Sunday Papers: Jack Kerouac

  

“All of life is a foreign country"

 

On the turntable: The Groundhogs, "Groundhog Night"

Tracking the Kamo

I'd been waiting for a hole in the weather, and being rainy season, I'd been waiting a week.  All the rain seemed fitting, as what I had in mind was tracing a river.  Due to that week of bad weather, the water I was now walking above was literally racing down toward sea level,  Yet the water I was after was in the next watershed.  I didn't expect to reach it until later in the day.  

Maps of the region show that the source of Kyoto's famous Kamogawa has its origins on the slopes of Sajiki-ga-take, a 895 meter peak just north of the city.  The river could be considered the origin of Kyoto itself, as its Imperial founding fathers found it fit ideally within the dictates of Chinese feng shui that dictated the preeminent architectural principles of the time.  And as feng shui can have varied interpretations, so too can maps.  I decided to seek a place furthest up the mountain, one I'd approach from above, following the tenets of gravity.  I'd loop around to approach the peak from the back, then follow the ridgeline down.  That was the way the rains would fall. 

For the first half an hour or so I walked up the logging road built on the bank of the Sofutani-gawa, which joins the Kamogawa lower down where I parked my car.  It proved to be a lovely walk, despite the tarmac beneath my feet.  The river in particular was ever rushing to my left.  On this day, the waters ran fast and white. 

Despite man's best efforts to maintain these forests, a large number of trees were down, fallen across the river, and crushing the guardrails at the side of the road.  I've wondered before at this, whether this is due to the increasing strength of summer storms, or to the trees being left to grow to such unweildly heights that they topple in high winds, while beneath them, their shallow roots are unable to cling to the sodden soil that slips away beneath.   There was a strange beauty to the crosshatch of trees down the hillside, an infinite number of geographic angles to be found in their corpses.  

This was a death sentence pure and simple, stemming from improper forestry practices.  After the war, extensive logging had been undertaken nationwide, in order to rebuild the bombed out cities.  They'd decided to replant with cryptomeria and cypress, "junk wood" that grows incredibly quickly, and therefore could be utilized for the rebuilding of the subsequent generation.  Somewhere along the line it was found to be cheaper to log the old growth forests of Indonesia, Australia, and British Columbia.  These coniferous forests (or more aptly, plantations), make up 40% of Japanese woodland, and have been essentially left to themselves.  Which has given rise to new problems.  The pollen they give off in spring now causes millions of dollars in absenteeism due to allergies.  And the overcrowding of the trees doesn't allow enough sunlight to penetrate to grow any vegetation at ground level for animals to feed upon.  (You hear very little birdsong or insects there.)  As a result, wildlife has begun to move closer to the neighboring villages for food, which has given rise to more and more bear encounters, and animal raids of gardens and fields.  I rarely saw electrical fences before about 15 years ago.  Now they are nearly everywhere.   

The forestry industry's approach to greater risk of storm damage appears based on the old Vietnam strategy of burning the village to save it.  About halfway into my ascent up the road, the forest nearly disappeared completely.  Enormous stretches had been razed.  (Online photos accompanying reports of recent hikes here show that this forest came down in late November last year.). This act of aggression went beyond a mere thinning before the return of typhoon season.   Like the high walls built along the Tohoku coastline after the 2011 tsunami, it had the feel of an act of revenge.  This was no trim; this was a complete buzzcut.  Where was the Lorax when you needed him?   
 

I passed the most commonly used route up Sajiki, marked by a hand-carved sigh tied to a stump, pointing up past hundreds of other stumps.  My own route was unmarked, which I would have missed without the GPS.  My 'trail' was now a dirt road hastily cut into the slope.  It led soon enough to an older track, which I followed to a large clearing called Saru-toge.  The trail all but disappeared down the far side, a creek bed with more water than earth.  Footing beneath was all a jumble of moss-covered fallen logs.  I made my way gingerly, taking care not to slip, and ever mindful of vipers who may be hungry and cranky after days hiding from the rain.  (In my concentration I didn't notice the leach that fastened itself to my shin.  It was only hours later at home that I noticed the blood flowing through a smaller forest of leg hair.

The rest of the day was relatively perfunctory: up and over Ishibutsu-toge (disappointingly missing the stone Buddhas of its namesake); along the ridge to Sofu-dani and its quartet of ancient trees (a place right out of a samurai film, the type of place for ambush); and further on to the summit.  The route down was a potpourri of Japanese trails: wide paths, broad forest roads, narrow animal tracks down steep hills. The ridge gradually led downward, and with a sharp left turn, began to level off.

This was the headwaters of the Kamogawa.  There were a handful of graves here, no doubt priests from the Iwaya Shimyō-in temple further on.  A half-dozen Roku Jizo stood watch from atop a stone wall, and another, standing alone, had luckily been missed by a toppled tree, its calm face beaming innocently from through the boughs.    

The trail now followed the Kamo, criss-crossing the stream a number of times.  The skeleton of a massive tree lay across the stream bed, from behind which a deer ran out, stopping uphill to look down at me as I passed by.  Beyond this was the new growth of an old clear cut.  While one quarter of the slope had been reclaimed by juvenile conifers, the rest had been allowed to grow wild, now a riot of varied shapes and shades of green.  It gave one some hope that those horribly decimated places could eventually reclaim themselves.  

Around the time when the temple roofs appeared, the temple priest himself popped up from the river, clad in heavy wellies and a mask in his breast pocket.  We chatted awhile, he worried about leeches, though assured by my long trousers.  I'd meet his wife a decade ago, finding we made mutual friends within the Kyoto Journal contingent, and as we talked about Gary Snyder and Royall Tyler, I thought that these must be interesting people indeed.  When I mentioned this conversation to the priest, he said, "Ah Snyder!  That brings back memories."       

And Shimei-in temple itself was quite memorable, with its rocky precipices behind, and the massive moss-coated boulders I'd been passing all the way down.  The temple was said to have been built by Kukai in 829, though the roots go back to 650 with En-no-Gyoja, founder of the yamabushi sect.  This went on to become a place of training, once so grand that by 1550, forty buildings filled the valley.  The principal figure of worship for the yamabushi is Fudo-myo, and his statue here is supposedly the oldest in Japan, carved by Kukai himself (that jack-of-all-trades).   More recently, renowned writer Shiba Ryotaro wrote an essay described an unusual night spent here, and a later conversation he had about it with Miyazaki Hayao served as inspiration for the latter's "Princess Mononoke."

Most relevant to this piece is that the water deity was enshrined in a cave here, which legend has it as the true source of the Kamogawa.  Perhaps symbolically, it was to this temple that the last of Japan's many demons was chased from the new capital of Kyoto. It was known as Chimimori, a spirit of nature, one beyond human knowledge.  The pure waters of the Kamo prevailed.  

I followed these waters along the temple's entrance road, lined with ancient Jizo under protective structures of wood and stone.  A trio of small inns surrounded a fork in the road, each with terraces that allowed one in summer to dine above the cool of the flowing waters.  And it is from here that I'd continue to follow the river toward the city another day.  For above came the gathering of rain clouds, ensuring that the Kamogawa will continue to flow on.  

  
On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Jazz Classics"
On the nighttable:  Max Boot, "The Road Not Taken" 

Stuff from an Old Notebook (Prologue)

Inspired I guess by Chatwin and Kerouac, I've been a carrying around a Moleskine notebook for 16 years or so.  I recently began to go through them, reminiscing as I looked over the entries.  Poems, travel fragments, random thoughts and ideas.  Notes from yoga seminars, Buddhist lectures, martial arts workshops. Addresses and phone numbers, recipes and lists, hand-drawn maps and directions.  Not to mention the names of books and albums, places and films, all presumably recommended by someone I was sitting across from at the time. There was even a signed 'receipt' from an former landlady.  

Although in more recent years I've 'upgraded' to the more convenient voice recorder on my iPhone, the old tattered Moleskines have been a true record of a large part of my life.  I appreciated this nostalgic walk through my own history.  

While a large majority of the entries have already found their way here to this blog, for a number of months I'll jot a few items down, as means of archiving.  Older poems will appear intermittently, beside the new.     


On the turntable:  The Dave Brubeck Quartet,  "At Carnegie Hall"

Sunday Papers: Gary Snyder

"English became an international language only by virtue of British and American adventurism. (English is a rich midden-heap of semi-composted vocabularies further confused by the defeat at the hands of the Normans—a genuine creolized tongue that lucked out in becoming the second language to the world.)"


On the turntable: Level 42,  "World Machine"

Sunday Papers: Gary Snyder

"The current form of Chinese characters with their little hooks and right angles came about when the Han Chinese shifted from incising signs with a stylus on shaved bamboo staves to writing with a rabbit-hair brush dipped in a pine soot ink on absorbent mulberry-fiber paper. The Chinese character forms are entirely a function of the way a brush tip turns when it lifts off the page. Lifting a brush, a burin, a pen, or a stylus is like releasing a bite or lifting a claw."

On the turntable:  The Art ot Noise, "The Art of Love"

Tracing ancient footprints in Old Nara

Adorning the main hall at Hōrin-ji is a trio of Buddhas. The triptych is common to the era, and to the place.  What grabs me though are the faces.  The central image, the important one, dates to the 10th Century, with the soft, round facial features of the Asian mainland.  But those on either side are from four centuries earlier, the faces darker, more gaunt.  I wonder how well these faces reflect the older natives of the time, when newer migrants and attendant culture fresh from China, from Korea, were diluting a population base that had arrived centuries earlier from the south.  

I'd passed another relic on the walk over from Hōryu-ji, a beautiful old house with ornately detailed carvings, beneath a roof of corrugated metal hiding thatch beneath.  It is abandoned, fenced in. Standing as it is at the confluence of roads, the poor feng shui probably did it in.  More dramatic perhaps are the utility lines towering above, whose own flow of power too may have contributed to the inevitable, and pitiful, end.   

I look at an adjacent utility tower that stands behind Hōki-ji, and wonder if it was here twenty-three years ago, when I did this same walk with Jordan in the cold rain of January.  I feel my dear late friend is with me on today's walk too.  I recall well our doing this particularly unattractive next section, a long slog into Nara deer park, only to find that the annual yamayaki had been cancelled due to the bad weather.  

Today too the sky is a grey slate, a far cry from the usual bluebird weather of May.  I am hurrying along, hoping to beat the rain which is forecast to fall after 1 pm.  It is meant to be a short walk anyway, only as far as Jiko-in..  I find the priest there holding court with some guests, bemoaning the loss of the varieties of tea culture.  Osaka and Kyoto used to have distinct styles of tea, but they have all been diluted by Kyoto style, as has the rest of Japan.  He says that it is a shame what is happening to the beauty of this country.  After he leaves, the old woman finds it difficult to stand, complaining that her feet are asleep.  You feel a little like a spy at these times, as no one assumes that you can understand what is being spoken about.  

Just past noon I pass a small sake shop, in front of which an uncle pops the top of his first One Cup of the day.   Though I shouldn't judge, for not much later I relish the taste of the beer I take at an Indian curry joint where I complete my walk.  And the rain begins to fall as predicted.  

On the train ride home, I muse that photography is killing my writing.  With a camera you look at things;  with writing you look through them.  And in this spirit I revisit the walk I did with Jordan back in January 1996, reading the journal entry whose prose seems drunk itself, on Snyder and Zen:

Sunday, Jan. 14 -- went to Nara, Hōryu-ji to be exact, J and I walking the long tree-lined drive, stretching upward like legs to meet the Sanmon gate, free ride back to the place of our birth, a glimpse of my parents' pre-concieved face.  The west side contains a small hall containing a lone figurine and tatami, a pleasant place to hide away, ignoring the tourists while studying, reading and watching the seasons change.  Down the hill, the walls of the main hall are streaked red from centuries worth of hands stained from hinoki pillars.  Wander jovial and mockingly through the treasure halls, then out to a narrow country road, winding, winding.    Temple-side lunch, then on to a pagoda rising from rice fields.  To Jikō-in, with green tea and garden walk in small sandals.  Walk the bamboo forest on a path bordered by water-worn Chinese scroll cliffs.  A taxi ride follows a failed attempt at hitching.  Toshōdai-ji's buildings stand somber in the winter grey.  Yakushi-ji's pagodas rise in the dimming light, one newly painted looks proud beside plain, weathered, Cinderella half-sister.  Snarling Nio, the finest I've seen, well-made up with smug oni beneath massive feet.  

Back in Nara, an explanation of directions from two young women, about whom J and I talk metaphorically, to find them following, within earshot but uncomprehending.  Post-dinner walk through rain to our hostel, no frills at ¥2400, a far cry from the $8 dollar palaces of New Zealand (which I had just visited a few weeks before.)  Having no towel, I dry myself on used linen, then turn in. Our old man roommate quiet but friendly, turns down his radio when my head hits the down, and he has the decency not to snore.

Next day, early bus to some temple in the mountains.  Confused quickly, get directions from a monk who looks just shy of a century old, his face a braille mask telling dharma stories that dance around a toothless grin.  How many years has this guy sat upon his cushion up here in the hills amidst the woodcutters?  In true Buddhist metaphorical fashion, J and I are told that we are standing astride the very path we seek.  Up into the trees, dampened blackened things which stand dense and tall, parting occasionally to allow glimpses of the village below.  At one point we are stunned to see a path of garbage extending down a hillside, no doubt the work of a single culprit, but the result is shocking, like a thin razor gash on the cheek of a child.  What the Japanese won't do to destroy their marvelous natural environment; they haven't a clue how to translate 'sustainable use" anymore.  

We drop now into farm land, tea plantations with hedgerows stretching parallel up the hillside like cornrowed hair.  A group of men stand chatting around a fire, ceasing briefly as they stare us by.  On through a village, with a souvenir shop at the far end.  Shortly after, the trail becomes a cobblestone road, dating back 1200 years.  As we descend carefully, the path slick with last night's rain, a creek leads the way past Buddhas god-knows-how-old, which appear on rock and cliff face. At the hill's base we pass through yet another village into the deer park proper.  

An okonomiyaki lunch and museum visit later, we're on a train packed with kimono-clad girls, to Osaka where we part ways.  I continue to a photo exhibit of Hollywood stars at work.  It's a shame when a gallery visit has the same mild impact as a glance at a book of the same substance.  On the way back to Yonago, run into G and C, who are painfully hungover, returning from Kobe and last night's Pavement show.  Oh, The Varieties of Gaijin Experience!  Its a shame that William James hadn't lived to write that title...


On the turntable:  The Allman Brothers, "An Evening with The Allman Brothers"
On the nighttable:  Irving Walsh, "Trainspotting"

  

Nanao Still Knows...

 
Nanao Sakaki, one of Japan's best known poets and counterculture figures passed away a decade ago after a storied and peripatetic life. A 10-year memorial service was held Saturday November 3rd on the Kyoto University campus, with music and poetry readings alternating throughout the day.  I attended his memorial service in 2008, and was happy to be asked to read today.  I chose my piece from Tokyo Poetry Journal's recent Japan and the Beats anthology, performed below.

What better way to honour Japan's Culture Day holiday than with a celebration of its counterculture?

 

 On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "Dick's Picks Vol. 4"

Whack for Trinidady-o

-->

The historic towns of Cianfuegos and Trinidad have been forever paired by UNESCO as heritage sites, but they each have their own distinct character.  The former is typically Caribbean in that it is (slowly) facing the future, yet not at the expense of its rich colonial past.  Trinidad on the other hand appears happy right where it is, which is 19^th Century Spain.   Renowned tourist sites can be divided into micro and macro types.  Kyoto, where I live, is the former, being essentially an ugly city filled with some marvelous sites.  Trinidad is the latter, for the town itself is a gem.  Nested on a long rolling series of hills between the mountains and the sea, it is a spiderweb of little lanes, cobbled with what I’ve heard best described as turtle-shells, and sloping downward toward drainages running down the center.   These irregular surfaces make for difficult walking, slowing everyone to a leisurely amble.  Those who can’t even be bothered to walk sit before low two-story buildings painted an array of hues, and punctuated with brightly colored doors.  When the pony-drawn carriage before you passes by a parked 1952 Chevy, you suddenly find yourself part of a travel brochure. 

Like in all the best towns, there is little to do but absorb the vibe.  We listlessly explore a couple of palazzo museums, poke our heads into churches.  Have the obligatory canchanchara at its namesake Taverna.  I also take the time to do a solo walk at dawn one morning, into the barrios well away from the tourist heart of town, where young dudes work on their motorcycles, and groups of young girls stroll to school in their uniforms.  Along the way I come across a Yoruba temple, in the courtyard of which a man is washing and plucking a chicken, either a result of, or preparation for, a ceremony of some kind.  

The slow pace of life in the daytime serves to pace the locals for their revelries at night.  Music is simply everywhere., in every café, spilling onto the streets.  Not far from the steps beside the Iglesia Parroquial where tourists sit and welcome the night, we dine at Paladar 1514, an antique shop of sorts crammed with the wares of five centuries.  This all adds to the restaurant’s ramshackle look, of crumbled brick and absent roof.  I believe that the structure actually is half-collapsed, and we dine alfresco safely between two columns.  Our waiter is a very young man who’s been working there for just a few weeks, and he deftly battes our queries about history in charming and amusing ways.   We are the only diners at first, but slowly others come to sit at tables overladen with ancient ceramic and glass (removed of course before the meal arrives). Another waitress comes on duty, moving through the narrow spaces as if dancing tango; all the movement is below the waist.  At some point musicians crowd into one corner of the courtyard, and before long I am pulled before them to dance with a young black woman that I'd seen flirting earlier with the mulatto bartender.  Trinidad has a certain racial ambiguity, its people even a greater array of colors than its buildings, yet seemingly devoid of any of the usual tension.  When I make this comment to my guide so tells me that Trinidad's port had been one of the points of entry for African slaves.  In fact, more African slaves arrived in Cuba than the United States.  This is mainly because the Americans saw the value in have healthy slaves to work and breed.  The Spanish simply worked theirs to death, to be replaced by new African slaves.  Things have improved of course, but G tells me that the lighter skinned tend to do better with education and employment, but the overt racism of the north is quite rare.           

 After dinner we climb atop the ruins of what had once been the palador's upper floor and from our perch atop a hill looked across the town.  Turning myself in a slow 360 degree circle, I spot at least five bands playing on rooftops on adjoining streets.  And the fun never stops, carrying on well into the night, as a pair of chatty old men have an animated discussion in the square across from our hotel.  Probably about anything but race.   

The final morning we drive out to the Sierra del Escambray, tracing the coastline lined with small, underdeveloped hotels before turning inland to climb and wind over the tendrils of hills pointing seaward.  Roads like these never fails to amuse.  It is as if there was no time or thought toward grading.  Far easier to just pave the hillsides, creating a roller coaster effect.  Always thrilling, always exhilarating. 

We stop at the park information center which has detailed information about the various hikes in the area.  Towering just above is a large hotel block that had once been a TB sanitarium.  We leave this soon enough, in the back of a massive Soviet-built troop transport.  We bounce along on the hard bench-like seats as the truck powers along the windy mountain roads.  Now and then small settlements will appear, small clusters of squat homes amidst all that verdant green.  Symbols and slogans of the revolution are everywhere, little wonder since that these hills were home to the revolutionaries for much of its struggle.  In that spirit I pull on my bandana, like some Corsican freedom-fighter.  

We climbed from the truck in a small village at the start of the trail.  Not far in we come across a decent-sized coffee plantation, shaded by massive trees.  This canopy shades us as well, as we make our way gingerly along slopes made slippery from the rain of two days before.  We come eventually to a tall waterfall, and a swimming hole that on this day serves as playground to a handful of foreigners.  On such a relatively mild day, I don't need feel the need to cool off, so I simply dip my lower half in the waters. 

The second part of the hike isn’t much harder the first, though it does require us to climb gradually from the valley. The views open up some, of the river we parallel, which in itself draws out more bird and wildlife. (Happily for me, Cuba doesn't have any venomous snakes, so ophidiophobic me can walk with my eyes pointing up for a change.) We leave the jungle at a small farm, not far from a series of bungalows where we’ll lunch.  We sit out on the veranda, eating a plate of chicken and the obligatory beans and rice.  It is a pleasant, bucolic  afternoon, though now growing hot.  When it is time to depart, our truck is nowhere to be found, so we sit awhile more in the shade, watching the chickens who, no matter how fast they can run, cannot outrun their destiny as tomorrow’s lunch. 

Back finally at our vehicle, for the long ride home.  Our guide G decides to pass the time in discussing Cuba and what it is like to live there.  For days we have politely avoided the topic of politics, it seems as if she finds it important to show how politics is intricately entangled with daily life. 

She tells us of the hardships of the Special Period, of a country in free-fall after the collapse of the USSR, its main economic trading partner.  The government did a remarkable job in strategically weathering out the crisis.  Not to say that the people didn't suffer.  Food production dramatically declined, due to the absence of fossil fuels.  But the Cubans are a clever people, due to a high level of education and resilient due to the embargo.  Bicycles began to appear on the streets, and many moved out into the countryside to crow their own food.  The diets became incredibly imaginative and innovative, with people substituting plantain peels for beef, and utilizing vegetables long overlooked.  One bizarre side effect was the huge reduction of deaths from as diabetes and heart disease.  

Cuba weathered this, as they weathered everything else.  But with exposure to tourists growing exponentially, Cubans are beginning to resent the stagnation of their island.  Most live on a monthly salary of $25 dollars a month, and I know that some of our meals cost more.   Yet despite this, she, along with all the other Cubans I met, truly love their country and have no intention to leave.  And therein lies the paradox.  To wait as patiently as the Cubans do, implies the belief that something better will come along.  And after fifty plus years, at no time does the future look brighter than it does now.  Obama seemed determined that part of his legacy be to open up the country, and I smile at the thought that the “Hope” slogan of his initial presidential campaign also holds meaning for the people of this nation.  Granted his successor seems equally determined to slam shut the doors again.  Yet a bigger factor is the fact that Cuba is taking its first baby steps into a future without Fidel. It is hard to picture a Cuba without Castro, despite the fact that the Cuban exiles in Miami and the CIA have been doing that for decades.  But the issue all along was with Fidel, and never the Cuban people.

So that hope stills exists.  Americans and their tourist dollars are now flowing in, and that will certainly change things.  It won't be long before the big corporate players follow, their insidious logos appearing on what has until now been crumbling facades.  Perhaps one of those logos might even be of a certain hotel chain owned by Obama’s successor himself. 

Personally I think that Cuba’s biggest potential lies in being a major destination for medical tourism.  This island is famous for the high quality of its healthcare system, and it exports more trained medical personnel to the developing world than all the G8 countries combined. Americans are already finding inexpensive treatment in countries like Thailand, India, and Singapore, and it won't be long before they find relief closer to home. 

And home is where we are now turned.  It is long drive back to the airport, so we stop twice:  once for a long lunch stop at the living zoo of Fiesta Campesina, and later at a coffee stand alongside the highway.  I walk out to stand awhile at the road’s edge, looking at the silence and emptiness stretching away in both directions.  Cars are few, maybe one every minute, but it is this very dearth of vehicles, and the vintage of those that do, that enables me to have my own On the Road moment.  With nostalgia comes certain pangs: feeling the cool wind in my face, feeling the pull of the open road.  Part of it is inspired by being a prisoner of a minutely-controlled organized tour.  Part of it has something to do with all these 1940s vehicles drifting unhurriedly by.  Surely in one these are the ghosts of Neil Cassidy and Jack Kerouac, rolling on toward their own particular brand of freedom. It is something they share with the Cubans, who opt for a similar joie du vivre in spite of the top-heavy political system under which they live.    

I too had a wonderful journey, one of the best I’ve ever had, yet in its very scripted nature, I was never truly free to go my own.  I never got a chance to truly be in the landscape, rather than simply move through it.  I would have relished an evening sitting in the rocking chairs in the Vinales Valley. Or a few days spent meandering along the uneven cobblestones of the Old Habana, stopping only for the odd cup of coffee, or to poke around the bookstalls, before rewarding myself with a craft beer at La Factoria Plaza Vieja.  I fantasize about sitting at the bar and getting into conversations with the locals. 

But I notice that there is a definitive separation between the Cubans and the tourists who are beginning to move amongst them in greater and great numbers.  It’s unlike other cities I’ve been, where there’s much more engagement, more interaction.  Here, the Cubans continue to go about their business, or their lack of business, as the touts are as yet unpushy, choosing to let the big specimens of overseas wealth simply drift by   That ability to choose, implies a freedom that they’ve had all along.  Let’s hope they can weather the myriad of choices to be made as their island grows more and more open.  

Once the big hotels and international conglomerates return then surprise surprise, socially they won't be far off from where they were in 1959.  A more optimistic view is that Cubans, being proud, patient, and educated people, will take a slower more sensible approach to things.  But the people are most certainly hungry.  Not for food this time, but a chance to share their strengths with the rest of the world. 

 
On the turntable:  Cactus, "Rochester, New York 1971" 

Wakasa Kaidō I

It wasn't how I'd pictured the morning going.  I had envisioned scenes of walking through the dark predawn streets of eastern Kyoto, watching the world awake and scurry off to work and school.  

Instead, I got rain, buckets of it.  The weather forecast had shown a dry window from midnight to lunchtime, and I'd been a fool to believe it.    In fact it was the rain that had woken me, not long before the five o'clock alarm.  I debated going back to sleep, but trusting that the skies would clear, I hopped on my bicycle and headed south to Demachiyanagi.  The steady drizzle that I rode through turned to downpour with my first few steps, but I thought I'd carry on anyway, weather be damned...    

Until 15 minutes or so later when I remembered the words I use when I tell my walking clients that I was calling a day off:  "If it isn't enjoyable, what's the point?"  And it wasn't.  The scenes of life I'd hoped to see were non-existant, my world view shrunk to that which fit beneath my umbrella.   I decided to go as far as Yase station and if it were still raining, I'd head home.  

I pushed on toward Kitaoji.  A row of low-income housing formed a canyon on my right, while to my left were some newly-built luxury flats. Typical Japanese incongruous zoning.  I like the idea of these two economic classes coming together in the middle for a street party, but I knew that that was an illusion, one enhanced by the Billy Bragg songs I was listening to to help me forget the rain.  

And before long, the weather lifted.  While the skies didn't exactly clear to a brilliant blue, the rain did stop.  And a certain beauty appeared, a beauty of imperfection.  Clouds teased the hilltops, caressing their flanks. Shadows brought definition to every shape and form.  Japan is best seen in lower light anyway.   

I rounded Yase and followed along Route 367, ducking down the quieter parallel roads when I found them.  I had very little go on map-wise, just a single web link that claimed the Wakasa Kaidō was the busier highway.  I've driven this road at least 50 times, so opted to follow the side routes, partly as exploration, partly as reprieve.  Mainly suburban commuter communities, but at least they had the mountains and rivers at their backs.  Up on the main road much was in decay, abandoned and forlorn.  

The valley was getting higher, or perhaps the clouds were lifting, but at any rate, the humidity was coming on strong, to the point that it fogged my glasses.  The road lost its shoulder as I had feared, but I faced down the traffic racing toward me on the curves.  My early start was meant to have gotten me through this bottleneck before rush hour started.  I was afraid to take my eyes off the lane ahead, but I quickly glanced down at my watch.  Seven-forty.  Shit.   

The shoulder returned in front of a tsukemono pickle factory.  A worker came out clad head to toe in a white outfit like a Hazmat suit.   Seemed appropriate, for when they put in the radioactive dye in order to get all those weird colors.  I don't believe that shade of yellow even exists in the natural world.   

The broad valley of Ohara spread out before me.  Higanbana sprouted just about everywhere, beside the shorn stubble of harvested rice fields.  I'd walked this stretch a number of times, so I turned my brain off and listened to some early ballads by Bob Dylan.  Well beyond the turn off to Jakko-in and Kirin Cafe was a small sports center whose owner had a few years ago been gracious enough to let my daughter use their toilets.  Needing a pee break, I crossed their carpark toward the facilities.  Midway across a woman called out "Moshi moshi," which also sounds much more aggressive than the usual "Sumimasen."  I explained what I wanted, which she reluctantly allowed.  While inside, I heard a man join her, and upon my return I found the two of them standing there, waiting.  The man was interested in what I was doing, and at least verified for me that I actually was on the Wakasa Kaidō.  Though sharing the name, the busy Route 367 was the newer route.  I thanked them again for the use of the facilities, to which he said that in future I should use the toilets at the bus station.  I turned then and began to walk off, peeved at this sort of attitude, with which previous kindness is instantly revoked.  Why offer it in the first place?   For some reason he asked my receding figure its name, to which I gave my usual "code name:"  Larry Rullelo.

A good thirty minutes on I met 367 again, which lifted me gradually toward the pass.  Midway up, a trio of cops were tagging speeders with their radar gun.  Passing by I asked one of them, "Catch anything?"  which got a laugh.  A small trail took me off the main road and over the pass.  Just over the other side was the Yamazaki Geo Clean Park (Geo being the latest Japanese recent buzz word for nature).  Its motto ought to be, "Cleaning up nature for its own good."

The hamlet over the pass was called Tochū, which can be literally translated as "In the middle of."  It takes every strength of your being not to add, "Absolute f-ing nowhere."  Due to its name alone, it seemed a fitting place to stop.  It wasn't raining at the moment, and with  only about 15 minutes until my bus I thought that I'd sit somewhere, crack open my book, and through Gary Snyder's Great Clod I would begin to plod.  

The Wakasa Kaidō carries on out of this town and immediately over the next pass.  Route 367 undergoes a series of S-curves in order to climb it, something I truly hoped to avoid.  The old trail must still exist.  Unfortunately the community center was closed, and a man out front had little idea, figuring the path would be hard to find anyway. (Anyway, as that climb will wait until next time, I had time to find out.)  

I moved toward the bus stop in a drizzle just beginning to fall.  To my surprise I found out that my bus (one of only two a day), only ran on weekends, a detail the bus company forgot to put on their website.  This could be bad, as hitching became my only option.  But I was standing in the rain on a road that had no shoulder.  The odds were pretty bad.  To my surprise the third car did pull over, and with less than a minute's wait, I was inside and dry.    

A couple returning from a wet morning fishing dropped me back in Kyoto at my bicycle.  I detoured over to the stone marker that marks the start of the Ohara Kaidō, which I hadn't known existed.    (The Saba Kaidō marker is at the west end of the Demachiyanagi bridge.)  The rain began in earnest now, so I pointed my bicycle north, racing the forecast as summer fell in pieces all around me.

http://kaidoaruki.com/area_kinki/saba/wakasakaido01.html


On the turntable: Bonobo, "One Offs Remixes & B-Sides"

Middle of Somewhere

I've walked a great number of roads in this country, but today was the first time I've walked a road that no longer exists.  There is a triumvirate of ancient paths between Asuka and Nara, traversed perhaps when the former capital passed the baton of Imperial seat to the latter.   I'd already walked both the High Road and the Low, so I figured it was time to honor my Buddhist heroes and take the Middle Way.

The walk started at Asuka Station, with the first hour or so passing between monuments dating to a time when the wild Jōmon tribes began cutting their hair, putting on robes, and calling themselves the Yamato.   This is perhaps my favorite period in Japanese history, a time when Japan was most soulful, to judge from the ancient shrines, burial mounds, and the trendy accessories of an import called Buddhism.  (Sadly, a lot of this went away two centuries later with another import.  The Ritsuryō codes gave birth to a bureaucracy that quickly entrenched itself so effectively that it survived 1500 years of near constant regime change.)  So it was with great joy that I walked, eyes filled with some of the greatest beauty this land can offer, right down to the temporal shapes of the sakura.

I had little to go on, map-wise, except for one that was simply a single line running between the shrines that acted as way points, a map that paid no heed to the contemporary reality of house, factory or fields, passing directly through them.  And most amazingly, my path did indeed run arrow straight, like a compass pointing due north.  I found small dirt paths between new suburban homes, crossed parking lots, and tightrope-walked low berms between earthen plots.  I only had to deviate once, at a concrete ditch which my legs were a decade too old to leap. After a brief detour, north again I went.

The day was warm and fine and busy with old timers working in their gardens or preparing their fields for planting.  By contrast, the suburbs north of Asuka were near devoid of life, and the few people I did meet seemed unable to return my greeting.  Perhaps this too is part of the Ritsuryō.  Beyond these deserts, I startled a pair of mandarins who took flight from a small canal, to land again upstream. They rose with a great deal of kinetic energy, far more than it would take to say hello.  

Leaving this no-man's land I was approaching Nara, my path now called Route 53.  There were no sidewalks, so my mind grew occupied with mental martial arts maneuvers as defense again oncoming wing-mirrors. In quieter moments, my eyes sought vistas familiar from previous walks, of Mounts  Miwa and Ryozan, of the forests of Kashima Jingu and the dormitory village of Tenri, of the as yet unclimbed peaks of Nijo-zan, and Katsuragi.  

I've mentioned Tenri before so won't go into it again here.  But I'm always amazed and the size and the scale of the place (built upon the site of what had been the capital for a decade at the end of the 5th century).  I noticed today for the first time a whole section of their campus tucked up in a nook of the hills, all tall apartment flats and massive boxes that could only be auditoriums. Incredible how the visions of a middle-aged peasant woman could grow into an organization with over 2 million followers.      

Just beyond was the Nara river,  little more than a small creek of one-meter-across.  On its far shore was a small hut sheltering a couple of dozen Jizo, who found eternal shade beneath the broad branches of the chestnut tree above.  Raising my head to look beyond its upper reaches, I found some comfort in my first glimpse of Wakakusa-yama's bald pate.  Not much further to go. 

The rest of the day was a slow creep into Nara.  There wasn't much to catch the eye, so I allowed the ears their turn, offering them the voice of Allen Ginsberg to distract them with some of his poems.  All the way, cars rushed by like the ghost of Neil Cassidy. 

In Nara proper, I eased off my ever-linear northern trajectory and detoured into the warren of lanes south of the station.  Most tourism in Nara is centered around the deer park, leaving me alone to walk the narrow paths lined in wood and tile and earth, which front temples and galleries and cafes. There is a definitive Bohemian feel to Nara, albeit one grounded in the 8th century.  And as I wrapped up my stroll I felt yet again how much preferable the place is compared to Kyoto. 

This thought returned to me that evening, when I attended a small festival at Goryō Jinja, my neighborhood shrine.  Yet even at this stripped down scale there was little warmth.  Whereas most festivals I've attended in Japan gave a sense of cathartic communitas, in Kyoto they take the form of touristic processions, where the only real community participation entails standing in the heat along the route. Actors move along in fixed lines and positions, dressed in attire that was traditionally never worn by the commoner, implying a certain separation.  It inevitably culminates in a group of men carrying or dragging along a shrine or a cart or those towering yamaboko.  In Kyoto, history's weight is heavy.     


On the turntable:  Art Pepper, "Goin' Home"
On the turntable:  Toby Thompson, "Positively Main Street"

Retained in Memory

It was a cold snowy night when Lord Kira's head left its body.  That tale is one oft-told, in puppet plays, kabuki, thirty-four TV presentations, and numerous films (I lost count at fifty).    I will start my own tale as it began during the hot summer of 2003, a time when I was just emerging from a shell of grief, and thought it would be a nice distraction to spend a summer in Kyoto interning for Kyoto Journal.  Little did I understand that the magazine was put together remotely, a collaboration by like-minded individuals spread across dozens of postal codes.  The work I was given for the special Streets issue involved little more than internet research, leaving me free to pass my days bicycling the city and visiting its sights.  Off the bike, I prepared myself for my third-degree blackbelt examination in iaido by practicing cuts behind the trees of Yoshida Jinja, the Imperial Palace grounds, or the forest of Shimogamo.

I based myself in a small subtemple of Daitoku-ji, which disappointed somewhat in not offering daily zazen meditation.  For most of the summer I had a small six mat room to myself, but as the heat of August built up, so did the visitors to the city, and for one week I was asked to share a room with a quiet, unassuming man from Tokyo.  It turned out that he was staying at Daitoku-ji for the same reason as I.  Gary Snyder, a hero of his, and of mine, had studied at a nearby sub-temple for a time.  (We found to our dismay the following morning was that there would be no zazen in August, as the internationally renowned priest was busy giving teachings in Europe.)  So that left us time to discuss other things, the most memorable being that he was the caretaker for the graves of the 47 Ronin.  I had visited these graves a number of years before, probably on one of my first visits to Tokyo.  I don't recall what time of year it was, but I do remember a thick haze of incense burning from the offerings of those moved by their sacrifice.  And like the dissipating nature of that smoke, the caretaker too drifted away and I never saw him again.  

I moved to Kyoto full time a few years later, and did eventually make it to zazen.   And being based here, I began further explorations, but never seemed to make it to Ako for December 14th's Gishisai, held on the day when the 47 loyal retainers finally got their revenge.  (I did however pass through Ako itself one afternoon, and found myself on the receiving end of a road-rage incident with a flash-car-driving yakuza whose low status seemed to correspond to his stature.  If you know your Chushingura, you'll be amused by the fact that what he was most upset about was that I didn't show him the proper respect.)   

This year, the weather and my schedule collaborated to allow me to attend.  I mentioned above that the night that Lord Kira's head rolled was a cold and snowy one, which offers great dramatic tension to the story,  the weather acting almost as ronin number 48.  In contrast, I stepped into a warm morning, under bright blue skies and leaves reluctant to do their duty by falling from the trees. 

And the samurai were nearly upon me before I even left the station.  A half dozen were shouting threats at one another before slashing and whirling within the narrow confines of the station hallway.  After the long train ride out here, I really needed to pee, but unfortunately the samurai were between the toilets and I.  I was reluctant to pass as they were obviously mere actors, with little of the tight control of the well-trained martial artist.  When the flailing temporarily ceased to allow for more swearing and snarls, I scooted past to go about my business.  

I only saw one more group of samurai that day, posing for photos and unable to defend themselves from the onslaught of off-key enka coming over the hedge.  What I did see was a Japanese festival at its most relaxed best.  The broad high-street of town had been closed to traffic, allowing a modest sized crowd to stroll along merrily on an unseasonably warm day free of work or school.  Food stalls of an incredible variety lined the street for the full kilometer to the castle ruins.  Access to the castle itself was barred due to the preparations for the procession about the begin.  I liked the idea of of a group of blue-pated men hunkered down within the walls of the castle, plotting something unknown to the rest of us.  So I walked the perimeter of the castle's walls, around to Oishi Jinja which eponymously commemorates the leader of the 47.  The narrow confines were busy but uncrowded, with people queuing to pray for the fallen men.   

Back on the main street, the procession had begun, kicked off by a series of elderly women clad in bright blue yukata, spinning parasols as they went.  The next few groups were also dance teams, and a glimpse of other groups further awaiting their turn revealed more flashily dressed elderly female participants, or young kids whose heights would be temporarily stunted by the weight of mikoshi.  I knew that the samurai procession would come much later, climaxing in each retainer having his name announced as the crowd roared.  

That would have to wait.  I enjoyed myself to the extent that I'd like to return for the festival in the future, and would certainly time my return to later in the afternoon in order to see that final ronin roll call.  But this day had felt just about right, and as I was weary from a recent trip abroad, thought I'd rather read of the exploits of others than to actually experience them.  So what followed was a slow and leisurely amble back to the train station, with plenty of food stops, beneath the character 'Aka' (for Ako, 赤穂) carved into the hills above.


On the turntable:  "Roots of Reggae II"