Mitsuhide's Wild Ride

 

Shōryūji Castle stands near the confluence of three rivers, which run through a narrow gap in low mountains between Kyoto and Osaka.  For two centuries this castle guarded this gap, but it could do nothing to withstand the encroach of suburbia.  Little surprise, as it fell in the Battle of Yamazaki in less than two hours.  Its defender, Akechi Mitsuhide could do little to hold

back the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who sought Mitsuhide's's head for the murder of Oda Nobunaga less than two weeks before.  In panic, the thirteen-day shogun ran.

As I stand atop the rebuilt ramparts I too think about attackers, though in 2020 this means coronavirus.  I'd wanted to follow Mitsuhide's path when I first read an article about it back in the winter, but then, like most people, I sought refuge rather than flight.  By October the situation in Japan seemed to be calming a little (or the lack of transparency deluded us into believing so), and it felt I could brave the short train ride to do the walk.  

I have a quick look at the exhibit inside the rebuilt castle keep, which in a PC-style sleight of hand veers away from Mitsuhide's historic betrayal and focuses more on his Hosokawa family relatives, whose tutelary temple now houses the world-famous rock garden of Ryozan-ji.  Yet the Hosogawa too aren't above criticism since it was their family feud that started the Onin Wars, abetting in the complete destruction of Kyoto and 150 years of civil war that followed.  Those wars were coming to an end in 1582 when Mitsuhide did his runner.  I'd forgotten though that his wife was a Hosokawa daughter, Gracia, Japan's most beloved Christian convert.  Many times I'd noticed her grave in Kōtō-in, but what I never realized was that her "assisted suicide" on the eve of the Battle of Sekigahara had turned the tide of sentiment in favor of Tokugawa Ieyasu and had perhaps contributed to his clan becoming the Shogunate.     

I am not thinking of any of this as I walk toward Shōryū-ji temple, along a tarmac colored differently than the others that cut through this otherwise nondescript suburb.  And located in suburb, the temple itself is equally non-distinct, but for a worn statue of indiscriminate age.  It is a short walk from here to the the 1600 year-old Igenoyama burial mound, its unknown occupant no doubt a powerful ruler during a time when Japan was just beginning to settle into a sedentary society. 

And suburbs are the ultimate sedentary legacy.  The mound too has been hemmed in, so I descend to follow the rivers northeast.  I am not sure the exact path Mitsuhide took, but I am sure he was spared the bland chain stores bisected by Sunday traffic, spared the towering concrete migratory path of the Shinkansen, spared the factories whose commonality was concrete, sheet metal, and bizarre smells.  We may have shared the view of weekend farmers busy with a late rice harvest.  One massive field has been sheared at the edges, with the middle left to resemble a bright green mohawk.  

Fushimi brings a bit of traditional respite.  I've both visited and guided here many times, and inevitably seem to come across something new.  My path today is deliberate, in order to visit Yamorido, a new craft beer brewery I'd heard about.  I sit safely at a table that is as much outdoors as in, taking a long break over lunch and a flight of beer.  Tokyo has just been added to the infamous Go To Travel campaign, and the street outside feels somewhat busy.  I haven't been out in public at all over the last eight months, and it reminds me of the old days of domestic tourism, with nary a language besides Japanese heard anywhere.

Following the narrow lanes out of town, I am nearly run down by a guy who has obviously not been looking out the windshield of his car, his eyes probably pointed down at his phone.  I give him a burst of Japanese of my own, all blunt verb endings mixed with some colorful English thrown in for good measure. 

I crest the hill that bisects the tombs of the Meiji Emperor and Russo-Japanese hero Nogi Maresuke, then descend into suburb again.  It is dull going for the next hour until arriving at Honkyo-ji.  The temple is of a modern construction, the oldest thing about it being the memorial stone to Mitsuhide beside the main hall.  The famed bamboo thicket behind has been severely shorn, cut back at least a hundred meters from the hall.  A broad earthen avenue remains, for the convenience of the machinery to harvest more in the future.  I see a handful of blue flags waving above a sparse patch of thicket down the hill.  This is Mitsuhide Yabu, the site were Akechi was speared to death, allegedly by bandits in Hideyoshi's employ.  It is truly hard to find much romance of the old here, with the dearth of forest and suburbs ringing all.  There are no bandits today either, but one old farmer working nearby directs me down a narrow path that drops me into the midst of the housing below.   

I walk more north than east now, angling toward a gap in the mountains to my right.  I remember that Daigo-ji's impressive Kami-Daigo temple hall is up there somewhere, and I feel happy that I'd visited before the 2008 fire that damaged a number of its structures.  For the next hour I move through a comparatively bland landscape of suburban sameness.  

My own fire of enthusiasm is beginning to die down.  I'd planned to walk all the way to Mitsuhide's Sakamoto Castle, the intended destination of his flight, but I'm fast losing interest.  I'm meant to veer east again soon, but I have an escape route in Yamashina station not far ahead.  On long walks such as these, I never look at how many kilometers I've done until I finish.  Otherwise, to realize you've done more than expected leads to a psychological fatigue.  But today I check the mileage, and am surprised that I've done 23 km already.  With 12 more to go.  I'd estimated the total walk at 27 kilometers, which I am prepared to do, but I'm not at all prepared to do 35.  Minutes later I'm sitting out front of the station, iced coffee in hand, killing time until the train.

 

It is at that same station that I detrain a week later, the chill in the air a far cry from the muggy heat that accompanied what's written above.  Cars pass too closely and too frequently as I walk the Tokaidō awhile.  Eventually I enter suburb again, accompanied by the feeling that I've seen all this before.  Beyond an expressway-shaded temple, a narrow trail leads me to Kozeki-koe, which I know I passed when doing a parallel journey in reverse 7 years ago.  And rereading that particular post I find the same sentiment I feel today: the highs of the quiet shaded neighborhood around Mii-dera; the annoyance at being denied views of Lake Biwa by the military base, the chain stores, and the towering apartment blocks that colonize the shoreline.  

Isn't until I'm Karasaki that I can truly enjoy the waterfront, beneath the trees that shade narrow patches of park. I get a surprise in the signs warning of vipers.  A trio of men fish from beneath an unusual torii with pitched cross-beams, and families enjoy the fading of light beside the gently lapping waters.  

Akechi is here too, standing bronzed and proud, looking in the direction where he lost his life.  This was all part of his castle, and I spend the next half-hour playing connect the dots with the historical markers that denote it perimeters.  Under the final fading light of the day, I find his grave (or perhaps one of many, as the bodies of warlords tend to be spread around a bit).  It is a nondescript site, just a small grassy mound tucked between houses, a resting place cramped for a man of vision vast.

On the turntable: Jacques Brel, "L'intégrale-- La boite à bonbons : 25ème anniversaire"     

 

Sunday Papers: Sebastiao Salgado

"With each dying person a piece of everyone else dies."


On the turntable: The Groundhogs, "Hog's in Wolf's Clothing"

October 14 Elegy

 

Sunday Papers: Paul Salopek

"Why is impatience signaled by the tapping of a toe: a gesture that telegraphs walking away— hoofing it, laying tracks, leaving, shoving off lickety-split?  Why is movement the default solution of our species? What’s wrong with standing still? Why even ask such questions? Because we are restless. Because we always ask."


On the turntable: The McCrells, "The McCrells Live"

(untitled)

Drinking beer

Alone on the grass

Is the highest barometer of freedom

On the turntable:  Mount Eerie, "Live in Copenhagen"

Sunday Papers: Fisher Unwin

"It's very hard to earn a living by writing.  Writing is a very good staff, but a very bad crutch."
       
       --(Quoted by W. Somerset Maugham in introduction to Liza of Lambeth)


On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Milestones"

The Moon in a Sake Cup

 

My piece on the autumn moon...


https://www.kansaiscene.com/2020/09/the-moon-in-a-sake-cup/


On the turntable:  Jimi Hendrix, "Blue Wild Angel"
  

Sunday Papers: John M. Barry

"Emotion is not the absence of reason; emotion corrupts reason."


On the turntable:   Miles Davis, "Unreachable Station"

Further Down the Spiral

Twentieth Century terrorism was political, therefore, intellectual.  Twenty-first Century terrorism is predominantly religious, and therefore, anti-intellectual.  


On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Portrait"

Sunday Papers: William Wordsworth

“A mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.”

On the turntable: Bee Gees, "Mythology"

The Journey to Mt. Koya

My piece on climbing a pair of pilgrimage paths up Koya-san:

 https://www.kansaiscene.com/2020/09/the-journey-to-koya-san/


On the turntable:  "Palermo Shooting OST"

Sunday Papers: Christopher Rush

"[T]he most interesting people I'd ever met were those who had never travelled but had stayed in one place, and by coming to understand it had come to understand the universe; [...] this was because travel narrows the mind and is for those who constantly require external stimuli, lacking sufficient inner resources of their own. Travel, in a word, is for people who have nothing better to do."


On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Bluing"
 

Semi concious

A cicada lays on its back, legs wriggling in the air.  There seem to be a lot of dead semi today. These little bodies are the symptoms of the mortality of summer.

 

One has affixed itself to my front door.  I'll leave it there for awhile, not only as a lesson in impermanence, but as a reminder of how to live life:  short, but screaming loudly to the fullest.


On the turntable:  Tenor Conclave,  "Four Tenor Saxes"

Sunday Papers: Steve Dublanica

 

"Deep in my bones I’ve been reminded, over and over again, that I am a created thing –  that I didn’t will  myself into existence. In seminary, I was taught nothing, no person, planet, black hole or atom can explain why it exists in and of itself. Everything in the universe is contingent or depends on something else for being here and, if you wind back the clock and examine the great chain of causality, you’ll eventually arrive at a point where there must have been a first cause – that which created something out of nothing. Since that “prime mover” has no cause it must simply exist in and of itself – uncreated and beyond time – and makes everything that is real, well, real. That “something” is what every major religion, despite all their differences, calls God."

 
On the turntable:  The Misfits, "Box Set"

 

Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand

The universe is a construct invented to define the infinite. Man’s mind can’t grasp the idea that there is true infinity. It’s too intimidating.  It also reflects the whole Brahman Ishvara split in ancient vedantic philosophy.  

 On the turntable:  The Muggs, "The Muggs,"

Sunday Papers: Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

"A little wind cleans the eyes."


On the turntable:  The Who, "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970"

Over Naccho, Grande

Cheers to Wes for writing up our recent expedition up Mount Naccho.   

The link is here.


On the turntable:  Mogwai, "Kicking a Dead Pig"

Feet in the Clouds...

From the air, the landscape takes on very different characteristics than on the ground.  The walker orients himself to objects man-made, which strike an odd balance between the comfort of a familiar human scale, and a dehumanizing disregard for his presence.  But from a great height, one encounters a landscape that goes well beyond the chauvinism of time.  The grandeur below was formed over generations, over centuries, over aeons.  Man's presence in it is incidental.  I think of the great forest cover of Cambodia, of the dusty angles of India, of the battle-pocked cones and grids of Laos.  But nowhere on earth I believe has the grandeur of Siberia.  All is tabula rasa, the twisting rivers bringing life onto the slate.  Canyons are as grand as that of Arizona, the mountains are areoli that rise from the tie-dyed steppe.


On the turntable: Drive-By Truckers, "The Unraveling"

Sunday Papers: Peter Fleming

"To read a propagandist, a man with vested intellectual interests, is as dull as dining with a vegetarian."


On the turntable: "Happy Songs for Happy People"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #18

SIVANANDA ASHRAM, KERALA INDIA, 2007

I've always found it difficult to write when immersed in something.  Meditation, martial arts, yoga, these practices require full participation.  One can only write from the role of observer, and in full immersion, this separation is impossible. (On the other hand, being a foreigner in Japan distances you, so it is easy to report and retain).  So the notes from my time in the ashram are haphazard and scattered: 

-Hearing the roar of lions at night and during savasana, coming from across the lake. 

-The sound of someone singing in the shower.   

-The dhobi drying laundry in the sun.  

-Sitting in lectures, the same as it was one thousand years ago.  

-The call of the Asian Koel, what I refer to as the Ali G bird: "For real, for real, for real."

-Sadhu taking photographs.

-Hindu devotional music blaring from the coconut forest, and from elsewhere, the call of a muezzin cuts through. 

-Om graffiti

-Feral dogs hardly recognizable as dogs 

-God as flower behind ear; smudge on forehead, ash symbolic of humility, draws power

-Man made god in his own image. 

-Why can't man answer the simple question, "Who am I?"

-Wizard of Oz as a sacred text.

-iPod Mothersbaugh techno in Singapore airport at 6 a.m.  Upgraded to Business class, and while in my broad seat, read that there are no distinctions between human.


On the turntable, "Meat Loaf, "Bat out of Hell"

Sunday Papers: Alan Booth

"People speak of a Protestant Work Ethic, but there is a Protestant Walk Ethic too, and it is every bit as perverse."


 
On the turntable:  Miles Davis/John Coltrane, "Best of Miles Davis & John Coltrane 1955-1961"
 

(untitled)

Sitting in the mountains,

Giving my life away

With every exhale.

***

Shidare-zakura laden with omikuji,

Sway in the the spring wind,

Like bridal trains.

***

Cold wind rattles the 

Bamboo like skeletons;

Whole sections twisted and fallen.

On the turntable:  Otis Span with Muddy Waters,"Live the Life"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #17

-Interesting that we engage the world as infants, strictly orally, and later, create the world through an another oral process, with words.  

-Hippies still haven’t figured out that you cannot stop war with folk music.  

-US feminists trying to combat men by acting like men themselves.  Non-American feminists utilize their femininity to develop a third possibly, a more holistic one.  

-Rereading The Inland Sea.  Richie brings the muse back to me, his every sentence perfect. 

-The 20th century did a number on the world.  The 21st seems insistent on finishing the job. 

-The house has a “Warning Police Dog" sign written in English but judging from the ferocious look of the dogs (there are two) and quite frankly from the man himself, I’d take a fair guess that he’s on the other side of the law.  

-On protest:  I don’t know why many protests begin in the autumn.  They inevitably wind up defeated by something far stronger than any government, winter.  Protest and politics are pursuits of the leisure class, and as such, are not sustainable as that class doesn’t have the fortitude.


On the turntable:  Magic Sam, "Chicago Folk Festival"

Sunday Papers: Wade Davis

"The measure of wealth in a civilized nation is not the currency accumulated by the lucky few, but rather the strength and resonance of social relations and the bonds of reciprocity that connect all people in common purpose."

 
On the turntable:  Mahala Rai Banda, "Ghetto Blasters"

(untitled)

I used to expect a lot of others--

Hoping for art,

Then for purity,

For truth.

Lately I'll settle for...

(unfinished)

On the turntable:  Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells III"

Sunday Papers: Roger Deakin

"I keep uncovering more and more evidence for a Murphy's Law of publishing: that if a book is truly wonderful, it is certain to be out of print."
   --Notes From Walnut Tree Farm 


On the turntable:  Mile Davis, "Bag's Groove"

Toying with Tanka

Below the waterfall

A still pool.

Flycatchers drinking

Breaking the reflection

Of a granite teapot lid.

***

Dumped ashes from fireplaces

I leave my footprint

In their softness

Legs of stone Fudō

Blackened by pilgrim's pyres.

***

Monolithic tomb--

Frost veiled trees 

In the blue haze of morning.

Percussive tapping of rain

Counts down the old year.

***

Winter twilight --

Barely nodding

Some snow drops.

Dried straw burns black

To spite its falling.

On the turntable:  Marillion, "Misplaced Childhood"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #16

Notes from a Zen film retreat at Upaya Zen Center, April 2010


MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES

Narration comes in where a viewer might grow bored.  The everyday is intensified in a way that takes the eye a moment to adjust. The bows of ships resemble shells and molluscs. The eye first goes to large objects, then we note as figures enter, dwarfed against the ships, or strip mines, or warehouses.  It is like looking at a Chinese landscape painting.  And we too are dwarfed, dehumanized.  No one person is sure of the scale of the system that drives all this.  There is beauty in the shots of tires and freeways, the eye finding relief in the curves, after all the shots of sharp metallic edges.  

Li Po, Tu Fu, and a hundred other poets, whole histories, folklores, cultures gone.  They defined China, and the places that defined them are soon to be gone.

The rhythm of the hands of the old women in the factories.  There is memory in those hands.



On the turntable:  Charley Parker & Miles Davis, "Historical Session"

Sunday Papers: Woody Allen

“God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.”

On the turntable:  Mops, "Rock'n'Roll"

(untitled)

A problem with my recent writing is 
That I’m trying to hit a home run every time.  
They mostly wind up in the cheap seats.  
Why not try for the odd grounder, 
The sacrifice bunt?
I see the next pitch coming--
High and outside.



On the turntable:  Montrose, "At The Record Plant"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #15

Notes from a lecture on Shugendo given by Quentin Durning, May 2009


-Mountains themselves were historically kami.  The Yayoi period  (300BCE - 300CE) created an agricultural base from which shrines rose gradually.

-Mountain deities were (are) female.

-Water brings energy from the mountain; the water god flows to fed the paddies.

-Kofun burial mounds are themselves mountains.  "Going to the mountain" a euphemism on death.  

-From 6th century, one got power from the mountains, an exercise with Taoist roots. Japanese Buddhism in contrast is still, grounded.    

-With the coming of Buddhism to Japan, Shinto gods were combined with Bodhisattvas.

The Heian period saw the entry of mandalas that Kukai and Saicho introduced from China.  Mandalas themselves are mountains.  

-In early history, people went alone to caves, rivers, etc.


On the turntable:  Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins, "Neck and Neck"

Sunday Papers: Brady Fotheringham

"Tourism has opened up avenues of understanding which could yet save us from man's worst obduracies.  But in large numbers tourists have a depraving effect on those who serve them."  
      --On the Trail of Marco Polo: Along the Silk Road by Bicycle


On the turntable: Moby, "Last Night"
 

(untitled)

Deep in the mountains,

A wetsuit

Hangs on a clothesline.

***

Rain swollen Kamogawa

Refreshes the faces

Of stone turtles

***

Looking Toward Ogasawara,
Past surfers on high Izu swells.

People dying out there.

***

Three punk hipsters

Stand in Triangle Park

Waiting for the light to change.  

On the turntable:  The Misfits,  "Collection 2"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #14

Notes from a lecture on Zen


-"Oz didn't give nothin' to the Zen man..."

-Anything is a koan if taken all the way.

-Koan was originally someone's doubt.  When resolved, awakening occurs.  

-Koan 'doubt' vs. Catholic 'doubt.'

-Shōkoku-ji owns Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji.

-"Without self, boredom is impossible."  - Jeff Shore


On the turntable:  Cannonbal Adderley, "Somethin' Else"

(untitled)

On a train at dusk,
Ride through a snowy landscape;
various hues of grey and white.

***

Her lips redder than my wine,
And much more sweet.

***

Dry Farfalle;
Like butterflies 
In a child's collection.

***

At the ancient shrine,
Waiting in line to draw sacred water;
A beautiful girl texts on her cell.

***

Yellow flowers burst from hillsides
Like remnants of 
Ancient splashes of lava. 

  

On the turntable:  Micheal Hedges, "The Best of Micheal Hedges"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #13

 -Moving rocks around or raking the forest;  what in the west is Dante’s hell or Sisyphean toil is simply called shugyō (training) in Zen.

-A child playing in the snow will not realize he's cold or hungry or tired. Unless called home, he’ll play forever.  Adults use the intellect to feel discomfort.

-Goth Obasan: fishnets, leopard skin sleeveless T-shirt, shades, David Sylvain hair, safety pins

-Moody melodic music which serves as BGM for the film playing before our eyes

-Old Portuguese/Japanese dictionary has “shizen” as “spontaneously” or “without external agency”

-I hate flying as a rule, and those long trans-Pacific marathons fray my nerves for the duration.  That said, it was a very smooth crossing, uneventful except for the fact that I survived.

-A certain regatta look to an apartment block covered with drying clothes.  Unshakable optimism on such a lousy grey day.

-Had a good laugh on the way to Osaka.  And you need laughs if you have to go to Osaka. 

 -Mist on the rivers, mists between hills. A slow train loads up, ready to finish the day late, far off in Tokyo. In village after village, houses stand dark. Despite the beginnings of dusk, there’s not a light to be seen.  Where are all the people?
 
-On the way to her hometown of Hiroshima, I listen to my (ex-)wife’s accent get broader and thicker.


On the turntable:  John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis, "The Hot Spot"

Sunday Papers: Jean-Luc Godard

"The United States imagines no other war besides a civil war.  In each war it is always fighting against itself and against those faults of its own that the enemy nation embodies.  It calls war a moral crisis. When it was English, it fought against the English; as soon as they became American,  Americans fought among themselves; as soon as it became sufficiently Germanized in its mores and culture, it tilted at the Germans."                           


On the turntable:  Stan Getz and Lionel Hampton,  "Jazz Roads"

(untitled)

A cheating duck 

Sits on a  stone

Beneath the river.

On the turntable:  Voodoo Child, "Baby Monkey"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #12

On a return to Yonago, 2007

The eyes are funny things.  On the ride up to Yonago for the first time in 15 months.  Passing through a landscape that you once found enchanting.  But as is also the case with a lover, the enchantment becomes contentment, then mundane.  Those lines and curves that once held you are replaced by blemishes...

..but today the magic was back.  Enthralled by it all once again, finding again those once cherished sweet spots.  Delighting in the new. 

Or maybe it was simply the fine weather.  


On the turntable:  Mutabaruka, "The Ultimate Collection"
 

Sunday Papers: Renae Lucas-Hall

"Japan seems a lot like what America would be like if Rock 'n' Roll had never happened."

On the turntable:  Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells"

Tracking the Kamo III

I left a little later than I'd hoped, close to 8 am.  It was a summer's day, but had the cool of hours earlier. I regretted not getting an quicker start, so that I could see the old-timers going through their funny exercises.  There were still a few around, but mainly it was people biking or walking to work. Sadly I didn't see any of the colony of nutria which used to live around here.  While admittedly a foreign species to Japan, their antics always brought people to a standstill, to watch their antics.  I presume they've been captured, as I hadn't seen them in a few years.

I crossed the stone turtles at Demachiyanagi, and returned to the Kamogawa's western edge.  The water still flowed quickly over some of the more deeply sunk flagstones of the riverbed, despite no rain since I left off two days before.   Atop the flattened reeds here stood a grey heron, which looked as always like it could really use a massage for its hunched shoulders.  A small pair of underpants lay limply on the stone steps.  A child must've enjoyed the water's coolness over the weekend.

 The fast flow of the water had done a number on the concrete stonework that brought definition to the falls.  After the big storm of 2013, many of these stones had been pushed out of place.  They'd been repaired, and again after another strong storm a few years later.  But as strong storms are getting more and more frequent from year to year, I'm not sure the city even made an effort anymore.  So the stone work continued to look like a mouthful of bad teeth. 

I passed by University Hospital.  People were sitting out on the benches in the wide patch of grass there, obvious patients due to their gowns.  I was always amused to see the ones who smoked.  This little patch of ground never failed to remind me of Mizoguchi Kenji, for a documentary on the director used this exact location during the closing scenes, as it was here that he finished his life.   

On the opposite bank was the ultimate picnic spot.  There were benches and wide patches of grass, and toilets nearby at the home center store across the road above.  Not to mention the shops of Demachiyanagi were just a few minutes north, with ample places to resupply.  Sakura trees lined both banks, creating in spring a ribbon of pink.  It made for a lovely bicycle ride, party people reveling everywhere.  

I saw an older man on one of the wooden decks going through what looks to be yoga poses.  It might have been the guy I saw tanning up north a couple of days ago. Another old man used his deck as an exercise bench, and had even brought his own dumbbells. 

Ahead on the path, I spied a turtle moving as fast as I'd ever seen a turtle move.   It begins to make its way down the embankment, but losing balance, begins to tumble.   Tucking its head and limbs into its shell, the turtle literally cartwheeled down the stone slope.  It must have been both terrifying and a little exhilarating.  

I've always liked the building at the southwest corner of Marutamachi bridge (and the little observation platforms jutting from the bridge's center).  Where the attractive brick building now stood was once the site of Nyokōba, a school for girls founded in 1872, upon the grounds of the former Kawaramachi villa of the Kujō family.   The school specialized in English and handicrafts, whose purpose was a means of reforming geisha and prostitutes, trapped into these roles during the stringent social dictates of the out-going feudal period.  Most students came from the lowest ranks of Japanese society, and those unable to afford their schooling were allowed to sell the wares that they had learned to make there. While the school was long gone, I appreciated that the current building there kept the look of the period.  

But traces of the impovershed remained. Beneath a pair of willow trees, a homeless man had set up house, his structure defined by tarps and overlapping umbrellas. There used to be a lot more homeless under the bridges here, living in quite elaborate DIY structures, soundly assembled from found bits of plywood.  They always looked clean and were unobtrusive, unlike the socially abandoned casualties seen in Western cities. These underbridge structures disappeared, around the time of the floods of 2013.   As a dramatic counterpoint, there were a number of riverfront luxury flats near here, as well as a five-star international hotel.  A stream ran in front of the latter, lined with bushes and hydrangea plants.   This was one of the best places in the city to see fireflies, but this late into June they were gone.   

I always hated riding my bicycle over the uneven cobblestones here.  We had reached the first of the yuka restaurants, that straddled the stream from here all the way to Gojo-dōri.  From May to September, al fresco dining could be had over the waters flowing below, taking the edge of the heavy heat of a Kyoto summer. I was always amazed at the effort that must go into putting these things up.  If visiting the city during the summer, there was nowhere else better to eat. 

Locals too obvious agreed, for centuries-old painting showed that this had always been a popular amusement spot in summer.  And not only in summer.  The area around Sanjo-bridge was the western terminus of both the Tokaidō and Nakasendō post roads, and as such it would have been a place to relax or supply, depending on your direction. (Here we can still see the stone statues of Yaji-san & Kita-san, the antiheroes of the periods best known 'road novel,' Hizakurige, translated into English as On Shank's Mare.)   The area still had a similar flavor, densely packed with lodging, shopping, and food.  (Scratch deeper to find varying degrees of gambling and prostitution.). As such, it made for an easy place to hide, especially for the various political samurai groups during the final days of the Shogunate.  Sanjō Bridge itself bears the scars of one battle, sword marks cut into one post along the south rail after the famous Ikedaya Incident of 1864.

I passed below the Pontochô Kaburenjô, founded in 1872 to host the Kamogawa Odori geisha dances held each May.  Friends and couples line the banks from here to Shijo, usually from sunset until well into he night.  Bands set up on weekends, making it one of the more lively spots for the large number of students from Kyoto's 43 universities.     

Shijō Bridge.  Across the water was the Minamiza kabuki theater, built across from the statue of that art's founder, Izumo no Okuni.  One of seven kabuki theaters allowed to perform during the repressive Edo period, Minamiza was most active during December's kaomise, when some of the top kabuki performers assembled for dozens of performances.  Thirty meters north was another, less ornate building bearing the characters for Kita-za, once another centerpiece for kabuki until it stopped hosting performances in 1893.  Today it was host to an number of restaurants and bars.      

The small canal that cooled the riverfront yuka flowed into the river proper at Gojō bridge.  Here too ended my walking path.  Cafe Kano was here, a rarity in that it both opens early and does a good (but basic) Western breakfast set.  The owner isn't particularly warm, but it was a cozy, sunny place to meet friends early.   This part of the river was popular too with fishermen, who stood out in the water with their waders and ridiculously long poles.

I crossed over to the east side, and continued along that bank for a while. The city seemed to receded some, as the walls grew higher and hid what stood above.  The next bridge along was called Shomen-bashi.  Nintendo's original headquarters was just a few buildings to the west.  I always used to find it puzzling that Kyoto's Rokujō-dōri was conspicuously absent, until I later learned that the riverbed there had served as the city's execution grounds during the feudal period, which explained the massive cemetery along the mountainside above.  Modern Kyoto downplays this history, but there still stood a commemorative stone to the 52 Christians martyred here. 

I returned to the west bank at Shichijō, crossing the grand Shichijō Bridge, not terribly old but one of the river's more attractive.  Things grew industrial for awhile, not least of which were the trio of bridges which ushered the three rail lines out of town.    It grew steadily worse from there, and it wasn't too long before the motorways came in, criss-crossing and criss-crossing and criss-crossing again.  There weren't too many people down this way, except for the occasional unwise jogger.  But at least there was a good bicycle path.  

The heat was beginning to come up. I decided to walk the parallel track on the berm above me, for at least there were some patches of cooling shade, with things below to look at, albeit scenes of small industry.  But up here was where all the people were.  One pair of old-timers walked along the far bank, one of them sensibly wearing a conical hat. 

The concrete finally left me alone, at least underfoot.  I moved along grass and earth, through an area that appeared popular with local teens, obvious from the fire pits and remnants of parties. Perhaps this was connected with the skate park that lay unseen just above me, which I'd passed on a previous walk.  Above, the highways still criss-crossed, but at least they brought shade.  

At the other end of the demographic was a gateball park here, and even on a warm day, there were at least three-dozen people out playing.  A closer look revealed it to be a temporary installation, to judge from a few grass-cutters leaning against the slope.  

In my rubberneacking, I hadn't noticed that I'd walked myself out onto a peninsula.  It would be a long backtrack to a bridge, but a look ahead showed that the river was narrow and running quiet.  A pair of cranes stood high above the water, inferring it wasn't particularly deep.  I pushed through the weeds, in the process scaring off both cranes and a heron.  Shoes and all, it was only takes five steps to cross.  The water was cooling, but I didn't like the smell.     

The track on this side continued to be dirt, but there was definitely a 'wrong side of the tracks' feel to it all.  On the opposite bank was a nice, well-tended walking path, no doubt to the enjoyment of the suburban houses beyond.  They had colonized an area once cultural rich, with Jonangu Shrine, the site of the old Toba Palace, and the place where the first shots were fired to begin the brief Boshin War that brought down the Tokugawa Shogunate.

The suburbs eventually claimed all, and I found myself walking along a track that looked more or less unused.  This too was a peninsula, which grew wilder and wilder the further I went.  It eventually gave way completely to a patch of low vegetation.  It wasn't too dense and I could push my way through.  I knew from the map that there was a road up to my right, but it ran through a construction site and I wasn't sure if I would be allowed passage.  Better to keep off the radar.  

Across the river to the east I saw three large monoliths.  These long rectangular stones were known as the Toba Ishi, brought upstream as part of repairwork on Nijō-jo, which had been damaged during the Omi-Wakasa Earthquake of 1662.  Somehow the stones went overboard here,where they remained until found centuries later during dredging of the river.

I finally came to the end of the peninsula, a world of rocks and mud.  Pronged footprints showed the presence of water fowl, who dined on the nutrients in the sediment.  All this would be underwater during the rains.  But the water today was relatively low, so I crossed again.  It was broader here, and running fast, forcing me to concentrate on my footing as I go.  The water grasped at my ankles, untying the laces of my shoes.  

There was a man parked down here. the lens on his camera probably more expensive than his car.  Below me, this final peninsula opened out wide enough to hold a number of rugby and soccer pitches. I was now walking equidistant to the Kamo and Katsura rivers. A markerstone noted that I would have to walk six more kilometers to reach the end of the latter.  I'd walked that far bank before, all the way to Osaka, mimicking the boat journey taken by Kyoto's old aristocrats as they made their way toward the Kumano shrines.  Like them, I had begun my own pilgrimage there from Kyoto proper.   Then as now, I was impressed with the large vegetable gardens along the banks, bursting with cabbage and beans, corn and onions.  I wondered how the farmers got the right to farm here.  In the past, I marvelled too at the sturdy-looking homeless camps, but didn't see any today.   

My maps had shown a park at the confluence, but I was unable to reach it, as the weeds grew too dense, and I could proceed to more.  But I could see from the GPS that I was mere meters away.  Here the Kamogawa changed its name, once married to the Katsuragawa.  It would continue to flow to meet the Uji river, then again changing its identity to the grand Yodogawa, which ultimately would pass through Osaka and meet the sea.   The Taoists, and many other philosophers after them, give ample reason why water is one of the most powerful forces there is.  Yet I had one power that water does not have.  That was the ability to turn and head back upstream.


On the turntable:  Mark Knopfler, "The Ragpicker's Dream'