quiet grove of pines at the other end of town.  But I'd be back, perhaps as early as winter, a time when the warmth of its waters would be far more welcome. 

After a lavish breakfast, we leap-frogged ahead to the trailhead for Magose-toge.  The stone stairs began right at the base, and didn't cease until the pass itself.  I've seen a lot of these ishi-tatami paths throughout Japan, but never one the went from head to toe.  We rested a few minutes at the pass, then pushed up an even steeper set of steps to the summit of Tenkurayama, the path wild and rough like many of those I'd climbed in China.  The summit was rocky, with one incredible boulder that was as big as a three-story apartment building.  A long iron ladder led to its smooth surface, and from here we gazed awhile at the sea off to one side, and on the other, the towering Omine peaks running down toward us.  Amongst these, the smooth grassy head of Ogai-ga-hara stood mysterious and proud.     

It was the usual long descent that brought us to Owase. We had a noon-time meet with a couple of people from the tourist board, but had done our traverse in ridiculous time.  Keiji stayed in the A/C of the Tourist Info building, but I set off in search of a coffee, not wanting to put on the mask (both literal and figurative) and make small talk.   But this proved elusive.  I wandered a number of streets, past dozens of shuttered businesses, finally giving up and grabbing an iced joe at a convenience store.  A line of preschool kids stood across the street from me, gawping.

I returned at the appointed hour to meet the folks from town, who led us around on a food walk, where we would pop into a business to be given a small bite, the cumulative half dozen building to the equation of lunch.  We sat later in a restored old home and discussed what the town was doing to regenerate itself.  I asked question after question, aiming the usual things that communities were doing to attract young people, but to each of these they answered in the negative.  The work-from-home ethic had been a boon to many parts of Japan, but these people had done nothing to capitalize on it. 

As such, I'd never seen a town so dead.  Naturally I pass though hundreds of such communities on my walks, but while many look to be teetering, these is still some semblance of life.  But Owase was as bad as I'd ever seen, and even a well thought out gimmick like a food walk would change that.  Who know that the large cemetery I'd passed though on my way out of the hills would be a foreshadowing of the town to come. The company that I was consulting for this week operates in the spirit of trying to revitalize rural communities, to bring them new life.  But this one had just gone to far, as if the citizens themselves had declared a DNR.  I just couldn't see bringing clients here.  The food walk was a fun and innovative idea, but in walking around, tour clients would get too good a look at the town, and how dire the situation was.  It was written in the patterns of rust upon all those shuttered shops. 

 

On the turntable:  Husker Du, "Zen"

 

Leap-frogging along the Iseji II

 

 

I started the day far away beside the sea.  Being summer, I missed sunrise by about half an hour, but it was still early as I watched the light come up behind Meoto-iwa, the rope between cutting through the orange sphere as if slicing fruit.  The wind was up, and every fifth or sixth wave would throw spray onto the concrete trail.  This Futamiokitama Shrine had an Ama-no-Iwato, somewhat fakily man-made, and facing the wrong direction.  The Ama-no-Iwato cave in the hills not far from here was smaller but had more authenticity in being a bit of work to hike up to.  But the Ama-no-Iwato in Kyushu's Takachiho was most impressive of all.   

My pick-up was early, and for much of the morning we'd followed the trail I'd left a couple of days before. I showed my colleagues the Bakamagari, and was surprised when they wanted to go through.  After the previous visit I'd thought it a miracle I hadn't picked up a leech.  And sure enough, back in the car I noticed one wriggling off my ankle.  I hollered for the driver to stop, thinking the leech hadn't yet locked its jaws on me, but I was too late.  Oddly enough I'd received some sacred salt at my inn the night before, but not wanting to kill the little bastard, I asked the driver for his ETC credit card.  When he asked me why, I joked that I wanted to bribe him into letting go.  But I found that I could use the card to laterally scrape away the leech's mouth without breaking his head off under the skin, which tends to get infected and itchy later.  Incredibly, the leech then fastened itself to the card,  making it quite a chore to flick him away as he maintained a strong grip into the plastic.  

We continued our drive south.   Gone were the days of the beautifully photographic image of the mini rice stalks beneath glass, as the water had by now mainly drained away.  It was up to the rains now.  But those seemed far away today.  The weather was pleasant with a cooling breeze that ruffled the tips of the stalks, like the tousling of hair.  

The shops we passed were the usual chain stores found only in the countryside, places familiar to me from my years up in the 'Nog, places I had 'grown up with' and assumed were everywhere.  Now living in urban Kansai, I recognized them as country cousins, as old friends.     

We finally pulled up at Umegadani Station, where I'd begun my ascent of Nisaka-toge three years before.  Today, we'd go up the parallel Tsuzurato-toge that crossed over a ridge to the north.  This had been the older pass, until replaced by the Nisaka 300 years ago.  Before walking away from the car, I was kitted out in pilgrimage gear:  red vest, wooden staff, conical hat.  The later proved a bit of a nuisance since it would get jostled by my pack, so after an mere hour I simply hung it from the bag, where it would stay for the rest of the week.

I was kitted out this way so as to be the model for a video being shot to promote the tour.  We'd filmed at the Ise shrines the day before, much to the amusement of other visitors.  One old granny asked to take a photo together.  I wondered what others thought when I was walking alone, far from the camera.  But after awhile I forgot about it, much in the way that I tend to forget that how much my height and features make me stand out, how I don't look like everyone else in this country.

Thus attired, I moved out along the rice-laden villages strung along the valley floor.  It was a warm day and the clothing didn't breathe well, so it was a relief when we eventually returned to forest.  The locals had used the pass until the 1930s, when the road was built.  It was a good well-marked trail, with stone steps rising steadily upward like toward Machu Picchu.  Now and then I'd have to act out a scene, and I was surprised how much I've missed film acting. There's an awareness that's not self-conscious per se, but more a hyper-consciousness, a focus on every movement and gesture that bespeaks the zen of tea ceremony, or martial arts. Not an action is wasted. 

After a brief rest and some off-the-cuff narration at the pass, we began the long walk down.  I remembered Nisaka as being similarly long, but this one went on and on.  It would be the character of all the passes we'd eventually go on to cross, and pity the poor walker doing this pilgrimage from the other direction.   The villages in this next valley were a bit more built up but had a pleasant feel, and its primary canal led us into Kii-Nagashima.

Lunch was fried sunfish eaten outside the michi-no-eki, just as it had been in 2019.  We jumped forward then to meet Ueda-san, who would lead us around on a tour of Uomachi.  A hipster surfer of sorts, he had a light touch about the whole thing, shooting the bull with fishermen repairing their nets, or flirting with the aunties serving us fish-related bites in the local shops.  It was all a reminder of how I've missed spending time with people in rural Japan. There was not the slightest hint of chill in their demeanor, unlike my stone-faced neighbors in Kyoto.  

There was a quick climb to the village shrine shadowed over by an immense camphor tree, followed by a long sit in an old house filled with funky Showa-retro delights.  Here they screened for us a shadow-puppet version of the village's local legend, cleverly rear-projected onto the shoji screens at the end of the room.   When it was finished, we turned in surprise to find standing behind us the thirteenth generation descendant of the film's heroic and long dead samurai.  He didn't have much to say, and I felt a little sorry for him, assuming that he is often trotted out to meet and greet passing tourists. 

In the temple grounds nearby stood two stones marking the victims of a pair of tsunami.  Surprisingly, one of these waves had been caused in the Hōei eruption of far-off Fuji, an event that birthed the eponymously named Hōei pimple that is now a prominent feature on Fuji' eastern flank.  

Next to the temple was the house of a woman who had spent most of her young adulthood in New York City, where her husband had been sent for work.  Now a widow, she seemed the town celebrity of sorts, leading us on a rapid-fire tour of her home, moving with the grace of true hostess,  There was an ease in her being, along with a definitive flirtation.  I wondered how she feels now living with her elderly mother in this small village, far from Manhattan and all that the metropolis contains.  But she had certainly created her own reality here, teaching English to the local children, and charming foreign visitors who pass along the Kumano Kodō running past her front door. 

 

On the turntable:  The Beat, "I Just Can't Stop It"

 

Leap-frogging along the Iseji

 

I'd made three attempts at this particular walk.  The first had been in 2009, when I walked all the major sections of the Kumano trails.  By the time I got to Shingu, I'd had enough of concrete and cars, and decided to begin the Shikoku pilgrimage a little earlier, assuming it would have more natural bits. (Spoiler alert: It didn't.)   I'd twice gone so far as to develop an itinerary and book accommodations, in May and December 2020, but the pandemic had different ideas.  

Good things come to those who wait, I suppose.  An adventure tour company approached me to help them revamp some of their tours, and so it was that they sent me to explore the forested parts of the Iseji.  As they paid for my transport down and back, I decided to leave a day early, for a bit of extra credit.  

A very early train took me to Tamaru, and a very short walk brought me to the true start of the Iseji,  While the trail technically continues another 13 km to the Ise shrines proper, I'd done that walk already as the final stretch of the Ise Hon-kaidō, which I walked back in 2015.   Yet despite the familiarity, it took me all of a minute to follow the wrong road, but I quickly figured it out and backtracked to the true path.  

Tamaru was one of those in-between places characteristic of Japanese towns connected by rail line.  With a character neither rural nor urban, history and charm seem to have hopped a train toward other places.  I longed to do the same, after a looping masugata detoured me through a quiet neighborhood, then dumped me onto the unpleasant and busy Route 13.  This stayed unpleasant and busy for far too long.  

Over the hour I walked the highway it grew narrower, and only slightly less busy.  These are exactly the moments that I put on the headphones, to drown out the roars as they roll by.  Today was a Leonard Cohen kind of day, and when "Sisters of Mercy" came on, in this part of the world it reminded me of the bikuni nuns, those sisters of mercy who walked the pilgrimage route in order to raise money by selling subscriptions for the upkeep of their home temples.   Legend dictates that some also raised money from prostitution, but this could be hyperbole, in the way the same misunderstanding is associated with geisha.    

Despite the road, it was great to be out.  This was my first multi-day long walk since Covid, the first time in the deep countryside for a month or so.  It was great the way the hydrangeas were coming in, and how the fading beauty of the azaleas still commanded equal attention.  

Big concrete Fudō-ji temple failed to move me.  But it was development's last hurrah, and I moved deeper away from the symmetry of structures to follow the curves of a more natural landscape.  I finally left tarmac and began the climb over Meki-tōge, whose name bears the curious characters of Female demon.  Recent legends state that there was a demon who ate travellers along this stretch, but all I saw were traces of ox-cart wagon tracks, which led to the deep cutaway of rock that marked the pass. I had my lunch at a small Kannon altar, then descended to pop out of the forest beside a dam that looked more like an alpine lake.  After the labor of the albeit brief climb, a swim would be in order, but on a day hotter than this one.   

There is something wonderful about walking low passes in Japan.  You follow a long valley out to its farthest reaches, and after the up and over, you enter a new landscape, with another broad valley opening before you.   This next section was through a quiet village, stretched high above the river which wended slowly below me.  

I passed plenty of ruins: a temple founded by Shotoku Taishi; an old feudal school; an old tea house which sold famous steamed buns.  There was also the open grounds of a modest temple complex, a sake brewer, then a long walk down an arrow-straight road lined with cozy looking homes.  At the far end was Tochihara, known to walkers for its Edō period inn that marked the first overnight for those who'd started at Ise proper. 

Not far beyond was the unusual Bakamagari, where the trail left the main road and passed beneath it through a long drainage pipe, over a set of raised rails so that people could keep their shoes dry.  At the far end however, you were forced to wet your feet crossing the riverbed itself until reaching the trail again on the far side.  I thought this all a tad bizarre.  Why would pilgrims bend at the waist and walk through a pipe?  But it hit me that historically they never had, at least until the road and railway were built.  

I was led off-road twice more before the day was done.  Saruki was similarly brief, the trail clear but beginning to be overgrown as rainy season bore down.  I wondered if these brief sections had been open when I did my big Kumano walk in 2009.  I imagine that many sections that I'd unwittingly strolled right past during that walk had since been discovered and cleared and were now open for traversing.  What motivation a little world heritage status can bring!

My enthusiasm for, and expectation of, finishing 28 km today was beginning to wane as the humidity rose.  It came back to that psychological game where, if I see the distance of what I've already covered, in the subtraction lies the fatigue.  The markers, helpful as they were, handicapped in reminding me of how far I'd already come, and what still remained.  

I missed one train by about half an hour, and it would be over two hours until the next one.   I was tempted to catch that train at the next station up, but it was just out of the realm of possibility. I could possibly make it, but would need to race to get there, diminishing the enjoyment of the journey along the way.  So rather than at Misedani, I would call it quits at Kawazoe. 

With such minimal train service on the line, how odd that during the final rail crossing of the day, I was stopped by a passing train, forcing me to wait.  From there, it was a pleasant walk amongst tea fields, then along the quiet lanes into town.   Kawagoe was again one of those in-between places, rural, but with a railway stop.  The former meant there was little in the way of amenities, or things to engage the traveller.  The latter meant that it was too built up to have any rural appeal.  But it did have a lovely old school where middle school students were getting the pool ready for summer swim classes.  And there was a bizarre little toy shop showing Showa era memorabilia, which multi-tasked as a temple of the Tenri sect.  Kawazoe also had the cleanest, shiniest, honey wagon I've ever seen.   

I confirmed the train schedule, then walked over to the bus stop to see if there was anything leaving sooner.  And how like Japan, in having this similarly infrequent service leave just a few minutes before the train did.  For every train.  All day.  The verb "to stagger' must not exist in the local dialect.   I was in no hurry to get up to Matsuzaka as my dinner meeting was not until 7, so I toyed with the idea of sitting somewhere to await the train.  But there was no place to do so.  There was no coffee shop, but there were dozens of vending machines, all in the shadow of the massive Dydo distributor that had colonized the town.  So I stayed at the bus stop, thumb out, in a half-hearted effort to control my destiny.  Traffic was steady, but no one seemed interested in stopping. I was considering giving up when I got a lift from a man commuting to his job as night shift in a car factory.   His act of generosity ensured me an early bath, and even better, a nap. 

 

On the turntable:  Husker Du, "Flip your Wig"

 

Jazz & The Spoken Word, set two

 

 

With the Joshua Breakstone group, Bonds Rosary, July 01, 2022

 

On the turntable: Rolling Stones,  "Beggars Banquet"

Jazz & The Spoken Word, set one

 

  

With the Joshua Breakstone group, Bonds Rosary, July 1, 2022

 

On the turntable: Rahsaan Roland Kirk,  "Here Comes the Whistleman"

 

Sunday Papers: Ken Knabb

 

"Patriotism is extremely seductive because it enables even the most miserable individual to indulge in a vicarious collective narcissism." 

 

On the turntable:  Pentangle, "The Lost Broadcasts"