Sunday Papers: Gore Vidal

 
"It makes no difference who you vote for — the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.""

On the turntable:  The Alarm, "History Repeating 1981-2021"

October 14 Elegy

 

 

 

The Super Parisian

 

 

Finale in a trilogy of posts, over at the French blog.

http://viewsfromaprovincialperch.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-super-parisian.html

On the turntable:  Phish, "Baker's Dozen"

 

C'est la Guerre

 

Another post, over at the French blog.

http://viewsfromaprovincialperch.blogspot.com/2022/09/cest-la-guerre.html

 

On the turntable:  Rufus Wainwright, "Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall" 

 

Sunday Papers: Martin Buber

  

"Never think of men except in terms of those specific individuals whose names you know." 

On the turntable: Roxy Music, "Siren"

After the Fire, the Fire still Burns

 

 

First post in three years, over at the French blog.

http://viewsfromaprovincialperch.blogspot.com/2022/09/after-fire-fire-still-burns.html

On the turntable:  Red Hot Chili Peppers, "The Uplift Mofo Party Plan "

 

Sunday Papers: Noël Coward

 

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” 

 

On the turntable:  Rod Stewart, "Thanks for the Memories"

Knowing Tranquility XXVI (Hiroshima)

 

 

Despite being only a couple of kilometers apart, there were no direct ferries between Honjima and its neighbor, Hiroshima.  So it was that for the second morning in a row I found myself on a boat leaving Marugame, as it streamed past the cantaloupes and rocket ships that are the most common shapes of industrial ports.  

The night before, I'd lucked upon Miroc Brewery, housed in an old warehouse and filled with decorative trappings often seen in similar microbreweries in the States or the UK. There was only another pair of customers, so the bartendress stayed mainly in the kitchen with the cook, whose teasing conversation drifted out to me as I sipped my udon IPA, a nod to the region's famed Sanuki Udon.  Belly filled, I wandered the older part of town, which had a curious beauty in the shuttered dark.      

At the wharf this morning, the ticket taker seemed determined to speak to me only in English.  I was asking him clear questions in Japanese, but I'm not sure what language he was actually hearing.  I asked twice if I could buy a round-trip ticket, which he confirmed.  But the ticket machine had a different opinion. I turned to him and say, "Oh, so we actually cannot?"  To which he said yes, again in English.  At least he pointed out the correct departure pier.   

I'd called ahead to rent a bicycle, an old beater bike which I found waiting for me at the pier.  I cycled clockwise, following the shoreline, past little clusters of houses that popped up again, and again.  I'd initially wanted to spend the night here, but there were only a few guest house, and none appeared to do food.  Maps showed that there was little else in the way of shops or eateries, and my ride confirmed the sparsity of just about anything.  Obviously, not many tourists visited Hiroshima.  

Nor had Richie.  He may have known about the quarry, whose scars now covered tremendous swathes of the islands northwest corner.  The accompanying small industry made up the other structures near the water's edge.  Were they instead picturesque homes the island wouldn't have felt so forlorn.  Unfortunately, at some point in the island's history some political bigwig had decided it expendable, a mere resource. 

I pedaled away from all this, into the island's heart. There I found a lovely little shrine, and a dusty road that pulled strongly against gravity over its sharply ascending pitch.  Luckily the trail, or what was left of a trail, quickly led into the forest.  Bamboo and felled trees leaned into my path, the footing below dense with last year's leaves.  Despite its condition, the path was reasonably obvious, but like the road below it climbed briskly up the mountain face.  

I reached a low saddle and turned right and toward the peak. It was easy going for some time, then a steep descent forced me to climb once again, this time through low spiky brush. Out to sea, I could hear the engine throb of passing ships that is the ever-present soundtrack to the Inland Sea, a throbbing that matched the rapid beating of my heart. It was hot along this stretch.  At least the earlier sections had had shade.      

 

 

The peak had no view, so I continued toward a picturesque formation of stones not far off, which I'd seen on a sign beside the road, but whose shapes were oddly not visible on Google maps.  I ran and climbed along the smooth faces of the stones here, softened and shaped by centuries of erosion, an ironic counterpoint to the severely-hewn quarries down by the shore.  

After a quick detour to a small Kobō Daishi temple cut into a cliff face, I backtracked to my bicycle, then rode to a lone vending machine where I quickly downed two cold drinks, under a sun growing even hotter.  My goal was to do a loop around the entire island, and check out the two other settlements to the north.  But I quickly found that the sole road around the island didn't stick to sea level, instead rising and falling repeatedly over Hiroshima's hilly topography.  I managed one set of steep hills, but midway up the next I pulled the bike over to cool myself in a small patch of shade.  

I sat here and thought awhile.  The island hadn't been giving me much, and what little there was seemed to be along this southern shore.  Plus the high temperatures and rolling hills were conspiring against legs already weary from the challenging hike.  In general, I have good physical endurance but I just didn't have it today. So it was that I wheeled the bicycle around, my conscious nagging at me.

I returned to a small stretch of beach that I'd seen earlier on.  As I was locking the bike against a small shelter, I peered into the shaded interior to see a handful of people silently watching me.  And who needs words when you have gestures, and the next gesture was one of unmistakable welcome, when the middle aged patriarch came over and handed me a cold beer.   

He and his family had come over on the early ferry, day-tripping to barbecue and to give the grandkids a day in the water.  I joined the latter there, looking across the windless, still surface of the water, to the mountain I'd not long before suffered up.  Yes, I'd made the right choice in quitting early.  

I hopped the early boat which would ride out to a few remote neighboring islands, before making a brief return to Hiroshima  prior to the crossing back to the mainland.  I felt even greater relief now, passing before a veritable roller coaster of shoreline hills, one dropping upon a village that was an overly concreted mass of nothing at all. 

The clouds began to come over and the wind changed, the sea taking on the slate-grey color of the sky.  Far out to the west, the horizon wore a distinct petrochemical glow.  Sailing past the shipbuilding factory was like going through a supermarket, each component part laid out in various hangers.  Immense cranes towered ten stories above.   

Onshore, a man asked for my tickets, then showed a bit of consternation that I'd done the loop to the outer islands free of charge.  He called a superior in an office somewhere, then told me that they wouldn't charge me extra this time, but that I mustn't do it again.  I knew my role here and dutifully apologized.  All very Japanese, each of us playing our parts, each getting what they wanted, yet still preserving face.  

 

 On the turntable:  Phish, "1998-11-02, E Center, Utah" 

 

Spirit of Shizen

 

Quite pleased to have contributed to this anthology, the catalogue for the exhibition “Spirit of Shizen - Japan’s nature through its 72 seasons” at Musée national d'histoire naturelle Luxembourg.

 

On the turntable:  "The Big Chill (Sdtk)"

 

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 Ise-ji 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 Ise-ji 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 Ise-ji 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 Ise-ji

 

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.   Kawazoe 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"

Jazz & The Spoken Word II

Jazz & The Spoken Word returns to Kyoto on July 1st. My own words (and the Rexroth intro) last time...

https://www.writersinkyoto.com/2022/06/jazz-and-the-spoken-word/

 

On the turntable:  Hasil Adkins, "Chicken Walk"

 

Sunday Papers: Ralph Steadman

 

"I think America is where all that was going wrong in the world was being nurtured." 

 

On the turntable:  "Bullitt OST"

Nara Kaido

 

 

The Kyō Kaidō map I recently found kept me busy throughout June, and this morning I would set out on the last of the walks it detailed.  My plan all along had been to do it before the heat of summer truly set in, under the umbrella of overcast skies of rainy season.  And this final walk was in some ways most important.   

When I'd set out 18 months ago to follow Akechi Mitsuhide on his wild ride from Shōryūji Castle to his safe haven beside Lake Biwa, I'd followed a route that was the most direct, or looked the most interesting.  But knowing now that this final route does exist, it would have been his most likely route, had he not been murdered in the thickets en route.  

As my feet fell upon it, I wasn't yet sure what this particular route had been called, and it was to my surprise that I later discovered that it too was known as the Nara Kaidō, the pseudonym of last week's Fushimi Kaidō.  Further research showed that the Nara Kaidō was a collective name of roads emanating toward the eponymous old capital.  I presumed that this particular one had served as an old bypass of sorts, allowing travellers from Osaka to head directly to the Tokaidō, without passing through Kyoto. 

I'd started tired from a physically busy week and it showed in a lack of enthusiasm.   Not long after leaving Yodo Station, I passed an off-road motorbike with two flat tires almost melded to the sidewalk. I felt nearly as flat.  The massive behemoth being built beside JFA racetrack was a forest of cranes, and I felt for the toddler I saw in his mother's arms, young enough that this accompanying din of construction right off his doorstep would have always been part of his short life. 

All in all it was pretty industrial along this first stretch.  The houses that did exist were down little stumps of alleys, but a good many had a faux-brick look with trellising that took me to the antebellum South, the look of New Orleans, of Columbia, South Carolina.  At the head of one of these stumps was a single grave, for warriors killed in the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, though the actual dead were still somewhere beneath the race course across the way.  

Where the houses let up a mountain arose.  This enormous pile of slag was many stories tall, with a bulldozer pushing the grey stones around and around.  The smoke rising from its vertical exhaust pipe, set against the grey of earth and sky, was a scene right out of the English Midlands in the 1970's.   It was a far cry from the many centuries when all of this was rice fields.

The road led me over the tracks to a smaller lane that took me along a berm that towered above the Uji River.  This confirmed my feelings I'd done this walk 15 years before, albeit in the other direction. The scenery certainly hadn't gotten much better in the interval.  I did like the look of the river when it receded to the point that its banks looked like the walls of a canyon, the water running listlessly through it.  Here too was a landscape from another place, a beautifully self-contained little ecosystem.  The riverbed itself must have been 300-400 meters across, but it had been whittled down to this little canyon.  

I passed a group of a dozen men in JR jackets, collectively overseeing the flight of a drone.  It probably caught me on camera as I squeezed through a do not enter barrier that tried to prevent me from crossing a narrow concrete pedestrian bridge that spanned the river.  Every step was accompanied by internal visions of breaking through and falling into the water below.  

I was just across the river from the park where I'd found Nobunaga's gravestone.  What I hadn't seen that day was a series of floodgates, which had high pilings above, much like Tower Bridge in London.  I assume they were Meiji, or perhaps early Showa, to judge from the matching buildings (now a technology museum), and the wrought-iron bridge further along.    

Into Chushojima again, along an attractive tree-lined path following the canals.  Here and there were old Tateba, places that allowed feudal period travellers to take a rest.   This was a far better route than that of last week, and led me straight into the quaint heart of Fushimi town.  I had my obligatory lunch and beer at Yamorido, a perfectly timed break one-third of the way along.    

Getting out of town though proved a horrible slog.  I circled back around to the Kangetsu Bridge, named for one of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's moon viewing parties, then straight arrow to the east, passing near Sanyaso, where that same warlord had built a platform for viewing that same celestial body.   Above me in the hills somewhere were the tombs of two emperors, and the remains of Hideyoshi's Fushimi Momoyama castle. 

These ruins lined the next half hour of my walk, though nothing really remained, but for the odd marker, included one buried to the hilt in concrete.  More prominent were suburban homes, and the JR line.  These escorted me through Rokujizo proper, before biding my leave at a built up shopping street at that station's far side. 

The road narrowed and grew busy, with no sidewalks to protect from the rushing traffic, especially the wing mirrors of trucks which brought the danger of imminent decapitation.  I was given reprieve by the quiet and shaded canal frontage of Daigo-ji.  It was just to the west where Mitsuhide had met his demise.  

The road undulated gently as it moved along the hillside.  I was growing weary now, the humidity high.  I jaywalked before a unnoticed police box, and not long afterward was a faded billboard for a college for police dogs.    I sleepwalked past Zuishin-in and its famous plum garden, the road growing narrower, quieter, before meeting Higechaya Oiwake and the Tokaidō. 

From here Mitsuhide's troops would have continued west along the Tokaidō, rather than cut over the mountains as I had.  Though at that time, the road would have been a mere shadow of the grand trunk road it would become a decade later.   But I've already twice followed routes into Ōtsu, and quite frankly, I'd had enough for the day.  

On the turntable:  The Beat, "Special Beat Service"