Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan (14 page)

I wasn’t anywhere near the sea, so I couldn’t even use that as a rough guide. I assumed I wanted to go north, but that was just because I always hold maps so that my destination is at the top and north is always “up.” I couldn’t find a single road sign that read
north
, but eventually it dawned on me that if I found a road going
south
and then went the opposite direction, I would in fact be going
north
. (It takes me a while to catch on to such things.) Three different roads headed in a vague sort of “not-south” direction. I chose one at random and began walking.

I had just turned a corner into the woods when I heard the sound of a vehicle behind me. Desperate for advice, I ran back to Hell’s Intersection, my backpack hallumphing on my shoulders like a Bedouin astride a camel, and I arrived just in time to see a truck fly by on a parallel road. I waved my thumb weakly in the air, much like a man on a desert island watching an airplane disappear over the horizon. It was no use. The moment had passed. Out of breath and disheartened, I let my backpack slip onto the ground.

Time passed. The sun inched its way up the sky. Waves of heat and humidity began to emanate from the asphalt. A bee appeared and tormented me a while, but eventually it too got bored and flitted off, presumably in search of shade. I began to ooze sweat. I felt a trickle down my back, then another. Time stopped. Not a single car appeared. I began to make lists of places I’d rather be, starting with
the Black Hole of Calcutta and then eventually ticking off the inventory in descending grades until I got to a Japanese high-school English class. Anywhere but here.

I was sitting on my backpack, contemplating my shoelaces, when I heard a vehicle. Scrambling to my feet, I thrust my thumb out wildly in all directions, unsure from which road the car would appear. The noise grew louder and louder, like the pitch of a mosquito, and suddenly a sleek blue car whipped past me on the east-west axis. “Wait!” I cried.

At the last possible moment, the driver saw me. He slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop. He then backed up, spun his vehicle around, and roared up beside me. He was wearing a mask.

I had always feared this: hitchhiking alone in a strange land and having a masked man pull up. Fortunately, this being Japan and not, say, Mexico, he wasn’t a bandito with a handkerchief over his face. He was simply a man who happened to be wearing a white surgical mask. This is what people in Japan wear when they have a cold, to avoid giving it to others. Or when they fear
catching
a cold from others. Or when they
may
be coming down with a cold and are afraid both of giving it to others
and
of making it worse. Why this man was wearing a mask while alone inside his own car with the windows up, I couldn’t say.

“I’m so sorry,” was how he greeted me.

I found this reassuring. Bandits rarely apologize before they rob you.

“Please get in,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

He didn’t remove his mask as we spoke, and it gave me the uncomfortable feeling that I had interrupted a surgeon on his way to some emergency operation. I imagined little Timmy lying on an operating table in dire need of a pancreas while his doctor was talking to me, but what the hell. It was a ride. I climbed in.

He handed me a business card. “I am Mr. Yamagawa. I am the mayor of Ipponmatsu Town. I am very sorry.”

Cool. A mayor. I asked him if I was on the right road to Uwajima City and he shook his head. This didn’t surprise me in the least. I am the world’s worst scout. Had I been leading the pioneers in
Westward Ho!
we’d still be circling somewhere around Pittsburgh. I have gotten lost in elevators. You could almost use me as a “negative-example”
navigator; just watch where I go and then chart a course along the exact opposite direction and you’d probably do just fine. How I ever became a travel writer is beyond me.

“Do not worry,” said Mr. Yamagawa. “I will take you to Uwajima City. Don’t you have a car? You should have a car. Please call my office tomorrow and we will arrange a vehicle for you.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. After all, a car is a car, but in the end my better nature wouldn’t allow me to accept the offer. That, and the fact that I don’t have a Japanese driver’s licence.

“Would you like something cold to drink?” He drove over a hill to a row of roadside vending machines and, with a quick “Please wait here,” jumped out and ran across the highway, leaving me—a complete stranger—alone in his car with the keys in the ignition and the motor running. Such trust, such naiveté. I briefly considered a number of pranks I could play, but decided against them in the interest of international harmony. He returned a few minutes later with two cans of Kirin beer and a bag of peanuts. “Please, please,” he said. “I am very sorry.”

We were soon back on the coast, riding high above the ocean under a polished blue sky. Fishing villages were cluttered in the coves below us like jumbled driftwood washed in above the high-tide mark. Seawalls jutted out protectively. Fishing boats, tethered to docks, rose and fell on the swell of waves. There were even a few cherry trees, encircled by bands of petals that had fallen around them. But it was nowhere as impressive as the sakura I had travelled through in Miyazaki.

Mr. Yamagawa was very accommodating. “You want to see sakura? That is not a problem. We have a scenic route we call the Cherry Blossom Road. I’ll take you through it.” He turned onto a side road and the car climbed through forests, up to a ridge of mountain, and then—suddenly—cherry blossoms burst upon us on either side, the petals scattering across the windshield. It was like driving through a tunnel of flowers. Above us, the overhang met in an honour guard of spring, a triumphal arch in white and pink.

“I’m going to travel with the sakura all the way to Hokkaido,” I said.

He laughed. “You want to leave Ipponmatsu Town?”

“I’ve never been to Ipponmatsu Town. I’m following the cherry blossoms.”

“But what about soccer?”

“Soccer?”

“Yes, soccer. How do you like Japanese-style soccer? Is it different from England?”

He and I seemed to be reading from different scripts. “Well,” I said, “I don’t really care for soccer. It’s too slow. I prefer ice hockey. And sumo. If you could just combine the two it would be great: Sumo on skates. I’d pay good money to see that.”

“Ha!” he slapped his dashboard from the sheer mirth of it. “You don’t like soccer. English humour. Very funny.”

“I’m not English.”

“Oh, you are Brazilian then? How do you like Japanese soccer?”

I was completely lost at this point. First he wanted to give me a car, now he wanted to discuss Brazilian soccer techniques.

He handed me a small pad and pulled down his mask for the first time. “Do you think,” he said with sudden humility “I mean, do you mind? Would you sign your autograph? For my son. His name is Kentaro. He loves the Grampus Eight.”

“Grampus Eight?”

“We are very honoured that the Japan Soccer League has chosen our town for its spring training. We welcome the players. Especially the foreign players, such as yourself.” He glanced down at the note pad. “Kentaro,” he said. “My son’s name is Kentaro.”

We came out of the flowers just then, in a kind of reverse-epiphany. I stared down at the pad. I was faced with a moral dilemma. Should I sign some illegible scrawl and let Mr. Yamagawa ascribe it to whichever imported soccer player he had mistaken me for, or should I confess my true (non) identity? Should I let the Mayor of Ipponmatsu continue to believe he was sharing his car with a celebrity, or should I bare my soul and admit that I had gained a two-hour ride to Uwajima, with beverages and a scenic side trip included, all under false pretenses?

I cleared my throat. “Before I sign this, I should tell you something. I’m not exactly a soccer player.”

“You are one of the coaches?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh. You are a manager then? Or a trainer?”

“No. I’m a hitchhiker.”

It was his turn to be confused. “A hitchhiker?”

“I’ve come from Cape Sata and I’m going to Cape Sōya. I’ve never played organized soccer in my life, I’ve never been to your town, and I don’t know who the Grampus Eight are. But I’m sure they are a fine team and I am very happy for you.”

“I see.”

A horrible silence descended. I wished I was back at the Lost Intersection of Shikoku. A desert island, my dentist’s, Pittsburgh—anything would have been better than this.

“Do you still want me to sign your notebook?”

“No,” he said. “That won’t be necessary.” And for a moment I thought he was going to ask for his beer back.

The ride into Uwajima was the longest of my life. Mr. Yamagawa dropped me off at the train station, which I took as a hint of sorts, and my profuse thank-yous and apologies didn’t seem to ease what was clearly a betrayal of sorts.

“Good luck,” he said. “Please come to my town any time.” But I don’t think he really meant it.

The mystery remains. Who was I supposed to have been? Was there actually someone out there as stubby and out-of-shape as I, making a living at soccer? Or is it just that we Westerners all look the same? Honestly, my physique is about as athletic as Yogi the Bear’s. Although I prefer to think of myself as “big-boned,” especially around the waist, the Japanese have no compunction about calling me fat. “My, you sure are fat, aren’t you!” They come right out and say this to me, just like that. Once, when I was attempting to charm a hostess in a night club, she smiled at me during a lull in the conversation and said, seductively, “How did you ever get so fat?” It kind of spoiled the mood.

If nothing else, that ride to Uwajima was the first and will probably be the only time in my life that I have been mistaken for a professional athlete. I just wish a beautiful woman and not a middle-aged mayor had made the mistake. Had a single female asked for my autograph, I would have signed it with a flourish and perhaps even thrown in some celebrity soccer anecdotes as well. Life can be so cruel.

4

T
HE CREATION MYTH
of Shintoism begins not with an apple, shamed nudity, and original sin. It begins with the drunken, fumbling incest of the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami, a pair of siblings who brought the first humans into existence not from clay and rib bone, but in the good old-fashioned way: they got drunk and jumped in the sack. From this came several thousand children, most of whom became gods as well; but a select few became Japanese.

As a folk religion, Shinto has a lusty enough history, replete with sex shrines, fertility rites, naked festivals, and rituals suspiciously similar to orgies. Most of that has since been cleaned up, alas, and only a few sex shrines remain. I choose the term carefully. To call them “fertility shrines” is too limiting; these shrines encompass all aspects of couplings, both human and supernatural. The sex shrines that have managed to survive various waves of puritanism in Japanese history have lost much of their original sensuality and are now treated more as titillating curiosities than as living religious sites. But they are not abandoned. Nothing historical is ever completely discarded in Japan, it is just added onto, like another layer of papier-mâché.

At Taga Shrine in Uwajima, the main object of veneration—or envy, as the case may be—is an enormous battering ram of a phallus. This massive, veined wooden penis is more than mere wishful thinking on the part of the Japanese; it is a bona fide cultural icon. As in, “Hey, get a load of that cultural icon.”

Demure Japanese women, dressed in Western fashions and carrying Chanel bags, come to Taga Shrine to pray before the phallus. They pray for easy childbirth and good health, and it isn’t in the least
bit incongruous. Japan has a way of transcending incongruities. This easy eclecticism is one of the country’s greatest strengths.

The only disturbing part of this ritual (if you happen to be male) is when these same demure women fold up the slips of paper their fortunes are printed on and then wedge them into the wood-grain of the phallus. The phallus has dozens of these paper slips jammed into it like acupuncture needles, some of them in areas so sensitive that it causes me to double over in sympathetic pain even now.

Taga Shrine is not lurid, it’s rather subdued. Granted, the lily-pad ponds were decorated with stone penises, but tastefully. The land the shrine is built upon was first consecrated seventeen hundred years ago. And although none of the original structures have survived, the present shrine is still so old its origins have been lost. In fact, Taga is referred to as both a Shinto shrine
and
a Buddhist temple, syncretic not by design but through the blurring of borders. Like the union of man and woman, the point of contact between Buddhism and Shinto is a bit messy and you can’t really tell what belongs to whom.

The mythology traces it back to Izanami, the archetypal goddess who died giving birth to fire. Transformed by death into a Goddess of Destruction, she roared out, “I shall kill a thousand lives a day.” To this, the God of Life replied, “If you must. But know this: I will give birth to one thousand five hundred lives a day, and I will win.”

They call Taga “The Shrine of One Thousand Five Hundred Lives.” It rejuvenates worshippers, it cures illnesses, it helps married women get pregnant and pregnant women give birth. They come to pray at the stalk of life: the penis, from which life is transferred from man to woman to world. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so strange.

Sex is religion, philosophy, morals, science, life
. This is the creed of Taga Shrine, and it was here that the first Taga priest was spiritually awakened to the principal of opposites in union. And thus began his quest: to seek and find and gather symbols of this vital life principle.

Which brings us to the museum. The museum, beside the understated calm of Taga Shrine, is a three-storey box of a building, circa 1974: Disco Architecture. Appropriately enough, it is dedicated to sex.

I’m not sure what I expected. Soft lights, red wallpaper, sitar music, wafting incense, maybe an instructional diagram or two. Who knows, I thought, as I paid the exorbitant entrance fee (I have long
since passed the point of caring about costs in Japan; I just open my wallet and let them loot it of whatever arbitrary amount they decide upon), I might even pick up a few pointers.