Seiobo There Below

by László Krasznahorkai

  Augustine and Valentine, it echoes in his head, and he cannot he get that picture of Lake Geneva out of his mind, the one that arose earlier, the painting as yet untitled but completed the other day: the obsessively pursued sequence, he cannot drive away those twelve obsessive parallels out of his mind, and in a sudden terror of the contiguities he says to himself that later . . . later, instead of the yellow, a metallic matte blue-green should be burning below, then to spatter a GHASTLY quantity of ochre and brown and crimson, and onto the sky as well, so that it will be ablaze in the ochre and in the dead crimson-brown, only above will there remain some kind of grayish ominous blue; then the mountain ridge on the opposite bank should burn intensely in a dark deathly, final blue, because in the end this picture must be aglow, must be ablaze, must burn, and then suddenly in a flash he sees himself as the train takes him to Vevey: somewhere between Nyon and Rolle he suddenly perceives there below, from the window of the well-heated carriage, a ragged figure struggling against the strong wind, his own self in 1880, walking with all of the paintings he has completed mounted on his back and under his arm, to Morges, so that he can sell them, and then there is a beaten scruffy dog in the storm; the wind is blowing against him, still mainly coming from the lake, and it strikes down upon them again and again; and it is still very far away to Morges on foot, it is 1880 and he is hungry, and the train from 1909 runs alongside them, the dog runs after the clattering wheels, and barks, the train disappears from view like an unreachable dream, one in which he will take his place in just a moment in one of the second-class compartments, and exclusively on the right-hand side next to the window, because he wants to see the lake, nothing else but the lake, for really, as never before, he wants nothing else than to see this lake, as this lake replenishes its own enormous space, with the rather tenuous shore here below, and the rather tenuous shore, there, on the other side, and above, the whole, the enormous sky — if he could only manage to drive that rotten mangy dog out of his mind, he mutters to himself, but speaking so loudly this time that everyone standing around him understands his words clearly, although they don’t know what to think about Monsieur Kienzl, who now wants to get rid of some dog that won’t budge from his heels, he kicks it aside in vain, it just won’t leave him alone, it just keeps on coming, says Kienzl irritatedly, just dragging itself along beside him, as if there would be any sense at all in this entire devotion.

  He’s cold, they say, repulsive and unfeeling, he’s heard it hundreds and hundreds of times, that he is harsh and merciless and brutal and unsympathetic and decadent, by that, however, they only betray — he takes one step forward — that they are afraid of him, because it is terrifying, really, when they have to be confronted with the fact that he is here, he who amidst eternal death and in the greatest of need, had to break out in a truly harsh, merciless, unsympathetic, and decadent world, with that truly unassailable desire in him, so that at last someone could state something about the truth, but what kind of a statement is that — he is cold and repulsive and unfeeling! and his mind is filled with rage yet again, and now he is the one who would be called repulsive and unfeeling! exactly him, who could be called the fanatic of reality, if anything at all; but not cold and unfeeling, no, not that; in his anger he begins to pull at his beard impatiently, in front of the ticket desk window, no one will ever get there, will ever get to the point of being able to understand, only Valentine understands, no one — just Valentine, and Valentine alone — understands what he is searching for so obsessively, and no one can say that he is unfeeling, because that was exactly what was so unbearable in his dreadful life, that he wasn’t brutal, but everything was — from Geneva through Bern and all the way to Zürich — it was he who surmounted everything with the greatest of sensitivity, because he alone had a heart, and with this heart he looked at the landscape, and he looks at it now too, and it is with this heart that he sees now that everything is woven into one: the earth with the water, the water with the sky, and into the earth and the water and the sky, into this indescribable Cosmos is woven our fragile existence as well, but merely for just one moment that cannot be traced, then, already, it is no more, it disappears for all eternity, irrevocably, like Augustine and all that Augustine was as of yesterday, nothing else remains, only and exclusively the landscape; in his case, then the locomotive’s whistle sounds from the direction of the tracks, and with that, this line, where there is only a woman with a hat in front of him, suddenly speeds up; he speaks once again out loud to himself, in his case, Lake Geneva remains, the recumbent monumental strips in the dead blue space, the Great Expanse, those two words begin to rattle around in his head, just like, in a moment, the wheels beneath the carriage pulling out of Geneva Station: the monumental, the inconceivable, the Great Expanse that includes all within itself, the ultimate painting of which is, of course, right here in front of him, and he will paint it, he finally reaches the ticket window — he will go that far, he flings out, with his two insanely burning eyes, to the visibly frightened elderly railway official, that he wants a second-class ticket to Vevey; he knows already what title he will give to the painting of the lake completed not too long ago, he knows already, once he comes back from Valentine, his first order of business will be to go into the atelier, take the picture down from the easel, and note down on a piece of paper, and finally to attach to the back of the painting those few words, which he cannot express more precisely than to say that he, Oswald Kienzl is on a journey, a journey in the right direction, just a few words, namely “Fomenrhytmus der Landschaft,” hence the most appropriate possible expression for the painting, for it not just to have a title, but in his own succinct way to let the world know, inasmuch as it may be curious, to let the world know who he was, what kind of figure he was, upon whose gravestone would one day be written the words: Oswald Kienzl, the Swissman.

  987

  THE REBUILDING

  OF THE ISE SHRINE

  He didn’t say I am Kohori Kunio, he didn’t even return their bow, nor did he accept the handshake offered by one of them, he didn’t say anything at all for quite a while, he just listened, namely he listened with barely concealed reluctance till the end of their account as to why they were here at the Jingū Shicho, who they were, and what they wanted; then he informed them that as for the name they had mentioned, Ms. Bernard, although he knew who she was, from here and from Harvard too, in terms of their request, he could neither say yes nor no, as the matter did not fall under his jurisdiction; he for a long time now — and here he repeated the words very meaningfully, stressing for a very long time — had not worked in the Department of Public Relations; then, with an unfriendly grimace, he gave them to understand that he did not in the slightest wish to discuss his present position with the two uninvited guests, moreover he did not wish to discuss anything with them at all, nor did he wish to have any dealings with them whatsoever, he did not in the least wish to get mixed up in a conversation with the two foreigners, he already even regretted having to come down from the Jingū office here to the public area of the Naikū, in a word he deliberately behaved in an unfriendly manner in order to humiliate them, and a little threateningly as well, as if he wanted to let them know that it would be better if they gave up their plan; if they went ahead with their request, they would meet with refusal everywhere, even if they handed in an official application, the grudging recommendation with which he wished to close this conversation that was debasing for him, they would receive exclusively one and only one kind of response from the Department of Public Relations at the Jingū Shicho: a refusal in the most decisive terms, and they should not even count on anything else, the Jingū Shicho and the two of them simply did not go together, they should leave off even trying, they should leave the Naikū and in particular they should quit trying to cast their presence, so inappropriate here, in a newer and newer light, so really, he turned the corners of his mouth down and looked off somewhere into the heights above the forests of Naikū, how could they possibly imagine that they cou
ld just show up here, accost him, cause him the trouble of coming down from his office and ask his permission, in the area of the parking lot in front of the Shicho building, to take part in the 71st rebuilding of the Ise Shrine, in the ceremony known as Misoma-Hajime-sai, and all the other things as well, how could it turn up in the head of a European novice architect and a Japanese Noh-textile designer, as they called themselves, that they could even step into the most sacred spot in the entire country, he could see very well, his contemptuous gaze suggested as he looked around with increasing irritation, just what sort they were: the kind of people who neither in their attire nor their bearing nor their way of speaking nor their manner were suitable, neither were they acceptable in their social status, and, in particular, the manner in which they had conveyed their request scandalized him, so that while they tried with ever more servile bearing and ever more humble words to reverse the direction of their incidental audience, already now completely hopeless, Kohori Kunio simply left the two supplicants there; they stood for quite a while, completely scalded, without even the strength to move, this reception had taken them so much by surprise because while they had suspected — chiefly, the Japanese friend had — how complicated it would be to obtain a general mandate from the Jingū Shicho, while they suspected that there would be serious obstacles, they — at least the guest from Europe — did not suspect that their first attempt would end in such a fiasco, not to mention that the so-called conversation that took place with Kohori-san excluded even the possibility that he would ever again communicate with them, either personally or in writing, so that they left the otherwise public area of Naikū with their heads bowed and with the speed of people fleeing, and they didn’t even feel like looking for the most important spot for them in Naikū, in this sacred forest, they just wandered around there outside, along the streets of Ise, they hung their heads and for differing reasons did not utter a single word to each other, in this way an hour passed until they were able to make their way back to the main entrance, so that this time they would go along the shaded dirt path leading between the majestic trees, at least as far as the center of the main shrine, to have a look at the honden — to put it more precisely, what interested them the most — the so-called kodenchi, the fenced-in empty space in direct proximity to the honden, which twenty years ago served as the location of the old honden, but since the demolition and complete removal of the honden twenty years ago, it was now, following the stipulations, strewn and made completely level, just like the other subsidiary shrines in this sacred forest, with roughly cut pieces of white limestone; they wanted all the same to see the place that — as the Japanese formulated it to his Western friend — was the honden’s reflected image but without the honden, because it is really like this in Ise, in the two sanctuaries of this small city, that is in the forests of Naikū and Gekū, there lies, in direct proximity to each significant complex of buildings, pressing up, as it were, against the existing group of buildings, an empty space of the exact same size as in the existing group of buildings, the empty lots stand there next to the building complexes, covered with white stones cut into fist-sized pieces, and they literally shine in the pure moonlight for twenty years: a group of buildings, an empty space, an empty space, a group of buildings, this is how everything has proceeded here in Ise since the edict of Temmu, because according to legend he was the one, the Emperor Temmu in the seventh century, who first commanded in six hundred and something that every twenty years the entire structure of shrines in both Naikū and Gekū, that is both the inner shrine to Amaterasu Ōmikami, as well as the outer shrine to Toyooke Ohokami — would be rebuilt again and again, namely that on the neighboring tracts of land, left empty and corresponding with complete accuracy to the basic plan of the buildings now standing, the individual buildings would be constructed again and the old ones would be demolished, although Temmu’s edict states that not just the copy of all these buildings has to be rebuilt again, but that the same buildings must be rebuilt once again, and everything — every beam, piece of masonry, dowel, corbel, overlay — really, with a hair’s breadth accuracy, must be rebuilt in the same way and at the same time and in the same place, so that it may be renewed, so that it may be maintained in the freshness of birth, and if we are speaking of Naikū — and we are speaking of that because of the two visitors — it is so that Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun-deity, would not leave us and would remain among us, and then — delighting in the radiating strength of the freshness — she does not leave us, and remains among us, as long as this renewal truly sustains the two great shrines in time: sustains the hondens of Naikū and Gekū, i.e., the shōden within the hondens, which serves as a residence for the deities; the three treasures, and the fencing encircling them as well, are all as if they had just come into being today, in the true vividness of creation, in the realm of a truly eternal present, because in this way all of the hinoki-wood is always fresh, because in this way the gilded beams are always fresh, the roofs and the steps are fresh, all of the joinings and planings are fresh, one can always feel that the carpenter has left off his work just a moment ago, that he has just lifted his chisel from the plank of wood, and so that every single piece of hinoki always has the sweet fragrance of hinoki; the Ise shrine, accordingly, has been shining forth in freshness ever since the year of six hundred and something, just as the main shrine of Naikū shines as well over there, where the two of them are now looking, but they turn their gaze away already, to here, onto the kodenchi, onto this emptiness, onto this unbuilt-ness, onto this pure possibility with its white stones, where altogether this emptiness is broken only by a little hut, serving as the basis for future work and protecting the sacred column, the shin no mihashira, in the middle of the back part of the area; they are looking at this space, which burns, so to speak, in anticipation, this space that will be the location of the 71st Shikinen Sengū, that of the 71st rebuilding, that is to say immediately, as it is now March, and the 71st Shikinen Sengū begins in May, that is, there are eight years left before the change that occurs every twenty years will take place in 2013, the Jingū Shicho gets eight years from Emperor Temmu until the twenty years are up, and for the new, that is for the current assembled buildings of the Ise Shrine, to be regenerated; this is what they wrote to each other, this is what they analyzed in their letters between Japan and Europe, when the idea first emerged of what a wonderful thing it would be for an architecture student and a local resident interested in Japanese culture to follow, in its entirety, how a Shikinen Sengū such as this proceeds in its countless ceremonies, moreover not just to follow it but to understand something of it, the Western friend wrote innocently, yes, the Japanese responded with a certain disquiet, perhaps suspecting something of that complicated process about which no one could have any knowledge in advance, so closed to the entire world was this process, no one could know anything about it, only the Emperor and the relative of the Emperor who represented the imperial family, as it happened the Emperor’s older sister — then, of course, the dai-gūji, the high priest, himself closely tied to the imperial family, the priests of Ise, and finally the miya-daikus, the actual instruments in the hand of continual divine creation, or more simply put the temple carpenters, and only in this case, the case of Ise, it is necessary immediately to add that we are speaking of the carpenters of the Ise shrine, because they were trained by the Jingū Shicho itself, it named them, it engaged them, it employed them, it took care of them and buried them, and they could not undertake any other line of work, only this; they could not enter into any other kind of employment, only this; the work, in the strictest sense, lasted until the end of their lives, for they were not just any sort of carpenter but ritual carpenters who worked, in the operation of the rebuilding of the shrine, with particular tools, particular materials, particular methods, in a word with a particular consciousness, completely secluded from the public, in secret as it were, just as all of the participants of the Ise Shikinen Sengū worked in secret, from the carpenters all the way to the h
igh priests, a secrecy which in the very first place could be explained by the seemingly greatest likelihood that the purity of the process — one of the most important objectives of Shintō — could be maintained from the beginning until its completion and that, well, then it was exactly this, this openness, this so-called modern Japan, and not least of all the thorough secularization of the system of patronage, that caused or compelled, from year to year, the confidential inner circle of the Shikinen Sengū to relinquish something from this great secrecy, with the Emperor’s family at the forefront, Kuniaki Kuni by name, the current high priest of the shrine, the older brother of Princess Kōjun, the son of Prince Asaakira Kuni, who felt that the Ise Shrine should be opened up to the world, and this meant that already the previous Shikinen Sengū, at the time of the seventieth rebuilding, had admitted journalists and television reporters to certain ceremonies; moreover, under the patronage of the Jingū Shicho itself, a documentary film was made about the Shikinen Sengū process, which although revealing hardly anything about it, still gave a kind of superficial account, at the very least drawing attention, moreover the general public’s attention, to the fact that there is something called the Shikinen Sengū; yet the high priest considered — and the previously mentioned confidential inner circle of the Shikinen Sengū agreed with him — that it would still be better if the Jingū Shicho would keep a firm hold on what was divulged and what wasn’t, nevertheless it did happen here that a film was made in such a way that it seemed to be revealing something while still concealing the essence of things in the usual way; in a word, from the viewpoint of the initiators of greater openness, it proved to be the height of success; in the history of knowledge of the Shikinen Sengū, however, it proved to be an absolute hodgepodge, indeed directly misleading, everyone in Japan knew this, yet hardly anyone said anything about it, nor did anyone connected to the Emperor’s family; people treated the affairs of the Emperor’s family with the deepest possible sympathy, tact, attentiveness, and patience, and with gratitude for everything with which the Kunaicho — that is, the Imperial Household Agency, in its representation of the imperial family — honored Japan in bringing it to public notice, so that evidently the previously inconceivable could take place, that non-Japanese, but so-called scholarly researchers with strong ties to Japan and to Shintō — as for example, the recently deceased Felicia Gressitt Bock, or Ms. Rosemarie Bernard, the anthropologist from Harvard University — received permission from the Jingū Shicho to observe certain ceremonies at the 70th Shikinen Sengū, moreover recognizing, for example, the clarity of the attentive research of the latter scholar, as well as her proven sensitivity in the treatment of the matter, further permissions were granted to her, in fact she was employed as a consultant at the Jingū Shicho Public Relations Division for one year, so that, apart from the work she was given, she might further deepen her research relating to the Shikinen Sengū, which afterward was confirmed by the invitation to Harvard, at the initiative of Professor Bernard, of one of the most highly regarded personages of the Jingū administration, Kohori-san, who had not worked as director of the Department of Public Relations for a very long time now, and his participation in a symposium there, well it was precisely upon this that the western friend’s plan depended, that they should try, relying upon Rosemarie Bernard’s indirect support, to acquire permission to attend the ceremony, to follow the course of the rebuilding, in which he was even successful in winning the cautious . . . hmm . . . support of his Japanese friend, and this plan, it seemed just now, had proven a disaster, as they looked at Western friend Kohori Kunio’s back as he walked away after their introductory conversation, then disappeared into the main entrance of the Jingū Shicho building, a disaster that made both of them equally bitter, for they sensed that there could be no doubt whatsoever as to the clarity of his message, they hadn’t even begun to introduce themselves, the appraisal of whether they were qualified for the Jingū Shicho’s attention could not even begin before it was immediately thrown back in their faces: they were not qualified, the world of this affair, so far beyond them, just beat them down, this world was so unapproachable and so opaque, and would manifestly remain so, they were embittered and were beaten down, if each for different reasons, and with different consequences as well, for while one of them, the European half — wounded to the bone in this matter that would contain great surprises even later on — was repeating over and over again to himself, on the train headed back, how in the world is this possible, and why, for god’s sake, what sort of mistake had they made, and what a rude, arrogant, offensive character this Kohori is, they had really crashed hard against how sacred it was . . . while what kept running through the head of the other, the Japanese side of this purportedly friendly relationship, was that they deserved it, he had felt it from the beginning, no good was going to come of this, what had happened was completely natural, they should in fact have counted on it, at least he, Kawamoto, should have counted on it, knowing well that you could not, just like that, as they had done — as his friend, with his European mentality, considered to be perfectly natural — you could not just send for a high-ranking official from the Jingū Shicho, Japan is Japan, and the Jingū Shicho is particularly so, and he, especially he, should not have pledged support to his Western friend, should not have accepted the general first-person plural and allowed himself to be swept up in the enthusiasm of the other when the great plan was beginning — first in their letters and then in person following the arrival of his friend — to take shape, but he should have dissuaded him in the most decisive manner possible from his insane idea, and should have explained somehow that this is not possible, this is completely out of the question; he should have stated clearly that to approach a person of such high status demands extraordinary discretion, it is simply not possible for us to go to him just like that, for us to have him called down by the porter just like that, no, Kawamoto-san shook his head, how could he even have mixed himself up in this insanity, why hadn’t he warned his friend that proposals such as this are doomed to failure, later on in eight years they could go at the end of the Shikinen Sengū to the consecration of the shrine — that is possible, that is open to the public, well of course this is what he should have soberly recommended, Kawamoto was now thinking, his friend would have understood sooner or later and he wouldn’t have got himself swept up into such a horrible mess, because what were they going to say later at home if they found out that they had gone to Ise, the Japanese side worried as they rushed homeward on the JR long-distance route, although this, the worry over this question, at least proved to be unnecessary, as later at home, in the Noh-textile workshop, luckily no one asked them anything, they were not plied with questions like: so how did it go, what happened; because those at home, the members of the Kawamoto family — the mother, the eldest son, and the two younger sisters — did not in any event really occupy themselves with the daily affairs of the other son in the family, rather unlucky, weak-willed, heaping one failure on another and thus still living at home, for they saw on their faces as they returned home that it had not gone well, that it had come to nothing, that it had been a fiasco, so why start asking questions of such a compendium of misfortune as Akio, so no one breathed a word about it, they didn’t even speak, they just ate their dinner in silence, and went to sleep, and although the next day it appeared that this unfortunate initiative with Kohori-san had made their position impossible, they still wrote, that is to say, the Western friend dictated, Kawamoto-san translated, refining every phrase to the uppermost limit, into Japanese, and thus, because the other insisted upon it, though he, Kawamoto, said to himself that now the disgrace would be fully complete, that day they sent the application to the Jingū Shicho by post, then they just sat at home in Kyōto, that is in the Noh-textile workshop of Kawamoto Akio’s family, they listened to the sound, clacking as it had for centuries, of the looms, and they sat there very dejectedly, and didn’t do anything; the guest was now no longer interested in the Kinkaku-ji, nor the Ginkaku
-ji, nor the Katsura Rikyu, nor the Sanjūsangen-dō, not at all; still, he explained responding to the question of the head of the family, who risked mentioning at times that it might be worthwhile for them to get out a bit, still, the architect friend decisively shook his head, what could they look for anywhere in this undoubtedly wonderful city — anything but to stand there as the tenth thousandth visitor immersed in solitary reflection in the Ryōan-ji garden, or to trudge along the corridors of the Nijō Castle, their eyes obligatorily dazzled in each room by the golden Kano paintings — when their plan, for which their Western friend had traveled here as a guest, their plan built up over the months, had suddenly and unjustly collapsed so terribly, but so terribly? . . . when one day a letter arrived from the Jingū Shicho informing them that they were granted permission to observe the Misoma-Hajime-sai ceremony, they should be there at such a time in such a place, and they could participate in the ceremony along with the journalists, all other information, it said in the letter, could be obtained from Miwa-san, who could be reached at such a number, from Miwa-san assigned by the Jingū Shicho Public Relations Division, and then they called him and already they agreed on the time and place and how to get there, in a word, they made the so-called arrangements, then they took out the relevant map and looked for Agemaku, and the forest of Akasawa, where the meeting place would be, where the minibus would come to pick them up to take them to the place, for there, Miwa-san emphasized, when the conversation turned to the details, no other kind of vehicle was permitted to enter, it was the private property of the Jingū, where the only kind of transportation possible was, solely and exclusively, those vehicles provided by the Jingū Shicho, it was not possible just to go charging around in one’s own car, this is a dense forest, Miwa-san explained, a very dense, impenetrable forest, where there are no paths, and apart from this, Akasawa belonged to the Jingū Shicho, and the trees there, several hundred years old, represent an enormous treasure, so that in a word, no, your own car exclusively and solely as far as Agemaku, and there, across a little nameless bridge on the left, then to the right up a foresters’ path to a special parking lot built solely and exclusively for the purposes of this ceremony — and there was the end, there they should entrust themselves to him, to Miwa-san, because he, Miwa-san, would be there, and he would guide them, and they would see, he said with more authority, that he would take care of everything, they should just get to the parking lot in the Akasawa forest, and the rest was up to him, with that they said goodbye, they put down the receiver, and again took up the map, but Kawamoto-san, though in one respect relieved that perhaps through somehow achieving some success at something, his position in the family would be a little less onerous, in another respect, beyond the Kohori affair, he felt in contrast to his friend, that it was not a time of rejoicing, but rather of fear, because he was decidedly frightened, as someone who knows just exactly what awaits him, that namely from this point on a series of horrifying situations would be coming one right after the other with his Western friend, completely uninformed as to the accustomed rules of conduct here, and whose faux pas would somehow be for him to smooth over, oh no, thought Kawamoto Akio, but then he didn’t even bring up the topic, he didn’t even mention a few rules pertaining to how one can . . . well . . . be more fortunate in conducting oneself according to the accustomed stipulations in Japan, but instead in his great confusion he began to speak, amid the clatter of the looms, that his guest would certainly like the region they were going to, because this, and he pointed to a splotch around Agemaku, is Kiso itself, this is the Kiso region where the postal route of olden times ran from Edo to Kyōto, between the Shōgun and the imperial court, and some of the smaller cities belonging to this route can be found to this day, ah, the postal stations of the Kiso Valley, oh that is a really beautiful place, the Western friend said to Kawamoto-san, then he quickly added: at least I think so — but the Western friend did not give any sign that he was particularly animated by the news, or that they could just conceive of the whole thing as some kind of tourist excursion, he just nodded, saying wonderful, wonderful, but from then on he was simply buried in books and notes, he only came down to the family at mealtimes and spent the rest of the day upstairs, in the room above the clattering looms, leafing through books and notes about the essence of Shintō and deities of Shintō, the ceremonies of Shintō and the hierarchies of Shintō, the history of Shintō and its origin myths, these were the themes of his research, not suspecting that there would not be any need later for this knowledge but, well, how could he have known this — from where, from what: instead, there was the fashioning of the wood and the measurement of the beams, the system of corbels and the jointing, the miya-daiku tools and the life of the hinoki cypresses and the means of crafting them, these accordingly were the subjects he should have been researching although before the Misana Hajime-sai he still could not have suspected anything, when he still wished that he could know, if only he could ferret out what was the dai-gūji, and what was the saishu: and the dai-gūji, is that the same thing as the saishu, or where are the Emperor’s Three Treasures, the Yata no Kagami, the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, and the Yasakami no Magatama, are they all in Ise today, for that is the chief shrine, the most sacred of all the shrines, and well, in every shrine there have to be the three treasures: the mirror, the sword, and the jewel, for these are kept in the shōden, no? — he pondered over such things, but he was already sitting in the car, Kawamoto was driving — the steering wheel on the right would have been hard for him — he sat next to the silent and as far as he was concerned incomprehensibly sad-looking Kawamoto; the three treasures, the Sanshu-no Shiki, ran through his head, it was midnight, they were just turning out from Kyōto into the thick traffic of the Meishin Expressway, the road was completely packed, the lanes seemed narrow, but in spite of this, the speed limit was one hundred kilometers per hour, so that they proceeded as a single mass among the innumerable buses and trucks and cars, the guest did not even dare to look anywhere, he just asked his friend a question now and then about Shintō, what is this like and what is that like, but Kawamoto was already cautious, and every answer began with the words that he didn’t know, and only if his friend forced the given topic further would he say something concerning his own knowledge with many reservations, but if he could, he instead tried to divert the other’s attention, bringing up concrete questions as, for example, when would they reach the meeting place, it was now past midnight so it would be three in the morning, which means that they would have altogether three hours to sleep, at dawn, at six a.m., Kawamoto-san reminded his friend, they had to be there by the tent, waiting for Miwa-san, so that he could register them; and if new questions popped up, he tried to dodge them with such matters, and he did this for a while until he got tired, and from then on he either gave terse answers or no answers at all, as if he had not heard the latest question, he pressed down on the accelerator in the dark night; in front of them, behind them, to the right and the left everyone was doing the same, as if all were pressing on the same pedal, one hundred kilometers an hour, that is how they headed toward Nagoya in the tight disciplined traffic on the Meishin Expressway, so that a good hour later they arrived at the turnoff point above Nagoya from the Tōmei Expressway and went onto Road No. 19 toward Kiso-Fukushima, but there only Kawamoto was determining which way to go, because his friend had suddenly fallen asleep, so he was obligated to keep holding up the map himself to get his bearings in the empty district, but he located, after Agemaku, the little nameless bridge on the route given by the Jingū Shicho without error, then to the right and up the forest path, so that when the guest opened his eyes — he started awake, as he had begun to feel strange, but what was strange was that the car had stopped — we’ve arrived, said his host, and he pointed through the windshield, they had stopped in a specially constructed parking lot, recently nailed together and surrounded with beams; all around was the forest, plunging gloomily into the sky, no one was in the parking lot, but Kawamoto-san was very certain tha
t they had arrived at the right place, although he was only fully reassured when, after a few hours of sleep, he was awakened by his travel alarm clock, which he had brought with him; and which truly and accurately woke them up at 5:45, dawn was breaking outside and the parking lot was full, among the few trucks there were mostly cars lined up close beside each other, from Tokyo and Ōsaka, Nagasaki and Aomori, Niigata and Matsue, journalists, reporters, television and radio crews, they were already preparing in silence, even it if wasn’t clear for what, probably they had timed their arrival here for around five or half-past in the morning, and they did arrive, and they were preparing, that much was clear, but what wasn’t clear was if they knew at all what was to follow, light was breaking around them in their kind of preliminary milling around, for a long time nothing happened, then further on down, below the parking lot, on the edge of a forest path, young people with sleepy eyes suddenly hoisted up a tent, then later on they put up one more next to it, but they didn’t carry or set up anything else, didn’t pile up anything inside, and each tent only had a roof, neither had any sides to it, altogether one table appeared from somewhere, well, that they put down, not inside either of the tents but in front of one of them, another young man appeared wearing a suit: judging from the seriousness of his expression, he was sent here for more serious tasks, he was Miwa-san, it turned out, when they went over to him and asked where they could find Miwa-san, I am Miwa Kitamura, came the reply, then he looked them up and down and asked — although it appeared he knew the answer, how could he not have known? — so, you are the architect from Europe and his friend from Kyōto, yes? and his gaze revealed neither good nor ill will, yes, that is us, Kawamoto-san replied respectfully, he handed a small gift and bowed, fine, then stand here over by the side and wait, you will be picked up by a minibus, and that is what happened, they waited for a long time and patiently too, in front of the empty tents in the middle of the forest with their name-tags that Miwa-san had given them hanging on their chests, when at last one hour later the buses appeared, the reporters quickly got into line and made a dash for the seats, the two friends were continually pushed farther and farther to the back of the line that was quickly forming and surging forward to the seats, but finally they too got a place in the last bus, and the vehicle was already taking this last group, driving with great caution across the bumpy terrain on a road that appeared to be brand new, because the road was new, just as the parking lot was, it was so new that it seemed to have been constructed during the brief hour while they had to wait in front of the tents, and one couldn’t know that it hadn’t been so, in any event there could be no doubt that they were decisively heading for the Misoma-Hajime-sai among the forest’s trees, where they slowly proceeded forward, now lurching here and there, then at one point the minibus just stopped, and between them they really, but really had no idea whatsoever where they might possibly be, do you know where we are, asked the European, I have no idea, answered his companion, somewhere in the depths of the forest of the Kiso Valley, among the pines and the hinoki cypresses belonging to the Jingū Shicho; Kawamoto, smiling, only said that much, because only that much was certain, and there was a little bridge that they had to go across, to be led between the trees on a winding path strewn with wood shavings, the buses accordingly had stopped, the gathering had set off on foot, and at last, after one turn, they suddenly saw in the distance a huge wooden structure, the whole thing reaching into the sky from among the trees as if they were dreaming it, because the whole, viewed from here, decidedly created the impression of a huge stage, not only from a distance but also from close up, that is, an absurdity built out of fresh-planed beams, just what the hell was such a huge impossibility as this doing in the mysterious depths of the Kiso Valley, they looked uncomprehendingly at each other, yet it was not a dream, even if it remained an impossibility, in the mysterious depths of the enchantingly beautiful Kiso Valley that extended between the prefectures of Nagano and Gifu, a huge stage looked down upon them, they were not prepared for this, somehow they had imagined that there would be two trees in the forest surrounded by priests, visitors in the background, something like that — and instead there was this huge stage, raised several meters above the ground and sloping downward, and this surprise overcame them in their first astonishment as they drew near, because they saw, at the front of the stage, the two extraordinarily tall, broad-trunked live hinoki cypress trees, down to which the stage, as it were, sloped, extended, and they saw on the two wide tree trunks the cords signifying selection — these were the shimenawas and then the shides — the small pieces of snow-white paper cut into zigzags, and folded, below them, a protective covering from some kind of rice-based material, also fastened to the trees with cord, and one or two lathes: quite high above the level of a person’s head, this might have been a sign, that below these lathes the sacred work would later proceed, in a word they noticed all this, and they saw it, and there could be no doubt that these were the two trees that today — in the Misoma-Hajime-sai — would be cut down, and in doing so would, as it were, inform the kami that the Shikinen Sengū had begun; still it was the stage that drew their gazes again and again, they looked to the left, they looked to the right, but they just could not familiarize themselves with it, although it also seemed obvious that in front and below, the two sides of the U-shaped stage surrounded the two chosen hinokis, so the whole thing, accordingly, was for these two trees, this stage, accordingly — enclosing a sharp angle with the rising forest floor — from the last rows to the first, from the back part of the stage timbered into the heights down to the two ceremonial tree trunks: this was a part of what was going to take place here, was closely connected with the ceremony to follow, and so on, the only problem was that they — at least the two of them — could not at all sense the import of this, because they could not come to terms with it, from whatever direction they looked at it, this stage did not belong here, in addition, what those who had made the foot-paths and those who had built this enormous stage had done escaped neither of their attention, because they had crushed, cut, and hacked down everything that had turned up in their path, they had chosen the trees, they had built the stage, they had formed the paths that led to it, but not with the proper degree of circumspection, neatly keeping things in order, but crudely, with a near-barbarous negligence, which was a little distressing, because the ceremony among other reasons was being enacted, as they had read in the written publicity materials given to them by Miwa-san, in order to beg for the trees’ forgiveness, and to reassure them that if in one sense they were going to lose their lives, in another sense life, namely a new and noble life, would be granted to them; in the midst of so much devotion and veneration and consideration, it was, however, incomprehensible that this devotion and veneration and consideration was all the same so lacking, namely that they had laid waste to, and hurled aside, all that was not needed, on both sides of the path lay scattered about in confusion, twigs, wood-splinters, shreds of bark, wood shavings, and rotting tree trunks, which could have been cleared at least from here, from the two sides of the path, thought the two guests, who now really began to feel uncertain when they experienced the same conditions arriving directly underneath the stage, and they wished to perform as well, after the others, the temizu, that is, when they rinsed their mouths and washed their hands, and here, too, even in the vicinity of the water-trough, which had been constructed rather hastily, in truly slapdash fashion, and into which the sacred water, arriving from an undisclosed location, trickled out from a rubber hose, they experienced the same disorder as on the path leading here, which really made them uncertain as to why this was not important in such a sacred Shintō ritual, but not much time remained to them to reflect upon this, because they were already above, on the back part of the stage rising into the heights, namely, despite his better judgment, Kawamoto-san too climbed up after his companion, who with not a single word, had just ran up the stairs all at once, and already he stood there by the balustrade on the stage, as if he ha
d personally been invited; apart from him and Kawamoto-san, coming after him in the great confusion, only the organizers wearing armbands were climbing up and down, and the organizers looked at them too in the great confusion, wondering, well what are these two doing here, from where however these two could see quite well what this giant stage that didn’t belong here was good for, that is to say they could see that there was room for them, that there was room for the numerous privileged guests, for whom two hundred chairs or so had already been prepared, of course who knew exactly how many there were, in any event, a vast number of chairs arranged nicely in rows on the planks, inclining downward toward the two selected hinoki trees, that divided in two the populous camp of the privileged guests; they were already milling around, one group facing one tree, the second group facing the other, this was essentially the principle behind the arrangement, but then it already became apparent to the bustling organizers that they were not privileged guests, they could no longer, accordingly, remain here, this European and this Japanese could not remain among the occupiers of the chairs, namely they had no business whatsoever up here on the stage, and would have none, and in a split second they were cast out, and thus — to Kawamoto’s greatest relief — they were compelled, as were the other nonprivileged guests, to climb back to the ravaged ground, going around the stage, up to a clearing, where they were ordered to go, and where in a tight group Miwa-san’s people were already gathering, that is the already familiar faces of the frantic columns of television reporters, photographers, and journalists, and that meant that they could be placed together obliquely facing the stage, more precisely, facing the ever-increasing number of guests gathering there, obliquely facing the hypothesized presence of the priests, and thus obliquely facing the two sacrificial trees as well, because what else could you call them other than sacrificial, just like those other trees, eighteen in number, upon which the Akasawa forest rangers had honed their skills, as this special operation was presented only every twenty years, and for that reason required the white-garbed workers, who over time lost some of the freshness of their craft, to train again in the last few days — at least eighteen was the number given by one of the workers, who seemed to be some kind of mid-level supervisor, entrusted with the oversight of the iron cable that tautened each of the two trees from three directions, holding them in place, and who, in addition to this supervisory role, naturally had just enough time to readily answer the questions of the curious journalists, as well as those of the two friends among them, eighteen enormous hinoki trees had been felled, the cable supervisor repeated, all the same they had to practice here, he said, mistakes could not be made, and certainly all of them were fairly nervous as to whether the cutting would really succeed without error, as of course every participant knew full well that there could be no question whatsoever of any mistake, here everything had to be done perfectly, as he expressed it, which meant, as he related, that the trunks of the two trees ultimately had to cross each other at precisely five meters from the upper part of the trunk, as it were, the two trees had to lie upon each other after being felled, the one had to fall down onto the other, he explained, but this contact, this intersecting, had to take place at a precisely given height, otherwise the ceremony does not come about, and the Misoma-Hajime-sai must be repeated, so it is no wonder, sighed the cable supervisor, if — eighteen trees here, eighteen trees there — the two teams of woodcutters, specially trained, but over a period of twenty years understandably out of practice, were still fairly nervous, and that could be seen on his person, he himself was really nervous enough, sweat trickled down his brow, and he gazed flustered here and there, so that finally the journalists began reassuring him, don’t be afraid, everything will be fine, if you have practiced so much, there will be no problems, and this individual looked at them with such gratitude that they felt inclined to console him even more, but there was no time for this as something seemed to be occurring in the direction of the seats on the stage, the reporters therefore scanned the seats of the stage more and more, the two of them as well began to observe the mysteriously uniform mass of the exclusive highly ranked guests gathered on the stage, where about two hundred men in identical dark-blue, somewhat rustic-looking suits were sitting, it seemed that this attire could have been mandatory as everyone was wearing it, suits and shoes from the 1970s, they looked at these suits and shoes, then they looked at the faces, and they tried to discover a more well-known celebrity — a factory owner, a banker, a noted politician — but from here it wasn’t really possible to make out the necessary details of a face like that on the ceremonial stage in the Akasawa forest during the Misoma-Hajime-sai, then they observed that on the incoming side, young Shintō priests were carrying freshly carpentered boxes to the stairs leading up to the stage, then after them, on the path in a line, appeared the mute and stern-gazed group of the priests who would lead the ceremony, but they too were clearly agitated about something, because now and then one or the other stumbled on the precarious surface of the shaving-strewn path, in their high heavy black-lacquered priest’s footwear, and so in general it could be said that everyone seemed serious and flustered, if not stricken by stage fright, even the male gathering of the exclusive guests was like that, as if the entire Misoma-Hajime-sai itself were suggesting that no one could be certain of how the proceedings would go, there were rules, and these rules had to be followed faithfully, without error, as if there were general doubt concerning this; something of this was perceptible in the atmosphere from here in front, from the clearing, where they sat among the journalists on the ground; then a shorter line appeared, a new group of priestly persons, who clearly now could only be the very highest leadership, although no one here knew who was the guji, the negi, the kujo, or who the joo was, or the mei, the sei, and who the choki was, or if everyone here even had received a mandate to take part, which was unlikely, there was total uncertainty among the journalists, they kept asking each other, although whoever was asked just laughingly shook his head, in a word no one knew anything, and somehow one had the feeling that the same bewilderment was felt among the chairs below them on the stage as well, when at last at the head of a little troop of priests the chief personage appeared, everyone recognized her features and her bearing, namely the elderly sister of the Emperor had appeared, the saishu of the Ise Shrine; she moved slowly along the path, completed the purification ceremony by the water trough, then with perceptible strain due to her age, she dragged herself up the stairs, and withdrew to the middle of the first row on the stage, taking her place there, which was so to speak the sign that the Misoma-Hajime-sai could begin, the highest-ranking priests were already kneeling, holding out their shakus in front of themselves in front of the hinoki on the left, then crossing over, in front of the hinoki on the right, so that the first part of the Misoma-Hajime-sai ceremony would be completed in both places, of which however it was impossible to understand, or hear anything, although there was silence at the ceremony, namely that here there was no music — the high screeching of the hichiriki and behind it the sounds of the ryūteki, and the shō, protracted and weeping, present at nearly every Shintō ceremony, could not be heard — the forest was enveloped in complete silence, the priest leading the ceremony, Kuniaki Kuni, mutely performed the ritual with his entourage behind him, and only at times was the rustle of robes audible, as the priest turned, stood up, then kneeled down, bowing again to the ground, because from that place, from where they were observing, this is largely what they saw, and this much was largely comprehensible from the ceremony: the priest kneeling in front of the tree, bowing down, getting up, bowing again with the shaku in his hands, behind him the entourage motionlessly kneeling, then they too at times bowed down and got up, and sat straight-backed and motionless again, this is mainly what happened in front of one tree, and mainly in front of the other as well, they had crossed from one to the other, after which the priest leading the ceremony took out from the wooden chests, carried up to the stage, and placed on the little tabl
es slowly, and somewhat hesitantly, the food offerings: the shinsen, rice and saké, fish and vegetables, fruit and sweets, salt and water, they were placed as offerings on the little tables, and then this was repeated in front of the other tree as well, and then it was already possible to see, readying themselves at the bottom of the staircase, the white-garbed woodcutters, who at the given sign proceeded onto the stage, and splitting up into two groups placed themselves around the two trees, but first just the group on the left began their work, while the other group stood motionlessly and waited for their turn to come, and the two of them, the Western guest and the Japanese host, both felt that with this the entire Misoma-Hajime-sai was saved, because up until the point when the woodcutters appeared, it was simply impossible to take this entire Misoma-Hajime-sai seriously, no matter how sacrilegious the thought seemed to them, they were of the opinion, and they even discussed this between themselves in subdued voices, that it was the complete absence of sacredness, or a crushing of the sacredness of the departed taking place on the stage, because the whole thing was so untrue, and there was no credibility to anything, not one movement, not a single gesture of the chief priest, the dai-gūji, or of the kneeling priests behind him, betrayed anything but a tense indecisiveness for everything to go well, for there not to be any mistakes; sheer exertion, this was all that could be seen in every movement and ritual gesture, but not the rite itself, and this atmosphere characterized the spectators as well, the privileged invitees, those supporters who had clearly arrived with generous financial pledges: a tense indecisiveness, thus the movements and the gestures were not the movements and gestures of faith and devotion but those of fear; a fear that somehow it would become visible that here nothing was true, not true, not sincere, not open, and not natural: well, what was missing was exactly that which was the very essence of Shintō, this is what they thought, and this is what they both discussed, concealing themselves among the journalists, when the work began, and with which everything was suddenly saved, because from this point on, the entire gathering watched the operation for close to two hours with bated breath, they watched, and they could not believe their eyes, because what these simple woodcutters, the specially trained workers of the Akasawa forest preserve, were doing, was true and pure, and credible and natural; an art was revealed in their movements, for that matter, in their movements was a very ancient art, and it occurred in such a way that they did not merely fall to the trees with their axes, but employed a particular method, in which of the group of nine, altogether three workers used their axes at once, they always worked in this group of three, surrounding the tree as they stood on the stage, and they did not just begin to chop away in a circle, say from one side, but all three of them together began to chop three holes with their axes, all told, three holes on three evenly spaced balance points of the circumference of the tree, and they did not broaden these cuts, but deepened them, so that accordingly, they cut into the tree from three directions, the location of which was determined by the leader of the group, and particularly in such a way that the tree stood in the direction of the desired pitch, the leader leaned his back against the trunk of the tree, he measured with his arms a distance on this trunk, and with that a point; then another and then another, then he showed these three points, where the holes had to be, to the others, and they already raised their axes, and when the group of three workers grew tired from the axe blows, they stood aside, and three rested workers stood in their place and continued the work so that the three groups alternated with each other, and the three holes grew deeper; and as the two of them watched in the great silence, in which the only sound was the melody of the echoing axe blows, as they watched them from the circle of journalists both began to feel — and they spoke of this again and again — that these workers were undertaking the work they learned to do with hairsbreadth precision, but they did not know, they had not the slightest idea, why what they were doing was exactly the way it was, and mainly they did not know that with every movement as they raised the axe, as it fell backward and then struck down, as they accordingly deepened the three holes until they met and became adjacent with each other at one point in the trunk’s inner part, namely that they were repeating — and with hairsbreadth precision — the momentum, the direction, the strength of the movements of their ancestors, in a word, the order, just as those ancestors had only just repeated the movements of their own predecessors, so that now, the Western friend whispered over to his companion, that is to say every movement of each worker, and every component of every movement — its momentum, its arc, its striking down — is one thousand and three hundred years old, they are artists, Kawamoto-san nodded enthusiastically, too, and only his glittering eyes betrayed that he too understood what the other was thinking, and he too, just like the other, was inspired by the thought; they watched as the cuts in the trees were deepened with the dull rhythm of the axe blows, they saw as they all then met at an inner point, the leader of the group of the woodcutter-artists, motioning, the others stepping back, a few shouts were heard, and it was as if this leader had uttered a short prayer, finally he himself struck the tree a few times at one spot on the trunk, but the two visitors could not see, as from here the figure of the chief priest was in front of that of the woodcutter-artist, at which point the tree gave a cracking groan, then it slowly began to lean downward, and then it was already down below on the ground, its peak turned a little toward the other tree; then someone began to relate, Kawamoto interpreting as well, that the true point of this ancient way of cutting down the tree was that in this way the position of the felled tree could be determined precisely, could be directed with a precision measured in centimeters; Kawamoto translated the words of an older journalist to his friend, but he was just watching the entire thing dumbstruck, mainly, when around the other tree, where the woodcutters had proceeded, the same thing happened, and the tree fell exactly where it had to, that is five meters below the peak of the other one on the ground, so there lay the chosen hinoki trees, and then Kuniaki Kuni stepped closer to one of them, and then before the trunk of the other felled tree, and, if it was possible, the silence only grew deeper than it had been before; Kuniaki Kuni raised the broad piece of paper with handwriting upon it to the height of his head, and there was even deeper silence, and no one moved, the sister of the Emperor — the saishu of the Ise shrine — bowed her head, and at this point so did all of the privileged invited guests, and as they bowed their heads so did the journalists in the clearing facing the stage, Kawamoto was only able to whisper to his friend: “norito” in exhortation, and he followed the others, and the Western friend did the same, but he did not know of course what had happened and what was happening, of course he didn’t know why, he stood with his head bowed, and he didn’t know, just as he would never know what he might have heard if he had understood, but well how could he have understood, for what was audible from the mouth of the priest was, apart from him, not understood by many even among the Japanese, because these words, spoken for the first time at least one thousand five hundred years ago and since then with no variations whatsoever were takaamahara ni kami tsumari masu, kamurogi kamuromi no mikoto wo mochite, sumemioya kamu izanagi no mikoto, tsukushi no himuka no tachihana no odo no, ahagi hara ni misogi harai tamau toki ni, narimaseru haraidono ookami tachi, moromoro no magagoto tsumi kegare wo, harai tamae kiyome tamae to mousu koto no yoshi wo, tamatsu kami kunitsu kami yaoyorozu no kamitachi tomomi, ameno huchikoma no mimi furitatete kikoshimese to, kashikomi kashikomi mo maosu, and so on, they listened, hardly able to hear anything at all, as if the dai-gūji were reciting nearly mutely, then he folded up the piece of paper, stepped back, prayed before the one felled tree, then knelt, prostrated, then everyone raised their heads, the priests repeated the norito in front of the other felled hinoki as well, then the priests departed from the stage in order, and they could still be seen as they proceeded in front of the water trough, finally they vanished at the first bend in the path, but then the Emperor’s relation stood up and
she herself left the stage with her entourage, followed by the invitees, and this was the sign, because not only did the others remain there, but everyone pressed forward toward the stage to try to get as close as possible to the woodcutters, who now came forward to shake the hands extended to them, and they were happy, all of them were smiling, and they were touched, and the joy did not want to leave them, they gave everyone some of the wood shavings from the sacred trees, the two friends also went over to them, shook hands with one of the woodcutters, and received a handful of wood shavings pressed into their palms, and it was just then that they noticed, only then did they perceive what an astonishingly powerful fragrance was everywhere, the particular fragrance of the two felled hinoki trees practically burst onto the section of the forest like a cloud, it drew them in, what an extraordinarily sweet wondrous fragrance, rhapsodized the Western friend, it is, nodded Kawamoto-san, because he was happy that his friend was not just experiencing disappointment again, and they would not return home beaten down, although that really happened too; they drove back to Kiso-Fukushima in a decidedly liberated mood, the enthusiasm of the Western friend — at least for a while — somewhat rubbing off on Kawamoto-san, although he was mostly grateful to fate that no larger misfortunes had taken place, they had not gotten mixed up in any sort of unpleasantness, which however could still be counted upon, as it was only afternoon; they were for the most part discussing the norito, gliding along in the traffic on the Meishin Expressway, the norito, the Shintō prayer uttered by the faithful in complete silence, the recitation upon which the benevolence and receptiveness of the Kami addressed in the prayer is wholly dependent — if, that is, it is uttered faultlessly in every instance where it is recited — that was all he, Kawamoto, knew, he said, apologizing while still in the car, because the norito is the most sacred of prayers of the Japanese, he explained further, when he saw on his friend’s face that he would like to know more, or, as he expressed it, to know as much as could possibly be known, and although Kawamoto-san enlarged upon it for a while inasmuch as he could recall from his school assignments: the norito is connected with the belief that the uttered word has power, but only the word uttered correctly, faultlessly, beautifully has the power to bring good; every time the opposite occurs, the word will instead signify something bad for the community, that is all that Kawamoto-san said: then in a strange confusion, a dispirited mood suddenly weighing down upon him, he became silent, and he did not wish to speak of this or of anything else, time imperceptibly slipped by, and they were already in Kyōto, there was much traffic, but still they made their way, Kawamoto however could see that due to their early arrival his friend really didn’t feel like going home, and so he proposed showing him some of the more unknown inner districts of the city, but then they sat down instead in a ryokan, and they had a fine meal, finally they sat on the terrace of one of the bars on the Kamo River, they watched the river, the couples strolling across the bridges, and Kawamoto Akio listened in ever-growing agony, as his friend had already been speaking for a while about how he would like to continue his research, how he wished to return one more time to Ise, because he would like to talk with the carpenters from Naikū, he would like, namely, to know more, to know everything about how the team of carpenters prepares for each Shikinen Sengū, how do the felled hinoki cypresses arrive there, how does the operation proceed, how do they prepare the hinoki, and how are the dazzlingly simple, pure buildings of the shrine constructed, namely, he explained, he felt that perhaps here, on this path, he must take one more step, because it was obvious that the ceremonies of the Shintō faith were completely uninteresting and had ended up in a woeful state, still though, it could be that the Shintō was still in there somewhere, concealed within the invisible world of the everyday, because surely if this Shintō was still to be found in an ancient movement, as they had experienced today, an ancient movement which had been preserved for centuries, there could be other surprises here too, oh no, thought Kawamoto-san, surprises, most likely there will be some, he nodded on the terrace of the bar on the bank of the Kamo River, and deep in thought he gazed at the people strolling from Shijō, flowing into the Gion, all the while convinced that no, this was enough already, they had been able to see the Misoma-Hajime-sai, they had received permission for that, but the Jingū Shicho would not give them any kind of permission for anything else, yet still to speak with the miya-daikus, yet still, to find out about the toryō, the miya-daikus, and through them the entire construction-leadership of the Shikinen Sengū, my god, how could he explain, brooded Kawamoto, that all of this is not possible already, it was not possible to put the Jingū Shicho in an awkward position with yet another request, even the first one already had gone beyond the limit of the desired norms here, but the Jingū Shicho had been magnanimous, it had given them permission to observe the Misoma-Hajime-sai; anything beyond this, however, beyond expressing their gratitude in a letter to the Jingū Shicho office, to which — Kawamoto tried to get his friend to understand what the correct procedure would be here, they could even add a gift, for example — well, anything else beyond this was unimaginable, but his companion, as if it were just a topic of debate, immediately rejected the thought that he, at this point — as he expressed it — should give up, come on already, don’t be afraid, you can smear all the discourteous things on me later, he said and laughed, but Kawamoto did not really feel like laughing at this, as his guest was already saying that tomorrow they would try to contact Miwa-san by telephone, and they would get to the carpenter’s workshop at Naikū, the location of which, thanks to the previously well-studied map of the shrine, they were familiar with, we’ll get in, the guest looked at Kawamoto encouragingly: but not only was it impossible to encourage him, from his constrained smile, and how he suddenly changed the topic to something else, it became clear that even the plan of this latest “action,” as his friend put it, oppressed him, and in general he was beginning to be worn down by his Western friend’s — of course, from his friend’s perspective, entirely natural — audacity, he knew he would never be able to explain to him that this was not possible here, and not only regarding the Jingū Shicho, but . . . regarding himself as well, one could not conduct oneself this way toward a host, this was very unpleasant, to have such a friend to whom it clearly never once occurred, because looking at the thing from his world view, it would hardly occur to him to consider just how difficult this whole matter was for him, Kawamoto — that he was obliged on the one side to try to satisfy the requirements of his guest and in this case, those of the Jingū Shicho; on one side there was the guest, whose needs had to be met, on the other side the prescribed obligatory forms that could not be transgressed, this was impossible to fulfill, and then so what now? Kawamoto brooded on the terrace next to the Kamo River, what should he do: he brooded needlessly, however, he fretted senselessly, and it was in vain that he showed something of this brooding and this fretting, however discourteous it was, the guest noticed nothing, he couldn’t have noticed anything, and thus there was nothing else Kawamoto could do but to dial Miwa-san’s number in Ise, he did so early the next morning at his friend’s tenacious entreaty, then he dialed it again one hour later, because he got the reply that the person he was looking for was not in, he dialed, then an hour and he dialed again, and yet another and yet another, his friend sat next to him with ever-increasing resolve, and ever-growing impatience, so that, well, it was actually a relief when he finally got through to Miwa-san, because at least he was freed from this resolve and this impatience, although it was true that with Miwa-san, however, another form of torture commenced, one in which he had to explain to him that no, what the Jingū Shicho had shown them of its good intentions and magnanimousness had not been enough for them, they would like to become acquainted with the workshops of Naikū as well, they would like to see how the trees were prepared, how they sawed and planed the wood, and then on the basis of what plans did they build the shrine buildings, Miwa-san of course, showed surprise, and his voice suddenly echoed
back from a distance, he would see what he could do, and they should once again submit a request, he recommended, in perceptibly strained tones, and the Jingū Shicho would decide if permission would be granted, and with that the conversation came to an end, and Kawamoto-san felt that his arm was about to fall off, it had grown so heavy while he was on the telephone, as he had suffered the entire process of continually bowing and scraping whereas his friend, when he informed him of what Miwa-san had said, became almost feverishly excited, and said, just wait, you’ll see, we’ll get into the Naikū carpenters’ workshop, and Kawamoto-san in the end did not even understand what was going on with this ever more complicated affair, because his guest turned out to be right, and already the second week after the submission of the application that immediately followed the telephone conversation, Miwa-san telephoned him, with the information that they should be at such a time at the main entrance to the Naikū, a certain Iida-san would accompany them to the carpenters’ workshop, they could meet with two miya-daikus, moreover, the possibility of a conversation with the toryō was extended to them, they could take photographs, but could not use recording devices during the conversations, and he apologized for that in his own name and that of the Jingū Shicho, but this was the decision, he wished them a very pleasant time in Naikū, Miwa-san said goodbye, and he had already put down the receiver and they were already on the train to Ise; no, Kawamoto Akio clearly did not understand this, he was, however, even more anxious as to what would happen now, it was two o’clock in the afternoon, there they stood at the main entrance to the Naikū, the sun was scorching, it could have been at least forty degrees celsius, and at exactly two o’clock a short, fat young person, Iida Sato, really came for them, and while the sweat was pouring down off of him in his black suit in the scorching sun, he took them to a gated entrance in the northern part of the grounds of the Naikū, this was the entrance to the Naikū carpentry workshops, but — as Iida-san expressed it a little theatrically — this was also the symbolic entrance to the Shikinen Sengū, and every such banality in relation to the Shikinen Sengū just began to pour out of him: by the time they reached the office of the workshop area, Iida-san recited nearly word for word every single sentence that was in the promotional brochure, which the Jingū Shicho had printed to popularize the Shikinen Sengū, and they grew so used to Iida-san being the kind of person who always speaks without interruption that they didn’t even pay attention to him, they just nodded politely, yet he — enthusiastically and with the serious look of an expert — just kept talking and talking, while they, in the meantime, noticed that on the left side of the road leading to the office building, numerous hinoki tree trunks were floating in a kind of canal-like body of water widening out into a lake, but of course, Iida-san didn’t know the reason for this, they would get an answer once inside, and they sat around a table in one of the rooms of the office building, where two miya-daikus were waiting for them, a middle-aged one, and a fresh-faced youth, it seemed that the older one was the teacher of the younger one, in any event somehow they belonged together, this was evident, although at the same time there was no sign of the master-apprentice relation between them, the fresh-faced youth sat just as decisively and proudly in his chair and answered the questions as did his older companion, both of them in the Jingū’s white work-overalls, and they gazed at them with a fairly suspicious yet at the same time somewhat curious look in their eyes, and in the beginning they didn’t really seem to understand what this strange pair wanted from them, this gaijin and this fidgety Japanese from Kyōto, so they didn’t even really respond to the questions put to them, instead they just warded the questions off, as if they were avoiding them, and they tried to give the most inane answers possible, particularly the older miya-daiku, he, as if he were laughing at them, was more and more aloof, and observed the two visitors with a somewhat derisive smile, he observed them, and uttered his replies from an ever-increasing distance, while incessantly looking up at the clock on the wall, so that, well, the fresh-faced youth was the one to say something occasionally, for example that the hinoki cypresses float in that canal to where the water naturally flows from the sacred river of the Jingū, from the Izusu River, because they dry out there for two years, that happens first, the younger carpenter continued, they bring the hinoki trunks, trimmed and stripped of their bark and branches, and these, he added, are delivered continuously every single day, already from the beginning of the Misoma-Hajime-sai, they are immediately placed in the canal, and they really float there, they are soaked for two years, but as to the visitors’ question as to how is it possible to dry wood in water, he did not betray anything, because the older one took up the thread of conversation, he announced that every single piece for the Shikinen Sengū was prepared here in this workshop, for Naikū and for Gekū, and with that he fell silent, he crossed his arms over his chest, glanced up at the clock, then looked at Iida-san, and it appeared in any event that he wished to demonstrate to the employee of the Shicho just how much he did not have time for idle chatter here, he was haughty, he was uncooperative, and he was increasingly deflecting the questions as soon as the Western friend began to formulate them, because of course he was posing the questions, Kawamoto-san, as always, only assumed the role of interpreter, he was trying with every possible means, with his body and his posture, to make his friend realize: this conversation must immediately come to an end, and then it was not drawn out for too much longer, after a while, his friend also grew weary of asking in vain, he was not getting any real answers to anything, so that at last he got up from the table, at which point all the others jumped up as well, the two carpenters accepted the gifts that had been brought but didn’t even look at them, and already they were gone, so if it was going to go like this then they had come here for nothing, the Western friend noted in subdued tones, but Iida-san heard, and in order to pacify them, he informed them that the person they were about to meet was someone, as he put it, whom worldly beings hardly ever saw, because he was the sacred person of the Shikinen Sengū, they didn’t even refer to him as the director of construction here, in his case they used the old expression, and they called him toryō, everyone addressed him like that, and he enjoyed truly great esteem, even if of course, like for everyone else here, the Jingū Shicho was the lord above him, although as for that, the current toryō was the kind of person who did not really acknowledge anyone as being above himself, only his kamis of the Heavens and Earth, and in the very first place, Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess, Iida-san explained, Amaterasu Ōmikami, the resident of the shrine in Naikū, whose grandson, he continued proficiently, Ninigi no Mikoto, descended to the Earth in order to render judgment upon the squabbling people, and to deter them from further squabbling, he struck down his trident in South Kyūshū, where he had landed, into the peak of a mountain called Takachiho, so that people would remember him, and ever since then the trident is still there, he explained and he did not continue to speak about the first Emperor, though it appeared he would have been happy to do so, the visitors however did not ask, and since it seemed he was waiting for that, he leaned back in his chair slightly offended, pursed his lips, and sank into a brief transitional silence, and that is how the time passed in the office of the Naikū carpentry workshop; Iida-san scratched his head, he went out, he came back in, he looked at the clock, right away, he kept saying to the guests, and sat down only to get up and go out again, and while these long minutes of waiting were hard for Iida-san to endure, particularly without talking, he returned again and again to describing the character of the toryō, whom, the two friends had the impression — it was not difficult to figure this out — Iida-san did not know in the least, only from hearsay, and he was relaying this to them, practically elevating this illustrious personage to the status of a demi-god, thus they were informed that this meeting was an entirely extraordinary gift — and he greatly stressed the word purezento, that is, gift — of the Jingū Shicho Public Relations Department, extraordinary, because in the first place, he b
abbled on, the toryō had work to do, the work had begun, and he, bearing full responsibility for all operations in his one single person, had to be everywhere at once, every work-process was concentrated in his hands, without him not a single planing-machine could be switched on, not one single cut could be chiseled by anyone, but one must realize — Iida-san lowered his voice, and here, even in this somewhat air-conditioned room, he dabbed his sweaty forehead again with a white handkerchief, after which he folded it up meticulously — one must realize that his task, of the first order, or how should he say it, said Iida-san, his immediate task is to separate the tree trunks that are worked on according to a precise order, because the mikoshi was constructed from one kind of material — this was obvious, wasn’t it — of the wondrous hinoki family, and the buildings from yet other materials, and a different material was used for constructing the walls than the columns — that too was understandable, wasn’t it? — but not only that, Iida-san gasped for air — the thoughts were rushing out one after the other from his head with such speed, and he wanted to share them with the guests with the exact same speed, so that he could hardly catch his breath — not only that, he raised his voice, and here he had to state again that the toryō’s very first task was that of drawing, apart from him no one else could draw, that was the most sacred and exclusive knowledge of a toryō, and he, the current one was particularly, extraordinarily gifted at knowing what to sketch onto the lower and upper parts of the evenly sawed-off tree trunk, how the saw should then proceed as it cut columns or planks from the hinoki-trunks, how finely the mechanical or the handheld planes should run along them, because his drawing decides how a column shall emerge from the tree trunk, moreover, it also decides what individual columns will serve which part of the building, and then in what function they will serve the higher interests of the shrine; Iida-san was so swept up that he nearly expressed himself in poetry, and who knows where this rapturous ardor for the toryō would have stopped if the person in question had not stepped in himself, true, not a demi-god, but an elderly man with snow-white hair, with a thin, tall build and enormous dark-brown eyes, himself wearing the attire of the others, that is white overalls: a dear, friendly old man, with a smiling look in his eyes, whose clothes still had sawdust on them, which he began to brush off himself; when after his entry, the customary presentation of gifts, mutual introductions, and the exchange of visiting cards — he said, laughing, he did not have any such thing on hand while working — Iida-san offered him a place to sit down, and signaling what an honor he felt it to be here and to be able to meet such prestigious interested parties sent by the Jingū Shicho, the toryō sat down cautiously so as not to begrime the chair too much, and then in time forgetting all about that, he immediately relaxed, sitting with his elbows leaning on the table, namely that he had learnt from Iida-san that these two were not visitors that had been sent by the Jingū Shicho but that they had been permitted, and they merely wanted him to tell them about the Shikinen Sengū, about the preparations, the trees, the work process — his eyes glittered gaily as he then began to speak, the words arose from him quickly, as one who lives in the impassioned shadow of great things, and who has stepped out of it just for a short time in order to speak of these things; but then would have to go back, go back to his passion, this aspect of him characterized the entire conversation: that he was burning now in a kind of truly great affair, and could not think of anything else, ever since he had been designated; only about this, the 71st Shikinen Sengū; and in the first place, he did everything possible to steer the conversation away from his own person, which they asked about first, because all the same, what could he say, he was a simple carpenter, a miya-daiku and that he remained so, he explained to the guests, only that the Jingū Shicho had honored him by naming him toryō, and as the toryō, he had now become a carpenter who bore a great, very great responsibility to the Jingū Shicho, to the Naikū and to the Gekū, but, most of all to Amaterasu Ōmikami; I am a simple person, stated this simple person, and he laughed at them and answered everything they asked very seriously, and gave them answers that cut straight to the heart of the matter, and if he felt that perhaps they were having a problem understanding something, or if he felt the topic immediately at hand to be of special importance, he repeated his sentences, even several times over, and at such times his brow darkened, now looking deeply into the eyes of the first, and now the second guest, and only when he was convinced that they understood what he was saying did he laugh again and wait for the next question, and the next, but after a while he digressed in order to speak of what he considered to be important, although they hadn’t asked him about it, because they had begun with why the Shikinen Sengū takes place every twenty years, to which he replied that well, because the Jingū has to be rejuvenated, and according to the elders the time for that comes exactly every twenty years, for the Jingū goes forward in time with man, and the gods too do not age, thus in the eternally youthful Jingū, there is a place for the eternally youthful gods, this is what he could say altogether as to the reason, he smiled at them, and well, how does someone become a toryō: it doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter how beautifully you speak, the only thing that matters is how you work, and of course age and practical experience play a role, not just professional, but human practical experience as well, and so it goes on from there — he gestured with his hand to show how it went on from there — but the essential thing, he raised his index finger, and looked at them very seriously with his enormous dark brown eyes, the essential thing is what is in your heart, the god looks and sees, and knows everything exactly, the god, he glanced at them with an impish look, and the Jingū Shicho too: after the latter remark those present, with the chuckling leadership of Iida-san, replied with complicit understanding laughter, and as for how someone becomes a good miya-daiku, that too, said the toryō, is very easy to understand, because here, in their native Japan, but especially here in the Jingū, the custom is such that the master does not teach, but that the disciple observes the master, and that is how he was with his master as well, he observed how his master, his oyakata, went about his work, he intensely scrutinized every movement, he watched what he was doing and how he was doing it and he imitated him, we call this, he explained, the “me de manabu” way, if someone is teaching, then it will certainly never be possible to learn anything from that person, this is what it’s like, he nodded in affirmation and his audience nodded, too, as from this point, all three had been transformed into keen auditors, the personality, the directness, the friendly nature of the toryō, his frankness and openness, had quickly swept them off their feet, even Iida-san, who at the beginning, striving to ensure that the authority of the Jingū Shicho would not remain latent for a single moment in this situation, he himself, his countenance serious, impeded the toryō with questions, dabbing away in the strain of his great task at his fat head, from his skull to his neck; but then even he forgot all this and, like the other two, really listened to the toryō’s words enthusiastically, as when, for example, he began to speak of that process of drawing, namely that it is here that everything begins and is determined, that is the essence of the entire activity of the toryō, namely that only he knows how to draw, and he only came to know this after having studied the drawing plans in the Shicho during half of a lifetime, of these, that is to say the drawing plans, there were altogether three kinds, the really old ones, the old ones, and the newer ones — for example the “kirikumu zushi,” to follow this and draw it onto the wood is a frequent solution, a person, he demonstrated something with wide gestures in the air, looks at the old drawing plans and he stores them away in his head, that’s what he did as well, as for books themselves, of which there were an innumerable quantity in the Shicho — he made a droll, wry face — well, books never help, because books are someone else’s experience, they unfortunately can never help the toryō, only his own experiences can be of help to him, he must always try everything out for himself, of course, before he actually become
s a toryō, because then he cannot try anything out any more, just think about it, a toryō cannot make a mistake, if a drawing is not executed correctly on the tree trunk there will be huge problems, because then you might as well just toss out the entire tree, but you can’t just throw out a hinoki like that, they had seen already, at the Misoma-Hajime-sai, what a tree goes through by the time it gets here, you can’t be tossing them out just like that, every single hinoki is a soul, and this soul must be dealt with very carefully, firmly, very carefully, and because of that a toryō cannot make a mistake, more precisely he may never make a mistake, he gazed again into their eyes, then after a brief pause spoke about how in the first place everything has to be there in his head and in his heart, then he has to measure very precisely, look at the drawing plans continuously, and only after that carry out his sumi-zuke, that is the drawing on the tree trunk; ink, every toryō uses a special ink, of course he did as well, and still even with all that, it is not certain that all will be well, because it can happen that the daiku may not cut according to the drawing, meaning that, he explained, he may not cut with hairsbreadth accuracy along the line, then the problem is just as huge, and this can happen in principle, but in reality it never happens, because a daiku never makes mistakes, everyone here, every one of his colleagues had been through the most outstanding training, all of them, nearly all of them could be a toryō, at the very least all of the older ones could, unconditionally, everyone here understood every single phase of work to that degree, but there is no stampede, he laughed, lest they might think that in front of the door, where the selection of the toryō is taking place, there would be some kind of major fisticuffs, to be a toryō is a great, a very great responsibility, one is not only a toryō by day, but by night as well, when he is asleep, even then, he has no family, no amusements, no rest, no illnesses, no holidays, entirely up until the point that the Shikinen Sengū is fully completed, he said; then again he returned to the explanation of the drawing, so that they would understand his words without fail, accordingly the drawing, I look at the drawing, I look at it continuously, and I only draw on the basis of that, but I don’t draw without a drawing plan right away, because then I can make a mistake, and if I make a mistake, it will not be possible to fix, to look at the drawing plan, measure accurately, and to draw accurately, it is only possible like that, and that was exactly what he did, and what he had not mentioned as of yet, he raised his index finger again, was the eye, because the eye has a huge role to play when using a tool, to see if everything is going well, and if the result is good, this must be examined with the eye, it wasn’t like in Europe where some kind of tool was used for that; but the eye, and then — he lent forward above the table toward the guests — the tools, the toryō always makes his own tools, for example, he inspects the tree and he makes the tools for that tree, yes, he makes his own tools as well, every single one by himself, even if he is working on something at home, he still always does this, then for the Shikinen Sengū it will be particularly so, because it is only worthwhile working with such tools that are really meant for the given raw wood, it is clear when the raw wood is there, you just have to look, and a person sees what kind of tree it is, and then how he can make the tools for it, but machine tools are used as well, he says, because they don’t look at whether the tool is new or old, but instead which is the most perfect to work with, he will show them later — he gestured to somewhere behind his back — how it all works; of course, mechanical tools, these are only used in the arabori phase, that is with the raw wood, not for the fine work; then it is time for the hand tools, and well there are no changes, no changes whatsoever, they do everything exactly the same as they did for the 70th Shikinen Sengū, and that was just like the 69th, say the older toryōs and so forth, going back to the very old times, and as to whether the new shrine is similar to the old one or is the same? he repeated the question, well, this seems like a difficult question, but it isn’t difficult, because the answer is simple, that is, the new building is the same as the old one, and as to why this is so, it is because the deity who resides there, Amaterasu Ōmikami, is the same, it is as simple as that, and that is how you must think of it, because even though the whole thing is rebuilt again, and the Three Treasures re-created for every Shikinen Sengū, nothing ever changes, everything remains the same, you know — the toryō leaned again toward them above the table, with a gay expression — if I go over to one shrine or another to pray, already I can sense from the scent of the hinoki that everything is the same, and it is that way with me in life as well, the toryō nodded, his audience nodding in agreement, I think about it, and I feel that everything is the same, well that is what it is like, that is how I think, and that is how my master also thought, and the toryō before him as well, but now, the Western friend interrupted him, let’s talk about the last day, what happens then; well, that too is very simple, the toryō spread his hands apart, because it goes like this, when all the materials are ready and beautiful, and the drying of the wood is as it should be, then the entire shrine is built, everything, but everything is built, assembled together, to see if it fits, if it is accurate, if it is correct, but all of this of course takes place within the workshop, and continuously, in the workshop, yes, because only human work can take place there; outside at the kodenchi, on the great day of the Shikinen Sengū, when they assemble the whole thing, there the work of the deities takes place, after that everything stands empty for one month, then it is tidied up for the last time and decorated, this however is the work of the priests, as is the final ceremony as well, before the sengyo, when they bring the deity from the old shrine, and then the people come, countless people come from all over Japan, and everyone prays, well it’s like that, but if you’d like, said the toryō, I can enumerate again the whole thing from the beginning, that it all starts outside in the sacred forest of the Jingū Shicho, but you saw that in Akasawa: there we select the trees, that is the seizai, then comes the first drawing, the rough sketch, that is the sumi-kaki, this is followed by the drying process, which is followed by the kannabai, that is the mechanical planing, then there is another sumi-kaki, then they take, he explained patiently, the entire thing, all of the trees into the workshop, that is the individual tree trunks are divided up among the various storerooms — there are eight such storerooms here on the grounds of the workshop, four of them for Naikū, four of them for Gekū — so, there in the individual storerooms the toryō, that is to say myself, he pointed to himself, draws the sumi-zuke on the tree trunk, so I could say, he says, that I sumi-zukize them, then there is the drying, and then the daikus try to put together the individual shrines in the workshop, and they keep them all there, built, then comes the next, and they build that one, they keep that one, and then comes the next one, and so on, but then the Jingū Shicho issues a deadline, so they take them all apart, and they take them out to the grounds of Naikū and Gekū, and there they are constructed for the last time, things proceed in such a beautiful orderly manner during the Shikinen Sengū, the toryō lowered his voice, then he looked up at the wall clock, exactly one hour had gone by, and he said, one cannot work without a good heart, it was godly work that he was doing, therefore the chief mandate for him was that he must not be preoccupied with anything else, only with work, must not think of anything else, only work, he accordingly had to think correctly, he had to work correctly, when the guests yet asked him if the toryō’s knowledge was concealed within his soul, he reflected a little upon this last question, then — like one who had forgotten what he had been asked — he said, a good tree, that is the essential thing, and with that he got up from the table, he bowed to the guests, indicating that the conversation had come to an end, and he offered to take them to the individual storerooms, which is what then occurred, Iida-san proceeding in front, having suddenly realized toward the end that he should have been representing the Jingū Shicho here in a more forceful manner, that is he became aware of having been somewhat pushed into the background, as events proceeded there in
side the office, whereas he, as the representative of the Jingū Shicho, could not permit this, due to his rank and hierarchy, because of that Iida-san was now keeping abreast of the toryō with his rapid gait, with his own little roly-poly figure, his short rounded legs could hardly keep up, but he endeavored to do so with his round figure in the scorching heat, and he did keep up, and he withstood it, and they went forward like that, they in front and the two guests behind them, the toryō accordingly turning back to them now and then to explain what they were seeing, he went with them to all the eight storerooms, then he showed them, too, how finely the planing machine, to which the raw wood was entrusted, could cut, and he prepared a sheet of hinoki two meters wide, he ran the machine along it, and a fine strip of wood, hairsbreadth thin, was produced, curling before their eyes without breaking off anywhere, he looked at his guests with proud contentment, because they were of course gaping in amazement, and they touched the wood as if they could not believe this was possible, and they ran their fingers and ran them again along the planed piece of wood, they praised how much, but how astonishingly, how unbelievably smooth the surface was, then after this little demonstration concluded everyone received a piece from the hairsbreadth-thin strip of wood as a gift, at last only the farewells remained, the two guests bowed, the toryō bowed, then, lifting it up, he thanked them again and again for the purezento, which he had been carrying wedged under his arm during the entire walk, finally he bowed deeply to Iida-san as well, Iida-san just nodded at the toryō, and was already headed off to the door, with his own characteristic movements already waddling toward the exit like one who is in a great hurry, then when the guests caught up — it was exactly two o’clock — to their surprise he recommended that maybe they should eat something, he, as he remarked, had not been able to have lunch today for obvious reasons, and as they saw that their consent would be very gratifying to him, and that a negative response would leave him deeply embittered, they said yes, and went to a nearby restaurant recommended by Iida-san, and they ordered everything that Iida-san, as a local specialist, advised them to, and with that, when the last course had disappeared from the table, Iida-san, as if he been struck by a magic wand, was completely altered, changing from a stern, serious, and haughty bureaucrat into a dear, friendly, and good-natured young man, he began talking about his work, about how many, how very many important visitors had already been entrusted to him to show them the shrines, there had even been here — with him! — an actor from Scotland, he stated in meaningful tones, and he nearly hung onto his guests’ reaction, to see what they would say to that, and when they praised his outstanding achievements, and prophesied a great future for him, he at last was appeased, and suddenly he began to talk about his family, and here too the words were flying off his tongue so quickly; and then he thought better of it and ordered two more local specialties, Kawamoto-san could hardly keep up with translating his words: he had an older sister, and a younger sister, he enumerated that the older sister was married already, and the couple lived in Kawasaki, the younger sister was still at home where he lived too, not too far away for that matter, Iida-san gestured to somewhere behind his back with the chopsticks, someone had to stay at home, his parents were old and sick, there had to be a man in the house, you understand, don’t you, he asked, well, of course, the guests nodded, the family could not leave the sick parents all alone, he also thought so, said Iida-san approvingly, and then the two guests paid, and stepped out of the restaurant onto the street, he was already behaving in such a way as if they had become good friends and he said good-bye to them, sweet boy, said the Western friend, and watched smiling as Iida-san’s roly-poly figure on those two rounded legs of his, teetering this way and that, grew distant, heading toward the Jingū Shicho along the street shimmering in the heat, but his companion didn’t say anything to this, but instead began to speak about how ashamed he was that he could only show such a Jingū Shicho to his guest; of course, the meeting with the toryō, he hoped, had given him joy, but he, Kawamoto-san, asked to be forgiven for the events in the Jingū, which his friend of course had no idea of what to do with, he simply didn’t know what to do with this abrupt change of mood in his host, because he, who had not been paying any attention to him at all, had been so utterly captivated by the toryō’s entire being, that for hours now his host practically had not even existed, he was just an interpreter who was there, and who functioned invisibly and self-evidently, but who had no existence of his own, but now he suddenly stepped out of this non-existence, and not even just in any old way, namely it was as if something were bursting out of him, he spoke without pause, like someone who had been preparing this for a long time, maybe for days already, and it was already fairly strange that Kawamoto was speaking uninterruptedly, until now, that is, he had not uttered more than two or three sentences at a time, but rather listened to the other, now, however, he was dissecting the separate turns of fortune that had occurred to them with the Jingū Shicho, and was doing so even when, having reached the station, they bought their tickets to Kyōto and sat down on the platform, and not only that, but he even started up with Kohori-san as well, and asked to be excused for him, and for how they had to sleep in the car in Akasawa, he was very ashamed that things turned out like that, and he was ashamed that the ceremony in Akasawa had proceeded as it did, he was certain, he continued in the dreadful heat of the station, that his friend had been hoping for something else, and he surely must be disappointed now, and he, Kawamoto, regretted this so much that he simply did not know how to make it right, but the other just looked, and said nothing, and stared at him as he could not understand anything of what was going on, maybe the best thing, his friend continued, would be if they returned to Kyōto, and if he would permit him, as a way of saying farewell, as there were only two days left now, to go somewhere, to take him to a place that would perhaps meet with his liking, it wasn’t much of a sight, just a little nothing, but perhaps the other would be glad for this, and this other just gaped at him, and now he was confused because he still could not understand what had happened with his friend, what this whole thing was all about, so that of course he agreed, and he thanked him for the offer, and all the way on the train he analyzed, to change the subject, the great beauty of the Shintō shrine, what a dazzlingly pure construction this was, how much elegance lay in its simplicities, in the lack of ornament and the infinite solicitude with which the materials were treated, although it was already evident that nothing could alter Kawamoto’s mood, he just sat next to the window, and kept glancing out, as if speech would be very difficult for him right now, his friend sensed that the more he began to praise something, the gloomier his host became, he was completely bewildered, so that in his confusion he left off the conversation and thus the last kilometers back to Kyōto were spent in silence, and even afterward they didn’t really know what to say to each other, as having reached the station they got onto bus number 208 headed homeward, which then became positively unpleasant, the confusion within them grew deeper and deeper, they lurched to and fro in the bus, which in addition was packed with a group of noisy American tourists, and they said not one word to each other, Kawamoto’s complexion even changed, namely he was pale, as white as a sheet, his friend ascertained in fright; we get off here, Kawamoto said, and the guest found himself in the station of the famous Silver Temple: but they did not go toward the Temple, but suddenly turned off to the left on one of the roads leading up to it, and at another equally hidden point started heading somewhere on a somewhat neglected trail upward, up to the Daimonji mountain, as it immediately became apparent, and the whole thing was strange, Kawamoto said not one word the whole time, and his friend didn’t want to start asking any questions, this must be the little surprise, so this is what he was talking about in Ise, he thought now, climbing after him, after the despondent, peculiar host, who was going on ahead of him, showing him, as it were, the way, and at times showing him where to step, because the path was becoming ever more steep and ever more rugged, and i
n the twilight he could hardly even see where to step, but Kawamoto was climbing upward with such determination, and due to this determination, he did not ask him even occasionally for help, to pull him up now and then on one of the tougher spots, he only sensed Kawamoto’s back above, in front of him, and his attention was entirely focused on the path so was not to slip, not to fall, not to roll backward, smashing every bone in his body, because this already was no pleasant evening stroll, but real mountain climbing, one had to clutch here at this, grab there at that, a branch sticking out here, a larger rock edge there, and climb and climb upward, and all the while twilight was descending with great swiftness, as if a net were being cast down upon them, maybe Kawamoto is hurrying so we can get there while you can still see something, he thought, but he didn’t understand anything, he was wrong even about that, Kawamoto was not at all rushing because he wished to reach the top of the mountain before the onset of darkness, there must be some monastery or a Shintō pilgrimage place, thought his companion, but it was not some monastery or a Shintō pilgrimage place that Kawamoto wanted to show him, but instead all of Kyōto; the Western friend perceived this when at last they reached the peak of Daimonji mountain, and Kawamoto-san stood aside, and he could look down from the heights, and there down below — completely encompassing the horizon — was in actuality the entire city, darkness had by this point almost completely fallen, the lights were burning down below in the distance already, and they didn’t say anything; he, because the sight had left him at a complete loss for words, and Kawamoto because he was afraid that he was showing this in vain, that his friend — who had helped him form a connection between his solitary life and the world, due to which he owed him eternal gratitude — didn’t understand, and it wasn’t possible to explain: here, on the peak of the Daimonji, this was not the world of words; this gigantic evening picture of the city encircled by mountains said, without a single word, everything that he wanted to tell his friend before bidding farewell: an evening picture, as the glimmer of twilight was disappearing into nothingness, and darkness finally descended, down below there was an enormous city, with the tiny lights of its stars setting out an enormous surface for itself, and up here above were the two of them, Kawamoto Akio and his friend, who although he was pleased that his friend wasn’t talking and was only staring downward below with dazzled eyes here from the heights, he was also aware that it was in vain, this friend saw nothing, the Western eye only saw the firefly-like sparkling of the evening city, but nothing of what he wanted to tell him, of what this hopeless, solitary, trembling land was signaling to one from down there below, certainly this place merely signified to him the wondrous gardens, the wondrous monasteries, and the wondrous mountains all around, so that Kawamoto had already turned around, and set off on the path leading downward, when this friend, his eyes filled with wonder, crowning an already irreparable misunderstanding, and, as it were, to offer thanks for this enchanting gift, spoke to him, and certain of an affirmative reply, asked the following question: Akio-san, you really love Kyōto, don’t you; which in a single instant caused a complete breakdown in Kawamoto, and he could only say in a hoarse voice, as he headed downward in the thick darkness of the path, just this much, going back, that no, not in the least, I loathe this city.