Japanese Gothic Tales (3 page)

2

Continuing his walk, he saw a hillside kiln climbing higher than the tops of the houses. He passed an unidentified shrine, an abandoned graveyard, camellia blossoms falling one after another, huge leeches in the rice paddies. Here on the Shonan coast, in the small bays tucked into the meandering mountain range, white sails rode upon the waves of the floating world. For a brief moment, so long as the sea still harbored no thoughts of rushing up the valleys and flooding the land, the villagers turned their backs to the water and worked their fields in twos and threes. The young woman throwing her shuttle and the older woman stepping on the pedal of her loom also faced the mountains, unafraid of the menacing ocean.

These seven or eight homes that were clustered around the two- story house on the corner formed the center of the village. Farther up the valley the houses became scattered; and a few hundred yards closer to the ocean they disappeared altogether. Crowded together on both sides of the crooked lane, these homes, plus another seven or eight that were spaced farther apart, formed a neighborhood.

The wanderer came to a field of rape blossoms, where the sunlight was dazzling. The green of the cliff to his left and the blue-green mountain across the valley were the only suggestions that the field of pure yellow did not extend forever. Even the small stream, flowing at the wanderer's feet, did little to cut the color's brilliance.

To his dazzled eyes, it was as if the two weavers at their looms had been vaguely copied onto a piece of white paper, and that the remaining space around them had been painted yellow. The contrast between the rape blossoms and the colors of the two women—their kimonos, their scarves, even the pieces of fabric they were weaving— made them stand out in his mind. Of course, he couldn't say if this method of highlighting was effective or not. But the image did hold him spellbound as he imagined a line of gold on red, the tip of a weaver's shuttle leaping in a circle, searing his eyes, flying into the grass by the stream's edge, disappearing like an extinguished flame.

That was when he saw a second snake, shining brightly as it slithered among the rape plants. He shuddered and turned. Immediately before him, hidden by the treetops, a flight of stone steps led steeply up to a thatched temple roof hovering like a cloud in the sky. Blooming near the top of the roof, against the peak's hair of green and black, was a patch of purple irises, seeming close enough to touch.

This is what our wanderer had come to see: the temple of the Kunoya Kannon. But as he stood at the bottom of the stairway, ready to go up to the main hall, a huge, shaggy face appeared from the dense undergrowth that surrounded the path. The animal was nearly as wide as the trail itself; and, as if that weren't surprising enough, there were more than one of them. Mane after mane, belly after belly, for about five or six meters, nothing but solid horse.

Immediately, the wanderer planted his stick and stood back. He found himself enclosed in a triangle formed by a line that connected the snake at the corner house, the snake in the rape field, and this herd of horses.

How very strange! But then again, as it says in the Lotus Sutra:

If beset by savage beasts

Armed with claws and sharp, mean teeth,

Lizards, snakes, and scorpions, too,

Their fiery breath a poison dew,

Oh come! Thou One Who Sees Them All!

3

A horseman appeared alongside the horse, one of three animals that swaggered single file down the mountainside.

"Thanks for waiting," the first horseman said.

"Sorry to be in your way," said the second.

"Excuse us,' said the third.

The three horsemen greeted him as they passed. Trying to get out of the way, the wanderer stood at the stream's edge, feeling as though his eyes were being blanketed with horsehide.

The path narrowed even more, but he found footing on the soft grass. With the sounds of the weavers lost in the distance, he came to the base of the steps, where the blue sky seeped down through the trees. The long flight was in poor repair, and the horses were hauling new stones to the back gate of the priest's quarters near the bottom of the steps.

Climbing those steps was like crawling up an unsteady ladder. Some stones were missing, the corners of others worn away. Because the earth crumbled beneath his feet, the wanderer was forced to crawl up the hill. He progressed slowly, but the fields and paddies below grew steadily smaller and more distant, and the waves appeared blue as the surrounding mountains embraced the sea and closed in around his feet, everywhere the same.

In the woods' deep shadows, among the green, mossy stones of the
stairway, grew lavender firefly gowns, relatives of the Chinese bell flower. The early spring blossoms seemed to dampen the wanderer's mind. He felt hot and sweaty, as if he were climbing up where boiling water had once flowed down. Yet with the slightest breeze, he suddenly felt chilled.

He finally reached the top of the stairway. The temple grounds were rather cramped. Behind the main hall with its thatched roof, wrapped around the walkways on either side, the mountain rose like a curtain, its undergrowth black as sumi ink, the wind moaning through the pines growing there. Or was the noise coming from some-where else?

Down the mountain, the snow-tipped waves were spreading on the shore below, coupling with the beach and vanishing into the cliffs, their sound still faintly audible. Sadly gone, however, was the
k
ir
i hatari
of the weaver's looms. From the vantage point of the mountain, he no longer saw the two weavers among the yellow rape blossoms. Now they were floating upon the waves, outlined by the blue of open sea.

But first, let us pray.

The temple, perched as high as a horse's back, was approached by five stone steps that had long since lost the balustrade's shadow. In its day, the building must have been marvelous to behold, with its vermilion-lacquered pillars, lintels carved with flower patterns, and beams painted Prussian blue. But now the golden dragons had a forlorn look, and the midday moonlight fell upon the temple's thatched roof, leaking down in butterfly patterns upon the Chinese-style doors. The building resembled an ancient painting done in the flamboyant Tosa style. Though not dazzling, it did possess a certain depth, a fineness, a feeling of nostalgia.

The dark interior of the hall appeared through the open lattice doors. To the side of the small shrine, draped with curtains, white lotus blossoms stood with their faces held high. Positioning himself before them, the wanderer bowed his head and withdrew, first one step and then another. With peace in his heart, he looked up at the coffered ceiling, carved in red and white peonies. The fading blossoms of Chinese whites were scattered among the crimson, making him feel as though he were in a dream, gazing upward at a garden of flowers.

Pasted over the flowers, the rounded pillars, the pedestals for the offerings, the paneled doors, and on the oute
r
Chinese-style doors and crossbeams, wherever he looked were the small paper stickers that named the various pilgrims who had come to the temple. One read "Engraver Hon." Another read "Fishmonger Masa." There was "Yasu the Roofer," "Tetsu the Carpenter," "Goldsmith Sakan." One was from Tokyo's Asakusa District, another from Fukagawa. Others were from places far away—Sue, Mino,
ami, Kaga, Noto, Echizen, Kuma
moto in Higo, Tokushima in Awa. They were like birds from distant inlets and bays, the wagtail, the cuckoo. These stickers had been left behind by unseen visitors, all of them virtuous men and women who had stayed in cheap lodgings with nothing but the cold night for a pillow, who had traveled rainy nights on rush-roofed boats and had found a home for their dreams here. Even today, the spirits of those pilgrims must come back to frolic, here where the stickers served as doorp
lates to their spiritual homes.

4

For such pilgrims, this sacred spot was a place of equanimity and divine favor, an engaging garden of flowers. Those who heard the temple's call were willing to travel any distance—ten, one hundred, one thousand miles, even from the ends of the sea. At first chance, they came to watch the flowers falling through the air. They came to worship the moon in her robes of white. The fevered of mind drank droplets of dew from the riverbank willows. Those suffering from love sought to touch the supple hand of Kannon, wanting to be held in her embrace. For those who had lost their way, there were green tiles and jeweled fences of cinnabar, gilded pillars and red balustrades, agate stairways and flower-patterned Chinese doors. The visitors fantasized about jeweled chambers and golden palaces, about phoenixes dancing in the dragon's shrine, giraffes frolicking among the peonies, the morning light shining upon the lion's throne, even about mothers and children sleeping together, cherry blossoms for a quilt, moon- bright pearls for a pillow. Whatever the dream, the all-merciful, all- suffering Kannon would not find fault.

"Engraver Hori," "Fishmonger Masa." Simply by looking at the names the pilgrims had left behind, proof that their spirits had passed
this way, one could imagine which
were men and which were women. One could guess their appearance, their deportment, their presence. If the donations published in the newspapers and the lists of donors posted at the temples were realism, these name tags were romanticism.

Smiling, the wanderer inspected them one at a time.

Looking back toward the door and the large, wooden donation coffer, he spotted a piece of tissue paper pasted to a huge, cracked, mortar-like pillar. On it was a poem written in a woman's flowing hand:

In a nap at midday

I met my beloved,

Then did I begin to believe

In the things we call dreams.

Tamawaki Mio

It was gently and beautifully written.

"You'll want to come over here, sir."

The wanderer had not seen the priest standing right beside him, the sleeves of his linen robe overlapping, his straw sandals visible beneath the hem of his skirt.

He turned, and the priest greeted him with a smile.

"Follow me."

The priest walked past the donation box and leaned back toward the latticed doors. Standing directly before the shrine, he pulled his robe to the sides, produced a match from his sleeve, then reached up and lit a candle. He brought his hands to his forehead and pressed his palms together. Then he opened a door just in front of the wanderer, who was still standing in the main hall.

A four-mat room was situated on the other side of its thick, worm-eaten threshold, built wide and set up a level from the hall floor. The wanderer could see trees through the cracks in the walls, but the unbordered tatami mats were new and green. The priest entered and sat down in front of a small table, its top completely cleared. Then he slid forward on his knees and pushed an ash-covered smoking box toward his guest. It contained a charcoal holder but no tobacco.

"Please. Make yourself comfortable."

Again, the priest rustled his sleeves as he began searching for something. "Oh, here they are!" He laughed and produced a box of matches from beneath the table.

"Thank you very much." The visitor stepped over the threshold and sat down. He lit his pipe and blew a puff of smoke that was darker in shade than that place where the ocean meets the sky. "Really an impressive temple you have here. What a view!"

"I'm afraid everything's in a shambles. I hate to say it, especially in front of the Buddha here, but I just can't keep up with everything by myself."

5

"You must get a lot of visitors." The wanderer said the first thing that came to mind.

The priest seemed to nod as he moved in front-of the table and put his legs to one side. "I wish I could say we did, but these days we don't get many. At one time this temple was part of a huge complex. You know that place you just passed? You can see it from here. From the foot of that hill there, all the way to those rape fields. Once there were seven temples lined up one after another. It's written down somewhere. This place, the Cliff Palace Temple, was the first to be built here in Konoya. We're the second stop on the Banda Circuit, a famous holy place though now just a shadow of what once was.

"Strangely enough, most of our visitors come from quite a distance. The closest are from Kazusa and Shimosa; and some come all the way from Kyushu, hearing of us by word of mouth. They say that when they ask the local people for directions, a lot of them don't even know where we are. Our visitors have the worst time trying to find us."

"I can imagine."

"Oh, yes." The priest laughed and cut his own sentence short.

There as something solicitous about the way the priest spoke, and the wanderer was not sure at first what to make of him. Emptying the ashes from his pipe, he noticed how sooty the smoking box was, how the charcoal bowl was stuffed with the remains of burned matches. It reminded him of the dormitory at Shinsha University in Sugamo, where the students were waiting for the advent of Miroku, the Buddha of the Future. This place wasn't exactly equipped for entertaining visitors either, but maybe that actually fostered the open sharing of one's feelings. Anyway, that was how he felt.

He filled his pipe and enjoyed another round of tobacco. Blowing the smoke toward the edge of the mountains, he fancied himself as the Taoist wizard Tekkai, a man who could blow an image of himself into the air.

"It must be nice and cool here in summer."

"Yes. It hardly ever gets hot. As you can tell, the main temple here is quite pleasant. But the temporary lodging down the hill is even cooler. It's nothing but a thatched hut, but stop in on your way back and rest your feet. I could build a little fire and make you a cup of tea. It's definitely rustic. You might see the teakettle sprout a tail and turn itself back into a badger. But that's the charm of the place." The priest laughed again.

"It's nice here. I really envy you."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. It's lonely living alone, you know. You saw how I came hurrying out when I saw you. By the way, do you mind if I ask where you're staying?"

"Me? I'm living near the station."

"Since—"

"The month before last."

"Then you're staying at an inn?"

"No. I'm renting a room. I do my own cooking."

"I see. This may sound rude, but maybe you'd be interested in making use of our hut. I know this is all very sudden, but just last summer, under very similar circumstances, I provided accommodations for a fellow much like yourself. Couples are fine, too. There's plenty of space for two."

"Thanks, anyway." The wanderer smiled. "I was just passing by. Didn't expect to find a place like this. This is really a fine temple." "Come by as often as you like. Come take a stroll."

"That would be a waste. No, I’ll come to worship."

The wanderer didn't mean anything in particular by it, but the priest eyed him suspiciously.