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Aheavy fog rolled in from the stand of andromeda trees,
wrapping itself about the people on the bank and spreading
across the surface of the lake. The sounds of Ohina’s softly
uttered chanting filled the air.
O goddess of waters, goddess of wisdom, Benzaiten, goddess of the
moon, we beseech thee. We pray for the sounds of your biwa. Let
not the waters at the depths of this dam go stagnant. Let not these
waters perish. Let not the spirits of the people run dry, and bring
to us good dreams.
A sound like the throaty whistling of a bird could be heard.
It must have been from the breathing of Oshizu, making her
way through the fog.
With Oshizu backing up Ohina’s chant—Goddess of waters,
goddess of wisdom, Benzaiten, goddess of the moon—and as they
became mixed with tiny droplets of mist, the voices sounded
like a shômyô invocation.
But—he had forgotten what his grandfather had taught him
when he was playing the biwa. Benzaiten was the goddess of
the waters. And she was also the goddess of wisdom who had
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6
power over fate. What was more, she was the one who had dominion
over soft and delicate sounds. In spite of the fact that
Masahiko had hardly listened very carefully to his grandfather’s
words, the words of Ohina’s prayer now brought them
back.
Masahiko was being drawn farther and farther into a world
that pulsed and vibrated with feelings so different from those
to which he was normally accustomed. He wished he could recapture
that inexpressibly beautiful rapture he had felt back
when he unexpectedly came upon the well near his family’s
old house, back before Karehito had appeared. At that time he
had wondered if it was his great-great-grandmother Nazuna’s
face he had seen reflected at the bottom of the well, but now
he also wondered if that unearthly, smiling face might have
been Benzaiten. He chided himself for this strange short-circuiting
of his thoughts. Yet in becoming absorbed in Ohina’s
chanted shômyô invocation he found he was pushing himself
back, once again, to the place beside the well.
Around the dam was a new road that had been carved into
the face of the mountain. At first sight the cut in the land had
been disturbing, and yet now, with its far ends buried in the
fog, he could see it as a moving part of the earth’s crust and
could feel the vibrations of the earth’s skin conveyed through
the wide outskirts of the Mt. Aso volcanic plain.
According to a geological record he had consulted back in
the temple, the local area was composed of the same rock and
fossil materials as those of the Sambo Mountains in Kochi Prefecture.
The geology of the Sambo Mountain belt contained
the remains of an ancient lagoon that lay at the top of a volcanic
island formed of limestone. In it had been found the fossils
of sea urchins, of a kind of clam called “megarodons,” and
of foraminifers dating from the end of the Triassic Period, approximately
two hundred million years ago. The volcanic isCHAPTER
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land had been formed somewhere near the earth’s equator,
but it had gradually migrated up to the southern region of Kumamoto
Prefecture. According to the book, this had been determined
by measurements of the earth’s magnetic field. And
so it seemed that this area contained some of the oldest geological
strata in Japan. Sometime between the Jurassic and the
Cretaceous Period this volcanic island which had been drifting
amidst the oceans, and which contained a lagoon within it, had
become attached to the ancient land of Japan.
If all this was so, then the stories believed in by the old people
of the mountain villages—tales that told of how, not so far
off, along the border with Miyazaki Prefecture above the headwaters
of the Midorikawa and Kumagawa Rivers, there had
been a lake set in the womb of the mountains—they could not
be dismissed as the absurd dreams and delusions of country
folk.
The vestiges of such dreams could be seen in the cuts of the
mountainsides. In the cross sections of the earth’s crust one
could see small parts of the workings of the entire universe—
of the wild energies in which the earth had been churned up
and released amidst surges of basalt and conglomerate.
Wrapped into the skin of the earth were countless trees and
briars that had been stroked by the palms of winds and rains,
and which had been covering the mountains since time immemorial.
What sort of bewitching beings, Masahiko wondered,
must be out there playing about in the far reaches of
the mountains.
The sounds starting to be released within him were trying to
establish relations with the moistures that had been slowly
seeping out from the earth since the distant geological past.
And so he realized that if, for example, there is enough moisture
to make the thread of just a single insect, then the string
that is the self will not be severed.
289
When was it, I wonder, that my ears began to get so damaged?
Was it that they lost their sense of tuning and became
closed off or, rather, have they been left wide open? He could
reach no decision. He could no longer bear listening to the
sounds of the city. In particular, he could not stand the women’s
voices. It sounded as if their voices were escaping from their
bodies through the tops of their heads—as if detaching themselves
from the lips that had owned them and seeking an independent
existence on their own.
There was a time when Masahiko had looked on rather
coolly when his grandfather, with that frightened look in his
eyes, had seemed to be searching for a refuge amidst the scattered
leaves at the base of the ginkgo tree. But now he could
better appreciate his grandfather’s feelings. Like his grandfather,
he too had come to react to the din of city sounds with
feelings of trepidation. What was more, he found that he had
been losing his ability to distinguish between good sounds and
bad ones in his mind and body, and that he couldn’t adjust his
hearing. It was as if, like a rapidly multiplying virus, both the
voices of people and the sounds of things were undergoing nuclear
fission. But now, thanks to hearing the voices of Ohina
and Omomo, he was starting a healing process. It seems, he
thought, I’m being healed by the soft moisture of the mountain
mists that constantly flows from morning to night. If my ears
become healed, what sorts of sounds might I be able to hear?
Masahiko was like an insect wrapped inside the thin covering
of a semi-transparent cocoon, groping its way toward a corner
of the heavens. His body felt as if it were being encouraged
and led on by a regular drum-like heartbeat sounding from the
depths of the earth. Urged along by the vibrations springing
from the earth’s primordial bedrock, he had the feeling that he
was standing by himself. It wasn’t a feeling of isolation, for he
felt surrounded by the spirits of the water, the grasses, and the
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trees. And didn’t these signs extend all the way to a meditative
moon? Because of these things, he was now able to hear the sacred
song welling up from the mists.
That sound of waterfalls I heard before—what was that
about? Could it have been a premonition, or an announcement
that my ears have been restored to hearing? He felt as if his insensitive
eardrums had awakened to the hidden mysteries of
the world. Certainly he had been hearing voices calling out
from a distant world.
He wasn’t sure if he could call what he’d been hearing “music.”
The rhythms the mountains exhale through the mists
from the depths of the earth’s thick strata are waiting for the
unfailing dawning of day while the trees and plants preserve
their forms and are dyed exquisitely in a multitude of shades
of green. And in the flash of the first rays of the dawn light, all
the colors of the trees are woven together. Color, like kotodama,
the spirit of language, is born of such things as the
union between the morning light and the grasses, trees, fields
and mountains. And among those who can be present in this
moment, there is joy. The people of Amazoko are characters in
an epic poem extending back to the reaches of ancient times.
The smell of water grew fainter. Masahiko felt a power—as if
someone were pulling him toward the sky on a thread he was
holding onto with his teeth. From amidst the flowing mountain
mists the thread grew thinner and thinner as he rose up.
The back of his neck was trembling and, just when it seemed
the thread was about to break, another thread the color of a
rainbow came close to him and he merged with it. The thread
must have been the limpid voices of Ohina and Omomo. High
up in the sky a slender moon shone brightly, with a string attached
to its bottom edge. Who, he wondered, would pluck
that string? And as he watched, another thread appeared—a
second string.
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It seemed it must have been a string of the legendary musician
Mizumaro. This famed player had been given the name
Benzaiten Myo-on Suijin, meaning Benzaiten, the god of mysterious
water sounds. Perhaps he had given himself the name
Mizumaro because it too contained the word for water. And
then, soon after—the light of a third string appeared. It must
have been the Isara River. And then he heard a tremendous
sound—a fourth string! Strung between the sky and the earth
and resonating, it was the thickest of all. This string was a sigh
that had emerged millions of years ago when the rocks were
released near the equator from a volcanic island that held
within it a lagoon.
He felt the sounds were drawing out and expelling the bad
spirits that had been accumulating deep within himself.
There’s no way that I, by myself, can pluck those four strings
strung from the moon over Amazoko. I’m nothing more than
a tiny silkworm wrapped in a translucent cocoon, keeping my
heart low and listening with my neck lifted up.
The candles reflecting against the sleeves of the two whiterobed
women flickered faintly from time to time. They looked
like the coming and going of spirits on the surface of the waters.
Then the women placed the candles on the rock that
Kappei had so carefully cleared off with his hands. Suddenly,
Masahiko’s body felt a chill. Could it be floating?
The light of the moon grew stronger. It was hard to make
out the faces of the people.
Kappei turned his head. “After all, I . . .”
The tone of his voice was husky. Masahiko thought of asking
him, “After all, you . . .what?” but he didn’t feel like speaking
out.
“I think I’m going to build a double-arched bridge.”
In a voice that also sounded husky, Karehito inquired cautiously,
“Where?”
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“By the remains of the old Moonshadow Bridge.”
Omomo began to sing again. She was seated on the rock
with the candles. The mist was growing thinner. Her obi took
on the darkened colors of the water.
Combing my hair
By the mirror of the lake
Strings of my heart
Flowers of the autumn equinox
I come to receive
The crimson color
Myo-on Benten Suijin
Water spirit of mysterious sounds
I come to paint
Your lips
With crimson
I remember hearing that!—Masahiko thought to himself.
With the sounds of his grandfather’s muttering voice lingering
in the depths of his ears, Omomo’s singing grew even
clearer.
He recalled his grandfather’s words. Little Benten-sama, she
was there by the banks of Mirror Lake. She was the goddess of
all the women. And on the twenty-third night of the moon, the
women all gathered at our old place and drank the seven-colored
liquor made from the fruits of the trees of the mountains. At
the ceremony of waiting for the moonrise they drank and offered
prayers to Benten-sama. And they painted their lips
crimson. They received their crimson lip coloring in a shell
from your great-grandmother. Her name was Nazuna and she
was revered by all the women, but by the time she passed the
age of one hundred her body was so small.
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Combing my hair
By the mirror of the lake
Strings of my heart
Flowers of the autumn equinox
I come to receive
The crimson color
That was back in the old days, way off in the mountains, so
the women didn’t just carry around lip coloring the way they
do nowadays with lipstick. And just before moonrise on the
twenty-third night, the women-folk would pass around the
mountain peach liquor and everyone broke out in smiles and
laughter. And at those times little old Nazuna-sama had all the
young girls of sixteen and seventeen sit down and she passed
out little bronze mirrors. I watched them do it twice during my
childhood, but the only time I really remember was the time
Oai first colored her lips red.
I always thought she was my older sister, who cherished me
and grew up with me. It was later that Oai told me that she was
my grandmother’s foundling. She had been abandoned by the
bridge, but instead of being eaten by the wild mountain dogs
she was found by Grandmother, treated with care, and sent to
a midwives’ school, thanks to which she could make a living.
That time on the night of the moonrise ceremony, when she
first had her lips colored by Grandmother, Oai didn’t yet know
that she was an orphan.
“This year the time has come for my Oai to have her lips colored.
So this being your first time, you must have some wish
to make, don’t you?” And then, beaming, Grandma Nazuna
passed the shell with the red coloring to Oai, who put her lips
forward a bit. It was a sight I rarely had a chance to see. I
watched from behind the women in silence.
The ring finger is called the rouge finger, and it was
Grandma’s finger that applied the rouge to my sister’s lips, her
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lips, colored, were like the quince coming into bloom. Though
she was my own sister, I felt as though I were witnessing something
rare. All the women sighed and smiled. I began to feel
excited.
Myo-on Benten Suijin
Water spirit of mysterious sounds
I come to paint
Your lips
With crimson
“All right then, let’s go to Benten-sama. Let’s get started.”
And in saying this the women hurried to clean up, quickly
shutting the doors and windows in a manner different from
usual. At moonrise on the twenty-third night, as the night
wore on, the owls were hooting off in the mountains where all
the trees and grasses were asleep. The women received the red
lip coloring from Grandma and then went to the pond and offered
some of the crimson coloring, putting it on Bentensama’s
lips. They made wishes, and—it must have been on the
twenty-third night of the month. It must have been sometime
after the rainy season, before the Tanabata festival.
The sight of both young and old people laughing as they
walked off into the night along the dark bushy path was—as I
think of it now—like that of a collection of old dolls missing
some arms and legs, walking along on their way. It was really
quite a sight. When I tried to follow I was chased back, since
young children weren’t allowed to follow.
When they arrived at the banks of the pond they made their
wishes and took turns putting some of the red coloring on the
lips of the stone face. Then they took some of the same coloring
and put it on their own lips.
Usually when the women went out with the men to the
mountains and did work like carrying loads of firewood, or
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cutting things with their scythes, or chasing wild boars, it was
out of the question to color their lips. But when they made
their wishes to Benten-sama, even the oldest women applied a
little of the crimson coloring to their lips. Then they sang and
danced by the pond. Those nights made the men kind of apprehensive,
so they’d sit off by themselves drinking shochu
liquor and go back home rather early.
What did the women wish for?—Well, the old men told me
about that. The women were told not to tell the men anything
about what they wished for, so they said nothing about it. If
they spoke about it they’d receive Benten-sama’s punishment.
The women drank the seven-colored liquor and sang by themselves.
Yes, I guess it must have made the men feel pretty apprehensive.
In the back of Masahiko’s eyelids the color of Sayuri’s lips—
something he really didn’t want to recall—was superimposed
on Benten-sama’s mouth. The image reflected dimly and then
receded from sight. For some reason he felt a bit relieved. Even
when he tried to drive it out of his consciousness he hadn’t
been able to forget the sight of Sayuri’s dead body being taken
out of the water. His first meeting with Ohina and Omomo by
the banks of the dam had also made a strong impression on
him, but with the passing of days the image of Sayuri’s body
being pulled out of the water at daybreak had remained firmly
fixed within.
When the image of that small, crimson-colored stone mouth
of the moss-covered Benten-sama floated into his vision, suddenly
he felt released from the spell of the dead body. He wondered
what the thoughts of Sayuri, and of Ohina and Omomo
who had been so close to her, would be. As he thought about
this night when the conferring of a successor to Sayuri was taking
place, Masahiko realized that the emotions of Ohina and
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her daughter must be far deeper than anything he could possibly
imagine.
The singing continued. Omomo began to wave a large
flower-patterned fan in front of her face. Along the night shore
the white robes of Ohina and Omomo and the flames of the
candles moved slightly. Her fan became a focus point in the
drifting fog.
Dawn is breaking faintly
Myo-on Benten Daibosatsu
Preserve the secrets of our prayers
For you we scatter flowers
Ah—the waters of autumn
Reflect the light of the heavens
The one who has already
Sunk into the waters
Has been changed
Into a celestial maiden
And returned to Oki no Miya
Floating on the waves
The delicate flowers
Floating on the waves
The delicate flowers
As she sang the last verse, Omomo opened the fan in front
of her face, creating the effect of a bird just about to take
flight. Slowly she turned about once, and then once again. He
couldn’t catch her expression, but from her slightly opened
eyes—eyes like goby fish eyes—Masahiko thought he could
see a blue light radiating outward and piercing through the
fan.
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The band of fabric wrapped about her forehead and tied in
back now trailed across her white robe, along with her long
flowing hair. He could tell that the band was of the same fabric
as the obi that was wrapped about her waist. He could
hardly believe that this was the same country girl wearing a Tshirt
he’d met when he first arrived. With her white robe
sheathing the movements of her body, when she sang the
words “delicate flowers” it seemed he was hearing the singing
of the very figure of Omomo’s body itself.
The celestial maiden whose return to Oki no Miya she had
sung about must have been Sayuri. Had Sayuri been a hitogata
human sacrifice? Did the dam support itself by swallowing up
humans as sacrifices?
The song came to an end. Ohina took another candle in
place of the one that was going out. And then, holding a string
of prayer beads, with her eyes cast downward she attempted to
say something.
n
Ohina’s voice was muffled. “Here at the bottom of the water,
the Mirror of Ikawa well by the Silk Estate . . . Look—see
how fine the day is, the sun is shining on the sea of trees of old
Amazoko. See how the waves of light catch on the wind-swept
tips of the branches of the mulberries and oaks.”
Hushed sounds of amazement rose up amidst the group.
The fog thinned and the light of the moon shone on the sea of
trees beneath the waters. It was as if Ohina were seeing the village
at midday.
“It’s time for our noon rest. Look—not only the monkeys and
boars, but even the cicadas have stopped chattering. Everyone
who works in the mountains and fields is dreaming in the
shade of the trees. And look over there by the old agariya—
there’s a nice striped snake running along the stone pathway
of Flying Stone Ginza.”
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Once again, everyone nodded beneath the slender moon.
The agariya was the section of the village Oshizu was from. All
the houses on the narrow lots of the hillsides were built upon
generations of stone foundations. The agariya was near “Flying
Stone Pass” and built on the highest stone walls of all. It was
the pride of the village. Just beyond its stone walls, on the
steeper slopes was a forest filled with monkeys, boars, crabs,
and all sorts of other creatures that would sometimes come
down and pass along the pathway known as “Flying Stone
Ginza.” When intruders who didn’t know the lay of the land
would sneak in to the village tying to cause trouble, once they
reached the base of the agariya a sudden gust of wind, known
as the matsubori kaze, would pelt them with stones. And so
that was how the name “Flying Stone” came about. The matsubori
was a gust of wind that originated in this area. It was a
wind not found in the flat places of the earth. Even with the
matsubori blowing all about, the stone foundation walls of the
agariya held firm and never collapsed. Back in the times when
the village had been very isolated this place had been a stronghold
for the people of Amazoko.
Oshizu pulled up her quilted collar and shivered a bit as she
stuck her chin into it.
“Oshizu-san—the black cat of the agariya, it just flew over
from the stone wall. It jumped over to the trunk of the first oak
and it’s climbing up.”
“Ah, our black cat. When it flies over to the first oak, that
signals the time the gods are passing through.” Speaking like
this in a low voice, Oshizu pressed her shaking hands together
prayerfully, as if she sensed the presence of a spirit. Everyone
in the village, even the children, knew the story. On the first
and last days of the autumn equinox the gods from the mountains
and the oceans traveled along the veins of the waterways
to meet, passing beneath the stone walls of the agariya. The
black cat had a long tail, and when it flew down from the high
299
stone walls to the first oak by the grassy pathway it foretold
the coming of the passage of the gods.
The black cat would settle on the lowest branch and listen
for the gods’ procession. Its eyes flashed a bluish-colored light
that served a warning to any children or people from other villages
who might cross the path unaware of the visiting of the
gods. There were many stories told by people from other
places of having escaped danger thanks to the warnings of the
black cat. It was said that if one were to unwittingly cross the
path during the time of the procession of the gods, that person
was certain to be bitten by a poisonous snake and become
cursed. Generations of black cats had carried out the function
of serving the advance notice. When the kittens of a black cat
were born, if they weren’t needed by the household they
would be taken to the agariya, where they were cared for.
At Oshizu’s mention of “our black cat,” everyone recalled
the image of that landscape. Ohina picked up the thread of the
discussion.
“Today the mirror of Ikawa well has cleared, so we can see
the Amazoko of old.
“It seems Sayuri-san and Oai-sama have brought this back to
us. And now, with the long-awaited return from far away of the
successor to the Silk Estate, at last our dreams are settling into
place and we’re coming together again. The whole village is appearing
to us again.
“It was in the morning . . . As the sun rose above the agariya
amidst the shadows I could see the neck of a horse, and
Masahito-sama holding the reins.
“Masahito-sama was sent off to school and he couldn’t get
back to the village very often. But in any case, I supposed he
was going to be called into the army.
“Usually he didn’t get up so early and he wouldn’t be seen
about the agariya at that time, so I thought, ah—he’s already
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been called up. One by one the young men were being taken
from the village, so I assumed it was only a matter of time until
Masahito too would be called.
“I wondered why he was up before the morning dew had
cleared and was leaving the village from Flying Stone Corners.
It was nothing special for a person like me to be out in the
morning dew cutting grass, but it was unusual for Masahitosama
to be out at that hour. He didn’t have to work in the
mountains and the fields, but I guess he liked horses.
“I also wondered what he was up to setting off on a horse without
any baggage. I thought maybe he was doing some early
morning training in the mountains. I was in the thicket below the
agariya cutting vines to make a bit for the horse so I took off the
towel wrapped around my head and waved a greeting with it.
“‘What brings you out here heading off into the mountains
so early?’
“Masahito was staring off into space somewhere and he was
surprised. He stopped the horse but didn’t reply quickly. Then
he stroked the side of his horse and replied,
“‘Oh, you’re cutting reeds. Thanks.’
“And then, gazing at my bundle of reeds and looking down,
he added,
“‘I’ll be off to the army before I’ve learned how to work in
the fields and mountains like everyone else.’
“‘All the men are being taken and almost the only one left in
Amazoko is you, Masahito, since you’re going to school. But
your family has these mountains where you can get materials
like the pine oil that’s used for airplane fuel, and the flax used
for parachutes. If you supplied those things you could get an
exemption from the army, couldn’t you?’
“‘But Ohina, that wouldn’t mean anything to the army. Pine
oil isn’t much use in a war. Wouldn’t it be better to just leave
the pine trees as they are?’
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“After saying this, Masahito loaded onto his horse the bundle
I’d left by the side of the road. And then, with a smile, he said,
“‘If I die, I imagine I’ll come back here to Amazoko and I’ll
be watching over everyone from above. When I become a spirit
I’ll be able to see the village from every angle and direction. I’ll
come down from the sky to the Flying Stone wall in a flash,
with the rays of the morning sunlight. Or I’ll come in singing
along Utazaka Hill.’
“I don’t know what I answered. I thought then that Masahito
might well be the last villager taken as a soldier. Even the
schoolteachers and priests had been taken, so only old people
and children were left. Only Chiyomatsu-san wasn’t taken
since, whether out of bad luck or good, he’d injured the tendons
in his ankle. That’s right, isn’t it, Chiyomatsu-san?”
“Yes, that’s a fact.” Old Chiyomatsu, perhaps half asleep,
murmured automatically, and gave a slow nod.
Ohina resumed her story. “‘I’ll come down from the sky to
the Flying Stone wall in a flash, with the rays of the morning
sunlight. Or I’ll come in singing, along Utazaka Hill.’”
“I really thought Masahito didn’t want to go off as a soldier.
“‘What d’you think Ohina; when I become a spirit, where do
you think I’ll return from?’
“I was on the verge of tears but since I thought it would set
people off making rumors if I cried, I made myself speak in a
normal voice,
“‘Well, when the time comes you’ll be coming down Utazaka
Hill carrying a biwa, like old Mizumaro-san. We’ll all come
running to greet you.’
“Masahito replied laughing,
“‘A spirit carrying a biwa—well that’s good to hear. And
everyone will come out to greet me. What d’you say Katsura—
if I return from the mountains I’ll be riding on you. But I guess
it’d be better to come in from Utazaka—right?’
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“Katsura was the horse’s name, and the latter half of what
Masahito said was addressed mainly to the animal. And so he
rode off, pulling the bundle of reeds over the sides of the
horse. I called out after him, standing with my sickle in hand.
“‘When you go off I’ll be there with everyone, carrying a
samisen.’ But as I spoke, my voice choked up.”
Oshizu, Chiyomatsu, and Kappei all turned their heads together
and exclaimed in a voice that sounded as if it came
from the depths of the water, “Ah—the traveling samisen
player.”
Masahiko felt a tightness gather in his chest. How, he wondered,
would he ever be able to express this voice through
sound?
“Masahito’s eyes darkened and then he said, ‘Ah, the traveling
samisen of Utazaka.’ He remained sitting up straight as he
said this. And then without saying more he glanced backward
from atop the horse and headed off down the hillside.”
“My older brother, when he went off down that hillside, he
too glanced back as he was leaving.” Chiyomatsu said this as if
suddenly remembering something.
Then, in a tearful voice, Oshizu spoke. “Both my brothers
went off down that slope too. People came out from all over
the village and sent them off to the music of the traveling
samisen. I’m grateful for it.”
Kappei, who seemed almost hypnotized by the elders’ talk,
muttered, almost in a groan, “My father made it through . . . and
he even returned for a while . . . but then he died in the river.”
“Once they left Utazaka, none of them came back.”
When Chiyomatsu said this everyone nodded and sighed.
Nearby, a pale white frond of pampas grass was swaying gently
back and forth.
“Ohina-san, won’t you sing us that old song—we haven’t
heard it for so long. Sing it for us once more.”
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And other people joined in pleading,
“Yes, Ohina-san, won’t you sing it for us?”
For a while there was silence.
The shoreline had grown a bit more distinct than before and
the hum of insects sounded more clearly. The flame of the
candle beneath Ohina’s chin flickered. It seemed the grass hut
behind her had expanded in size. It looked like Omomo was inside,
but no one could see what she was doing.
“Look—The firefly hut. It has the light of the old days.”
Oshizu stood up and started walking unsteadily, pointing toward
the grass hut. Suddenly Kappei started to get up, but
right away he sat down again. Oshizu’s shadow fell in front of
Masahiko. Then he noticed that she had a white towel tied
about her head. It may have been just to keep her from getting
wet in the fog, but it made him recall what he’d heard about
Sayuri’s foster mother Oai—about the way she always wore a
towel wrapped about her head.
“We had lots of fireflies around our house too. It wasn’t such
a great house, but when it was surrounded by fireflies it was
like—well it was like the house of a lord. It was the highest one
on the agariya.”
“This was the birthplace of the fireflies too . . . Hoo— Hoo—.”
And in saying this, with her back hunched over, Oshizu
reached out with one hand and groped her way toward the
grass-colored light coming from the hut. She looked like an old
doll walking through unknown mountains at night. Passing
near Ohina she spoke with gestures like those of a doll.
“I remember that day well. We had only one horse in the village.
I was listening and I thought I could hear the sounds of
the horse’s hooves at Masahito’s return. The horse was named
Katsura. It was a mare, a bright glistening one too.”
“Yes, she sure did shine. I used to take care of that horse and
I always rubbed her down beautifully. When I was cutting
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reeds I chose the best grass. Masahito’s father used to joke,
‘Why, that horse is so expensive it’s worth three humans.’”
From time to time the fog appeared to be lifting, yet in the
sky above dark clouds started moving in.
Above the lake it quickly turned dark, but to Ohina and the
people of Amazoko it looked as if a sea of dark green trees at
noontime was spreading out. To Masahiko, who was in an extreme
state of awareness, it seemed as if beginnings and endings
were becoming merged together. And that, in fact, was
what was slowly unfolding before his eyes. He realized: one
person’s story has started carrying me along to a past I’ve been
completely unaware of. And as Ohina was telling her story,
Chiyomatsu and Oshizu assumed their roles, like in the creation
of a genesis tale.
There’s such an incredible past here, yet it’s remained so unknown.
I’ve been completely unaware of it. If it weren’t for
Grandfather I’d know absolutely nothing of this little mountain
village in southern Kyushu. And I’d never have thought of
things like a village being sunk by a dam. If I hadn’t met Ohina
and Omomo I’d never have been thinking about the stories of
a village called Amazoko, sealed off beneath the water. They’re
all little stories, and yet . . . Such were Masahiko’s thoughts.
But weren’t such stories the original forms of undiscovered
classics?
In the beginning there were springs and rivulets. There
were winds and rains. There were people and there was spirit.
Voices came and went. And with them came songs, so they
might call to the souls that existed with them.
Meeting these two women and hearing their songs has
shaken loose the spirit within me. These women have freely offered
their songs to the spirits of the ancestors at the bottom
of the lake and to their world. Certainly their songs reached
the distant places beneath the water. And they even reached
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beyond the time-space continuum to me, who came here
knowing nothing at all about these things. From here on I have
to continue thinking of them.
Although I heard that song on the night of O-bon, and at the
same close range by the waterfront as they did, that doesn’t
necessarily mean it reached my heart. At that time there was
a huge gap between those women and myself; not only in regard
to time, but also in regard to the relation between time
and space. The closer I was, the farther the distance was between
us. No doubt Ohina and Omomo must have been aware
of that long before I was. As for Ohina, since that time she realized
her mistake in taking me for my grandfather she must
have gone back to her place. But what sort of place is it where
these two women live?
Though she was a woman, Ohina was renowned as a catcher
of poisonous snakes and for making and selling the medicine
known as “Oai’s hundred lives tablets.” Her daughter had built
a tiny cottage with only a single window—hardly more than a
big box—on the banks of the lower Isara River, just above the
flood line. It was rumored that when her mother was out,
Omomo entertained men who came from various places. One
time the younger priest had firmly stopped his mother from
whispering things in Masahiko’s ears about that house.
“It seems you’re on quite familiar terms with those two
women. But you know, it would be better for you if you remained
more distant from them,” was the way she had put it.
Masahiko hadn’t asked her reasons for saying this. He supposed
it must have had something to do with the family’s lineage
being in question. Both mother and daughter, in part because
of their exquisite voices, seemed to possess spiritual
powers, and so they carried out various duties for the village
in times of trouble, such as praying for rain. They appeared to
be held in awe by the villagers, yet in daily life a subtle disCHAPTER
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tance was kept from them such that they seemed somewhat
removed. Probably the two women were aware of this themselves,
so they maintained a suitable distance and preserved
their position within the village.
n
From time to time flashes of silent lightning dashed from
the sky and were absorbed into the lake and ridgeline of the
distant mountains. Here in the valley this had become a familiar
sight in the night sky. Kappei had imagined that this
night would certainly bring a shower of lightning. Since
Sayuri’s death he had often seen lightning.
Here and there the night sky was rent, and then it soon was
brought together again leaving no trace. Kappei’s grandmother
had once told him,
“Lightning is a sign of the dragon gods wandering through
the sky. The gods of the skies tell them, ‘Don’t fight, don’t
fight!’ and wrap them up in their sleeves. When autumn
comes, the dragon gods send off flashes of light all over the
place, so the gods of the skies have to keep their eyes on them.”
———“I don’t quite understand, but perhaps there’s a world of
a different dimension contained within lightning. But then,
what the devil is a different dimension anyway? What’s gotten
me thinking like this? It’s not like me. I guess this kid from
Tokyo has been getting to me. I suppose I’d better watch out
or I’ll fall off a cliff again . . .
“I wanted to take Sayuri to see the lower reaches of the
Mimigawa River. According to Ohina, when her mother gave
birth to Sayuri she was wearing a beautiful piece of silk fabric,
the color of light blue water, tied about her belly. What sort of
town, and what kind of family did she come from? Wearing
such beautiful old silk, she couldn’t have come from an ordinary
family. And why did she end up beneath the weeping
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cherry of Amazoko? These are the kind of things Oai-sama,
who brought up Sayuri, used to talk about. I used to have daydreams
when Sayuri was alive, but since she died those dreams
have stopped. Sayuri went off in those flashes of lightning . . .”
Kappei thought it was fortunate that the night had hidden his
face from the others.
That piece of glossy silk with figures of dragons and flowers
had been wrapped about Sayuri’s waist as an obi when she was
pulled out of the water. At the time of the autopsy, at the request
of the police, Kappei, along with the other men, had unwound
it right on the spot. Her dead body, whose hand he had
never even touched while she was alive, had already turned
completely stiff, right up to the ears, even though it rocked
back and forth every time they moved it. Kappei felt as if his
emotions had been frozen and only his arms and legs were
moving about meaninglessly. The wet old fabric had been
thickly padded and it was extremely difficult to undo. Ohina
had helped, her eyes filled with tears and her mouth shut
tightly. The men kept silent and picked flowers to cover
Sayuri’s face, following the sparsely worded requests of the
women. But then, whose new towel was it that had been
placed over her face?
At the time of the final washing of her body in the yard of
the temple one of the women had remarked in a quavering
voice as she worked at loosening the knot of the obi with her
fingers, “From the time she was born to when she died she
never spoke, not even once.”
Even though the temple had a large tub room it was rather
cramped for washing and preparing a body. And also, the head
priest’s wife had made the comment, “Even though this is a
temple, if you bring in the dead body of a woman who’s died
in an accident, the place will become unclean. It will leave a
bad feeling with the visiting priests who come.” And so they
had set up a temporary washing area beneath the sal tree.
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Outside the washing area which was set off by a circle of
hanging straw mats, many of the men had lit sticks of incense.
From time to time they caught some of the conversation going
on within.
“She never married, though I think there was one guy she
really liked.”
“You mean you don’t know about that? Well . . . it certainly
looked as if she liked . . .”
“Now, no more of the loose talk.” Oshizu’s voice had
sounded a stern rebuke. On occasions like this she was always
present, taking control. “That’s enough of that.”
“. . . She was Kappei’s guardian spirit. He called her his
“Benten-sama.”
“That’s right—Benten-sama. Well, after all, she cured him
when he had that terrible injury, didn’t she?”
“Everyone thought he was beyond help.”
“With a wound like that, just a human’s power couldn’t have
healed it.”
“What a precious woman. She never had any children of her
own, but she saved other people. And now she’s gone.”
“She managed to be born here under the cherry tree, and
yet now her lineage has ended.”
The intertwined voices had slipped out from the interior of
the reed mat enclosure. Kappei had no recollection of his
thoughts, sitting on a rock in the garden holding a plate of salt
and incense sticks for the women, until he was called for after
the work of preparing the body was completed.
“Say there Kappei, what is it then? She’s all set to become a
Buddha now. Why don’t you get things started by saying a
prayer for her. She’s a fine Benten-sama now.”
Oshizu’s voice had snapped him back to attention. There
was still some salt left on the plate. It seemed that each time
the women went into the enclosure they took in salt. The body
had been particularly difficult to prepare. Sayuri was dressed
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in new funeral wear with white cloth wrapped about her legs
from her knees on down. It seemed the women had colored
her lips. The disordered state she had been in when she was
lifted from the water had been completely transformed and
she had become a peaceful Buddha.
“Thank you, Sayuri-san.”
After saying this there had been nothing more he could say.
There were preparations to make in order for the procession of
the coffin to take place. Tasks were assigned for the work of
carrying it to the place for cremation. It had not been a time
for sifting through his emotions.
The year before last, during the record-breaking drought
when the water in the dam dried up, the remains of the old
Amazoko had become visible. Kappei had gone down to take a
look, choosing a time when none of the old women were
around watching. A miasma had crept about the remains of the
village that had become a mudflat. The remains of the houses
in the lowlands lay covered with mud and, as he looked past the
edges of the old tea fields, it seemed that a whitish, brown-colored
scum was oozing along sluggishly. On the dry riverbed
were countless leaves plastered everywhere, like an ogre’s toys.
The big old ginkgo tree that stood watch over the graveyard
had been covered in congealed sludge and nothing could be
seen of the imposing figure that had once sent golden leaves
dancing about through the village. And as for the horse chestnut
tree by the base of the Moonshadow Bridge, after being submerged
for such a long time under the pressure of the water and
then suddenly exposed to the extremes of the drought, it looked
as if it had been dried out and pasted on the barren shore.
How could he express such a sight? It was almost as if an enormous
snake’s den—one that had not yet been dissolved by the
pressure of the water—had been exposed. This was the wretched
bottom of the dam of the watershed that had once provided the
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water for the villages, fields, and farms all along it. He wondered;
if he came to see it at night, might it even radiate a phosphorescent
glow? It was horrible to see how the village had
changed into such a state. Kappei felt it had been disgraced.
Where had the beautiful sights of that river valley gone? Even
the raging flooded river that had carried off his father had
looked more beautiful than what he saw in front of him.
Worrying that his feet were about to be sucked into the
mud, Kappei had trudged along slowly.
It’s flooding! It’s going to be washed away! It’s flooding! The
sluiceway is giving way! ———
During the drought he had been able to see for the first time
the extent of the desecration of the village of Amazoko that
now lay at the bottom of the dam.
At the time his father died in the Isara River Kappei had just
been a child and his remaining family, which consisted of just
his mother, his grandmother and himself, had been in no position
to stand up and oppose the dam. It wasn’t that there hadn’t
been any people who opposed it, but with his family having lost
its breadwinner they were in urgent need of the compensation
money. He often heard his mother and grandmother talk about
how they should try to go to the meetings as often as possible
and how they should work together with the majority. Even
though he was still a child, when he went along he was counted
in with the number of those present. And that was why, in his
childhood, Kappei had attended the meetings.
“You have to tell them to let you join the majority—you hear
me?”
His ailing grandmother had raised her head from her pillow
to tell him this, and his mother had explained with pensive eyes,
“They say that if we don’t get you included with the majority
group our share of the compensation money will be cut.
You have to take the place of your father now.”
311
He could clearly remember taking part in the meetings, feeling
he was sitting there in place of his father. But as to how
much the compensation money had been, or whether it had
been fair, he had no idea.
In the “modernization” that the late Jimpei had talked so
much about, there had been no feeling at all for the idea of purifying
old things. In time, the villagers had come to understand
this. And little by little they also came to understand
what it meant to have the village where they had spent their
lives be covered over by water. At the time the weeping cherry
was cut down, the sawdust that spewed from the cut looked
like the hemorrhaging of blood. Kappei too had been there
watching when it was done. It was the first time he had ever
seen an electric power saw. When they were building the
sluiceway for the dam the construction company man had said
that the cherry tree was in the way and they couldn’t continue
the project unless it was cut down. It seemed that the presence
of the great tree had forced the construction chief to address
the villagers.
That old weeping cherry had become rooted in the thoughts
of all the people of the village. Word that it was going to be cut
down spread through the resettlement village below the dam
within the span of one night. At the time, Kappei’s grandmother
had been picking mugwort around the newly erected
resettlement housing, dragging herself along as she went. The
young wife from next door had come over and called out to
her,
“Say, have you heard they’re going to cut down the cherry
tree of Utazaka? Don’t you think we should go for a cherry
viewing?”
“What? Cut down—the cherry?”
His grandmother had spoken the words very slowly, and
then her face went pale.
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“We’ve all gotten our compensation money, moved out, and
turned our backs on it—so now it looks like we we’re going to
have to face our regrets.”
“Cut it down? Are you sure?”
“That’s what I hear. They brought in a big electric saw for it.”
“That tree—it’s the lifeblood of Amazoko.”
Suddenly the neighbor woman’s voice became choked with
tears and she clung to the old grandmother who was smaller
than she.
“It’s our lifeblood. It’s the life of Amazoko . . . And they’re
going to cut it down? Tomorrow?”
“As long as that cherry’s been standing there for us I’ve felt
things would be all right.”
“That’s the truth. I never imagined something like this happening.”
At the time, Kappei had been surprised to see his grandmother—who
since the previous year had been stooping over
badly as she walked—suddenly stand up straight and then grab
firmly onto his wrist.
“We have to go. You too, we’re going cherry watching.”
And in saying this she had stopped suddenly and gazed intently
at his face.
“We’ve laid up a stock of home-brewed liquor back in the
woods—you know where it is, don’t you? Go fetch us a bottle,
and take care you don’t break it.”
Having said this, she adjusted the towel wrapped around her
head and moved forward quickly. Feeling possessed with authority,
Kappei quickly picked up a bottle of liquor and ran
with it all the way back to Utazaka. Viewed from the distance,
the scene looked like a snowstorm of falling petals. People
were gathering and bowing to each other silently and then sitting
down under the cherry tree and looking up at the scattering
blossoms. They looked around the nearby construction
313
shack wondering where this rumored “electric saw” might be,
but they couldn’t find it.
A number of people had brought straw mats to sit on, and
soon the entire group began to drink the liquor, but their
words were few. His grandmother gestured to him with her
hand, saying,
“Today you’re a man. So here, take a drink of this in place of
your father.”
And so he found himself in the unexpected situation of
holding out his cup to receive a drink of the liquor. A few times
before, off in the woods, he had tried sneaking a drink to see
how it tasted, but this was the first time he had been invited to
drink, taking the place of his father. In the expressions on the
faces of the men sitting around him, he saw no objections to
his drinking.
As instructed, he took just one drink, but for the first time
he really felt the power of alcohol—a feeling he still remembered
clearly. He stood up a bit shakily and said, as if reciting
the lines of a speech he’d been taught,
“You know, the longer we look at these blossoms, the more
beautiful they get.”
“Here, here—listen to him talking now. Looks like that
liquor’s going to good use on him.”
Nor could he forget the tears he had seen in the faces, wrinkled
with laughter, of the adults who were cheering him on. At
that time he was still quite an imp. He’d chased after petals,
jumped across the narrow stream that fed into the Isara River
and gone to look at the spring. He’d felt an urge to drink its water.
In the village there were two good springs that flowed with
especially sweet water. There was the Ikawa spring, here beneath
the cherry tree, and the other one at the Silk Estate.
Since early childhood he had often heard stories of how, in
the old days, many of the wayfarers who traveled to the cherry
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tree came to drink the water beneath it before they died.—But
if that cherry tree is cut down, where will those people go?—
Such had been his thoughts as he stared into the well, holding
the dipper in his hand. Petals were floating on the water surface
of the well. And a person’s face was reflected amidst them.
It was Sayuri. He felt his breath had stopped. Sayuri was the
child of one of those people who had fallen by the cherry tree.
It was from this time that Kappei’s special relationship with
the woman who would become his Benten-sama had been established.
When he scooped up some water and held it out for
her she lowered her head and smiled the most beautiful slight
smile. The droplet that ran down her small chin seemed to him
the most sacred of things. He realized she was unable to speak.
The words of his grandmother had sounded in his ears.
“Her being unable to speak must be the expression of God.
No one must ever hurt that child. Anyone who does will be
punished.”
Kappei had taken her words to heart and vowed to keep an eye
on her and protect her, should anyone try to cause her harm.
It was on a clear, bright morning that the cherry tree was cut
down. The electric saw turned out to be entirely different from
what Kappei had imagined.
Everything related to that big saw, starting with its sound,
was different from what he had known when the old local tree
cutters went about their work so carefully.
Someone had yelled out, “Hey you!—Get out of here!” The
person grabbed him by the collar and shoved him away. At the
same time, the howl of the saw started. It had a heartless
metallic sound that echoed throughout the valley. To Kappei,
it seemed that everything had been amputated then—and
everyone agreed that blood had flowed. The sawdust that flew
out from the tree was drenched in the color of fresh blood. In
the midst of these sounds and sights that made him feel that
315
the colors of his world were being drained away, he had noticed
Oai-sama standing there, grasping Sayuri’s shoulder. The
cherry tree was in full blossom and it toppled over slowly,
rolling over and exposing what looked like a freshly severed
head. It was the body of a fallen giant.
His grandmother had hobbled over to the tree on her knees.
She reached out her hands to touch its open wound and sobbed
as she stroked it.
“Forgive us. Forgive us. You were sacrificed for our lives . . .
We were poor and couldn’t buy you back. If we could buy up
everything in Amazoko we’d buy you back.” The other old
women had staggered over to the tree too and sat around it,
placing its blood-stained sawdust in their palms and weeping
as they rubbed it in their fingers.
“Forgive us. Forgive us. Forgive us for what we have done.”
Even through his child’s eyes, the sight had been overwhelming.
A large flash of lightning struck from up in the sky. It
seemed to Masahiko that Kappei was muttering something
over and over. His voice had the sound of bubbles rising from
the depths of the lake. Since the shower of lightning had
started, the mood of the old people had changed. It was not
only Kappei. Chiyomatsu, as if speaking in a dream, asked,
“Ohina-san, won’t you sing that old song of Moonshadow
Bridge for us?”
Masahiko recalled something—the words Omomo had spoken
to her mother that first night he met her.
“If you can’t get to Amazoko, then call it up. Call it up from
the depths of the water.”
It seemed clear to him now that Omomo and her mother
were trying to do just that. Withdrawing to the reed hut and
gathering everyone together were all done to call up the spirit
of Amazoko.
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n
Still seated on the rock, Ohina began singing in a low voice.
The lights had been put out.
Flowers of the moon
Scattering, scattering
People crossing
Over the bridge
The ringing of the bell
That is life
Sounds the connecting
Of the fates of life
And death
The voice sounded as if it were striking out along a pathway
through fields in a distant land. Suddenly, Masahiko was transported
to a world that seemed completely different from this
world. He felt he had become one of many tiny lights on a
bridge of vines, set amidst the scattering of the petals of the
moon. He felt himself crossing over the bridge, passing over a
valley a thousand fathoms deep, wrapped in its darkness.
Where am I am going? Certainly I, along with these people,
am crossing over a moonlit bridge of vines, and Ohina and
Omomo have called up the village of Amazoko from the bottom
of the lake. As he glanced at the expressions of the elders, not
always sure whether their eyes were open or shut, Masahiko
saw a vision of the “petals of the moon” falling above the lake.
Kappei had worked his way into people’s dreams, starting
from their memories of his earliest childhood.
He hadn’t actually talked about it with other people, but on
spring nights the weeping cherry of Utazaka became like a water
globe filled with petals whirling about in the midst of the
317
lake around the dam, and it seemed that even now it was scattering
petals in the villagers’ hearts. The sight of that cherry
tree and the sound of the electric saw had become joined
within Kappei. There had also been an old song the men used
to sing about cutting down trees, but that too had been killed
off. Any time the subject of the cherry tree came up, the old
woodcutters would fall silent. After the village was flooded
and the people moved down below the dam they didn’t stop
getting together. They’d bring out sake and they’d sing, but the
old mountain men would glance about with a vacant look in
their eyes and their singing lacked the spirit it had once possessed.
Even now, when Kappei heard the sound of an electric saw
it made him shudder. That time he had fallen from the dam at
the construction site and was skewered by that long iron construction
rod all the way from his rear end to his neck, he had
felt the burning heat of that saw running through his entire
body as it cut away. And still his body ached, especially in winter
and summer. Again and again he had slipped in and out of
consciousness and groaned and screamed, “Kill me! Kill me!”
over and over again. The scene of that cherry tree appeared
over and over again in his hallucinations, and as he drifted
about on the border between life and death he had probably
been possessed by associations linked to the sounds of that
saw. The droplet that ran down young Sayuri’s chin appeared
to him as a coolness in his dreams, and the words “Could you
get me some water?” sometimes slipped from his mouth.
No one had believed he would ever make it out of the hospital
alive. Sayuri was called in by Oai-sama and, unexpectedly,
in the dark courtyard of the hospital she had performed
a dance of prayer for his recovery. The patients in the hospital
gathered around and listened in silence to the sounds of her
bell, but they all understood that a mute shrine maiden had
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come to pay him a visit, and this became a regular topic of conversation.
“Old Kappei there must have taken a pretty good look at her
too. That was like the dance of an angel.”
The patients never tired of talking about her with sighs. The
most amazed of all had been Kappei, who found himself opening
his eyes on the world again.
“I have to get better. I have to show her I can do it.”
Kappei was convinced that Sayuri’s wordless dancing had
been more effective than any drugs or the treatment of any famous
doctor. As soon as he was released from the hospital he
went to express his gratitude. Gesturing with his hands he explained,
“Before I was carried to the hospital they cut off a steel rod
that was stuck in me from my rear end all the way to the side
of my neck.”
Oai-sama had gasped as she listened, as if her own body
were being skewered by the iron rod.
“I was on anesthetics and my body was as good as dead. But
I guess somehow I still had some consciousness left. I could see
as if I were looking down on my own body from somewhere up
above. I became that weeping cherry tree. I could hear the ripping
sounds of that electric saw, and sparks were flying. When
they started operating on me I was half dead, and when the
iron rod was cut out I felt my body becoming that weeping
cherry tree.
“The saw snarled and groaned. Sparks scattered. And then I
was aware of the petals of the cherry whirling about.
“Sayuri still had her hair bobbed and she was watching over
me intently. Her face looked sad as she watched me—looking
like a skewered pig about to be barbecued. I told myself, ‘Come
on, you’re a man, you’ve got to die beautifully, like the cherry
tree falling. I kept thinking—compared to that cherry tree I
319
must look a mess, but I have to die beautifully. My life’s at
stake here.’ And yet with that rod stuck in me, no matter how
hard I tried, I couldn’t die beautifully. I felt so ashamed.
“When I think about it now I wonder what I was living for
then, just hovering there at the last moment. It fills me with
regret . . . Such a damned fool—that’s what I’ve been! . . . It’s not
that I was clinging to life, but I felt so bad about dying like that.
Back then I couldn’t appreciate the feelings of the cherry tree,
or of the old women. It’s such a shame, such a damned shame.
While I was alive, I couldn’t accomplish my function. That’s
what makes me so sad.
“And before it was cut, while its new blossoms were falling,
I heard the voice of the cherry; ‘Come over here and sit down.
Come sit and bring a sake cup. I’m going to let you drink some
of Amazoko’s seven-colored liquor, so take your cup and
drink.’ I was shocked—but that was the first time my soul flew
up and came into me. It came from around that cherry tree,
and it felt as if it came to me directly.
“There was no one else around the cherry tree. When I took
a glance around it looked as if, by the big roots of the tree,
there was a plain wooden stand and on it had been placed a
white sake bottle and a white sake cup.
“Then I remembered the words of my grandmother. Back
then I always used to be up to some sort of trouble. One time
my grandmother held both of my hands and looked hard into
my face and said,
“‘You know, you’re the only grandchild I have, but it seems
your soul must have been stolen by some bad spirit. Now how
are you going to get it back?’
“She said it with such a sad face. And even after being spoken
to by her like that, I just acted like nothing had happened
and went on doing the same old things. But looking back on
this after she died, I felt her words had remained here and
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there, like patches placed over my body, on my shoulders and
back, and where her hands had touched me. And at that time,
just when I was about to die, that soul my grandmother had
told me about jumped into my body through those patches.
My soul came out from that cherry tree.
“It was during that time when I was hovering on the edge of
life and death that I first realized my grandmother had probably
been saying a prayer for me back on the night before the
cherry tree was cut down; that night when she let me—not
even ten years old then—drink some of the seven-colored
liquor. I realized that she’d been saying a prayer to the cherry
tree, praying that I’d recover my soul.
“My soul flew right to me. It flew to me like a packet of light.
And I myself became light. It was, how can I say it, something
new, something I could actually see. It wasn’t only my own life
I could see, but it was like I was seeing in one flash the workings
of things that stretched all the way back from ancient
times to the present world. I wondered—how did I come into
this life as such a fool? It made me ashamed. I felt completely
embarrassed.
“I raised my sake cup as I had been told to do by the voice
from the tree. A liquor made of the fruits of mountain trees had
already been poured into the whitish cup. I drank from it and
took it as a sacred liquor that signified that my soul was being
brought to me. Sadness and happiness came to me all at once in
a flash of dazzling light, that first time my soul came to me.
“There was no one else there besides the cherry tree and me.
I wondered, Where am I? Is this Amazoko? The word ‘Amazoko’
means ‘bottom of heaven.’ It’s a place directly connected with
the heaven up there. So then I realized; that’s it—the cherry was
a tree that connected the heavens and the earth. And even for
the wayfarers who died beneath it, it provided their final drink
of water before they took their last breaths.
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“So in other words, that was a function of Amazoko village.
“I have to tell you what I saw when I was there at the boundary
between life and death, so let me continue up to that
point—when I saw Sayuri-san’s face. My face must have looked
different from usual to her. She was gazing at me and her face
had such a sad expression; like that of a Buddha. She focused
on my face for a moment and then looked down.
“I wondered if she could hear a single word—or if she could
hear nothing at all. Since she couldn’t speak, all she could do
was give a faint smile, like a Buddha. But come to think of it,
who did Sayuri-san and Oai-sama have to talk with about their
innermost feelings? Perhaps since Ohina and Omomo were
also from households without men, these two families could
open their hearts to each other. Although Sayuri couldn’t
speak, that didn’t mean she didn’t think about the things in
her heart. When she prayed for other people, for the animals
and for the inugami dog spirits, wasn’t she also praying for herself?
I know a little about the Mimigawa River—the place they
say her mother may have come from. It looks like a dragon
tramped up and down that river, splashing through it with its
head up. It’s a deep river that cuts through a deep valley. If I
could have shown Sayuri-san the color of that river, wouldn’t
it have reflected something into her spirit? Since she couldn’t
speak, she must have understood her existence in this world as
one of spirit. And since her birth took place under the weeping
cherry, surely she must have received her spirit from that
tree before I did.
“By the Mimigawa River in a village on the outskirts of
Hyuga once I saw a night performance of Kagura, with sacred
Shinto singing and dancing. It was like going back to a former
world and I wanted to show it to Sayuri. From the time I heard
that her mother came from the area around that village, I was
convinced that Sayuri’s style of dancing came from that reCHAPTER
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gion. Why is it that I—the one who was told I was going to die—
was returned to the world of the living, while Sayuri was the
one who died? And then on top of that she drowned and was
exposed to the public. That girl who sleepwalked, she said a lot
about Sayuri leading a horse along the embankment on the
night of the fire. Something must have happened to Sayuri
that obsessed her, and because of it she must have set fire to
Jimpei’s house. Even though I’d gotten my soul back from the
cherry tree, at the critical moment I didn’t have the wits or
ability to help her. . . .”
Except for Masahiko, who had never seen the original place,
everyone there had actually seen the old village of Amazoko
when it was about to be flooded. Everything was flooded, all together—all
the flowering clover, the Chinese milk vetch, and
the countless little violets that lay along the ridges and borders
of the fields. For a short while, even submerged in the water,
the scene had looked like living vegetation. What surprised
everyone most of all was seeing the amazing variety of insects—
beings that normally went unnoticed—floating about in a mass,
covering the surface of the water. All sorts of creatures were
drifting about—numerous kinds of ants, both large and small,
along with fantastic-looking tiny light green butterflies in the
process of breaking out of their cocoons, with their thinnerthan-paper
wings torn apart. Okera bugs and salamanders were
swimming about. Even tiny baby birds that looked like they’d
just been hatched were floating in the water in their nests.
After hesitating at first, most of the people had gone out to
witness the flooding of their village. Kappei’s grandmother too
had said,
“I’ll have to tell about it when I get to heaven.”
With a hand towel tied about her head in the manner of the
younger women, she had started down Utazaka Hill and was
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watching what was going on when a construction worker
called out,
“Say there lady—the water’s coming up to where you are.
You better move higher, it’s too dangerous there.”
Slowly, bit by bit, the water inched its way up. When it
reached the field on the slope where they had hastily dug up
the last of the potatoes, the water became a turbid red color
and bubbles rose and floated about.
“Oh no, look—those baby birds in that nest over there.”
Three tiny chicks with mottled downy covering and wideopen
mouths were faintly chirping away in their nest. Nearby,
a little snake was swimming in the direction of the nest. For a
moment, it rose onto the top of a clump of earth—that’s what
its intention must have been. Then suddenly, from amidst a
group of birds circling in the sky, a strange piercing voice was
heard as one of the birds swooped straight down and grabbed
the snake. The people gasped as they watched it happen. It
was a bird slightly larger than a crow. Someone called out,
“Look—a mugitsuki bird.”
It must have still had a nest in the elm tree by Gongen’s
Shrine.
The elders had milled about nervously on this suddenly created
shoreline. Kappei’s grandmother went out to the elm,
which looked like it was going to be covered by the water, and
as she clung to its wide trunk she squinted her eyes and whispered
to her grandson—who for once was behaving himself,
“I want you to remember this well—all these insects here are
among the ten thousand beings. What’s going to become of
them now, with no place to go?”
Then she bent over in the shade of the reeds, folded her
hands and recited the Namu Amida Butsu prayer. The phrase
“ten thousand beings” had sounded unfamiliar to Kappei. The
words had an unusually clear sound, and the phrase stayed in
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his ears. A year ago at the time of the drought when he had
gone to look at the recently exposed remains of the village he
had found a small toppled stone pagoda inscribed with the
words “Memorial for the Departed Souls of the Ten Thousand
Beings.” When he saw it, he recalled his grandmother’s words.
That was the first time he had really understood the meaning
of the idea of worship.
On the day they let the water in, Jimpei had gone to watch
the proceedings, wearing a vest. His being somewhat more formally
attired than usual was likely owing to the pride he took
in being a member of the dam promotion group. He’d declared,
“Well, a lot of things have certainly turned out well. I know
some folks here were pretty attached to these things but, well,
that’s why Amazoko fell behind the times.”
Not surprisingly, his words seemed to make many of those
around him uneasy. His face turned solemn and he clasped his
hands together.
“With an old country place like this it’s, well, I guess it’s only
natural to feel something for it still, but now that it’s all done
and taken care of, we’ve, we’ve taken a step forward. Isn’t that
so, Chiyomatsu-san?”
With his voice raised to full pitch, he clapped the shoulders
of the slightly built Chiyomatsu, who was standing by his side.
Chiyomatsu didn’t say anything. He just stared at the surface
of the water, covered with insects, all struggling and floundering
about. The people must have been recalling times such as
those during the heat spells when the crops had been hard hit
by insects and they had performed ceremonies to drive them
away. Chiyomatsu remembered all the experiences he’d gone
through there using his body, in cooperation with the others.
They watched their fields, paddies, pathways and houses all
being taken under by the water, right before their eyes. Yet all
they could do was stare vacantly in a daze.
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Along with the insects, who seemed to be crying out from
hell, they felt as if they too were being exterminated, even before
they knew what was happening.
The lack of response to Jimpei’s words had indicated that
the others shared Chiyomatsu’s thoughts. They all had enjoyed
the passing of the seasons there—with all the festivals,
and the making of wines and liquors from the different fruits
and grains, and the weaving of baskets from vines and bamboo,
and the making of charcoal, and the burning of the fields
for raising good shiitake mushrooms. The villagers had managed
to get by with just a little extra income from outside, such
as from trimming trees and weeding for the forestry department.
And even without that, the village had been able to get
along self-sufficiently.
Kappei thought of them as a people who relied on the
mountains and rivers for their living. It had been that way
since the oldest times. They hadn’t owned the mountains, but
that was the way it had been with them.
All of a sudden Kappei felt a pain in his chest. Sayuri, who
was brought up by Oai-sama, had been well aware of these
things. In the season when the rice plants came into blossom
she had gone to the edge of the rice fields where she loved to
bend over and draw the flowers to her nose to smell them.
Suddenly, Kappei was moved to speak out;
“Even if I have to blow up the dam, I’m going to rebuild
Moonshadow Bridge with stone, with a double-arch, and get
the water flowing through it.”
It seemed he was completely serious about what he said.
Chiyomatsu blinked his eyes open and then, turning toward
the dark surface of the lake, he replied in a low voice as if he
were whispering a secret.
“Let’s do it. It’ll be something good to take with us to the
next world.”
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n
Black clouds appeared, obscuring the moon from time to
time. The surface of the water was dark.
Oshizu began to speak. “The moon looks like it’s glowing orange
tonight.”
“You know, I’ve been smelling the scent of sunlight for some
time now. It’s the smell of grass in the sun.”
“Yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve smelled sunlit grass.”
“It’s like the old terraced fields. It hasn’t changed since the
old days.”
“That’s right—the terraced fields. Chiyomatsu-san, you have a
great nose. You’ve always been able to smell the rain and crows,
and even with your eyes shut you can always sniff things out.”
“Well, in the old days my eyes were sharp as anyone’s, but
these days it’s only my nose. Why, I can’t even make out the
rocks at my feet these days.”
The elders broke into laughter.
“The sun’s so bright on the old stone walls—such gorgeous
sunshine.”
People breathed peacefully, exhaling in small breaths.
They said the reason the moon was glowing orange was because
the sun had struck on the terraced fields beneath the
water. The elders had been transported by the songs of Ohina
and Omomo and they were smelling the scents of the grasses
and stone walls that used to lie along the old terraced fields
near where the stands of pampas grass now covered the banks
of the dam.
Masahiko took a leaf of mugwort that had been touching his
hand and tried chewing on it. It had a bitter, astringent taste.
From behind, Omomo approached with her hand extended.
“Here, I’ll give you this as a remembrance of this night.”
He realized that it was a wooden comb. Earlier in the day,
before the sun had gone down, Omomo had washed her long
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hair in the lake when no one was around and Ohina had
combed it out carefully. Was this the same comb? The comb
still held the warmth of Omomo’s hands and smelled faintly of
the oil from her hair. It seemed like the smell of sunlight.
“Look—the higan lilies. They’re the hairpins of the mountains.”
At Oshizu’s urging they all looked up, and here and there,
amidst the fields on the hillsides, the higan lilies were glowing
brilliantly, emblazoned against the sky. The times of the distant
past had merged comfortably with the village that lay in
front of their eyes. Even though the village was at the bottom
of the lake, it did not seem strange to imagine they were walking
along the narrow pathways through the terraced fields under
the midday sun. At the top of the hillside on the far bank
was Flying Stone Pass, and they could see the highest house of
all, the agariya. That was the house of Oshizu.
Its walls were a model of hand-built construction, made by
gathering rocks from the mountainsides and carefully placing
them together to form a thick fortification against the winds.
The cracks between their tightly packed stones were filled with
various kinds of ferns and ivy, making it an imposing-looking
wall. There was a tree standing in front of the enclosure. Already
he could tell it was a yusu. The first time he met Ohina
she had asked him about it.
“That shining yusu tree at the bottom of Utazaka Hill, it
marks the beginning of Amazoko.”
He looked as if he were waiting for a password. That tree
also marked Oshizu’s house. Was he seeing this landscape in
the present, or seeing it through these people’s dreams? Perhaps
the mulberry wood comb he was holding in his hand
could tell. Touching the wooden comb made him feel as if he
were recalling the touch of a woman’s hair. It was the feeling
of a hand picking up red yusu leaves and placing them in a
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woman’s hair. The memory of the nape of Nazuna’s neck, reflected
in the spring, came back to him.
Even if he had not actually experienced things, it was possible
to know them through dreams. When he raised his eyes,
the solidly constructed terraced fields came into his vision. His
grandfather Masahito had never tired of telling him about
these fields.
“Humans’ livelihood and the work of their hands. They
come together with the earth and from time to time they produce
great works of art. The Pyramids too were good, but here
in the farming villages we have our stone-walled fields.”
It didn’t seem those walls had been built in two or three
hundred years. The first field had been made by just one person,
gathering stones one by one and piling them on each
other. He wondered what crops had been sown on that field.
Probably the people had put down the simple grain crops that
filled their bellies. He’d heard that in the old days they used to
grow buckwheat, soba, millet, various kinds of barnyard
grasses, and wild millet. A grain of wild millet is only one tenth
the size of a grain of rice. It’s what birds eat. Thinking of how
his ancestors had fed themselves on what they could grow on
these mountain slopes moved him almost to tears.
What had this mountain been like originally? People had cut
down trees and dug out their roots. They scurried about like
ants, leveling and preparing the ground. Ten levels, then fifty
levels, and then more. Gradually the number of terraced fields
had increased and the village also had started to take shape.
The mosaic-like constructions of stones that his grandfather
had called works of art were now reaching toward the skies.
When the winds blew, as they streamed, whistled and howled
through the countless spaces between the stones, their sounds
differed from day to day. The village was wrapped in soft autumn
sunlight—from the sun-exposed mountainsides to the
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stone-reinforced terraced fields, to the houses that lay scattered
about the lowlands.
As he breathed a deep sigh, Masahiko whispered to himself
that sunlight too can be reborn.
Omomo passed the comb to him and returned to the grass
hut where it seemed she must have been praying for something.
Before the landscape changed, he had to run down the hillside.
Perhaps right now at the Ikawa well by the Silk Estate
Nazuna was holding a baby. He went down through the fields
enclosed by rows of low tea bushes, passing through their narrow
pathways where every time he brushed against the
densely growing little tea leaves they released a fresh scent.
But no matter how he ran through the small and large fields,
it was like a maze, and he couldn’t reach the well.
He was annoyed at getting so tangled up in the fields, knowing
he wouldn’t have gotten lost if he had planted the fields
himself. It was all part of a carefully prepared dream, so unless
he got through quickly night would fall about the dam and the
smell of sunshine would disappear. Nor was there any telling
whether the grass hut that Ohina and Omomo had used would
still be there tomorrow. And also Omomo’s words, “as a remembrance,”
hung in his thoughts. And Ohina and Omomo
had also said, “these days it’s been getting harder to find
enough materials to make our medicine.”
The thought occurred to him that perhaps the wooden
comb was something that had been passed down from Nazuna.
Perhaps Nazuna had used it as a charm to call to the place
where the Master lived in the womb of the mountains.
People said that the Master had made himself into a cradle,
that he had taken in that baby near the base of Moonshadow
Bridge, and that Nazuna had brought the baby up. People said
that Nazuna did not have the usual nature of humans. And
didn’t Ohina, Omomo and Sayuri also give the same impression?
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The light and water
Of Kodenbara fields
The birds calling at night
Make the flowers fall
And the name of the princess
Confined in bed
Is Oki No Miya
The Blue Shell Princess
As he was listening, Masahiko felt as if warm hands were
softly touching his back and his blood was starting to circulate.
Feeling his entire body coming alive, he was plunged into
thought.
My family’s household has been broken up and destroyed,
but my family itself has always been connected to water, hasn’t
it? Sayuri served the god of water and just before she died,
when she set the fire to Jimpei’s house that burned him to
death, even if she had her own motives, couldn’t it also have
been because she, as an incarnation of the water, was driven to
do it by the tortured spirits of the waters? She had never spoken
a single human word.
That girl in the fire, whom I saw in my dream—she must
have had some connection to Nazuna or Sayuri. Her obi must
have been woven by the women from thread that was dyed in
the muddy lake. The women had gathered at the Silk Estate to
do things like washing clothes, cooking, and spinning silk
thread—but had this been a group that was connected to the
veins of the water?
The baby brought up by Nazuna had never married, but she
had helped deliver the babies of all the women, and she had
raised Sayuri, who had carried out the prayers that were essential
for the rains. The men had kept their distance from
these women’s gatherings, saying with a laugh that they were
“frightening affairs.”
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When night came the women had gone to the pond by the
grove of oleaster trees and reddened the lips of the old stone
statue of Benten-sama, and even the aged Oai-sama had put a
little of the red coloring on her own lips and gazed into the mirror
of the water. And then they had drunk together the sevencolored
liquor made of mountain fruits and clapped their
hands and danced through the night without returning home.
And from what Masahiko had heard of how the men were not
allowed in during those times, it made him feel a bit apprehensive
too. The women had many things they kept secret from the
men, and they obviously looked forward to such times.
“This is our role,” is what Omomo had said in the grass hut
the first time they met.
At her side, Ohina had added, “It’s not something to reason
about. It’s just a woman’s role, performing the rites for the water
gods.”
Masahiko reflected on how, on this night, the various procedures
for the “succession of Sayuri’s role” had been carried
out. Probably men’s roles had been different.
Omomo emerged from the hut and started walking back and
forth along the lakeside.
Yaa
Hôre Yaa
Staying even
Just one night
The feeling doesn’t end
It remains in
The shadows
On the water
The white sleeves of her robe billowed and flapped in the
wind. The elders sang along with Omomo’s words as if chanting
a prayer to the Buddha.
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“Oki no Miya, Oki no Miya.”
Just how far away from this mountain village was Oki no
Miya? Omomo’s song sounded as if it were sung not to any person,
but launched above the earth’s surface on a voyage to a
distant place.
Oshizu called out in a wheezy voice, as if speaking to herself,
“Let’s go together—all of us.”
“Our guides have been arriving for some time now.”
Old Chiyomatsu turned toward the water, extended a hand,
and opened it for them to see. It seemed there was something
in his palm, but Masahiko couldn’t make it out clearly.
“It’s an insect, and it’s brought the announcements.”
The others whispered,
“An insect?”
“Yes, an insect.”
It was a bit larger than a firefly and was crawling about in
Chiyomatsu’s palm in the dim moonlight.
Perhaps feeling reluctant to call out to the group whose
members looked as if they were dreaming, he directed his
words to Masahiko only.
“Guides often come to the temple as well.”
It seemed the elders had heard him. In a voice that arrived
from the bottom of the waters, Oshizu said to them,
“It’s the insect that shows us the road to take through the
mountains.”
“When the sun goes down and you start to lose the way, this
insect flies about and stops—flies and stops. And for children
too, when it flies about and gives them directions they’re able
to follow it and return to their houses without fear.”
“But I’ve heard there are also times when it doesn’t lead you
back home. Some people say it’s led them to the lake in Amazoko
Mountain.”
“That must have been Chiyomatsu’s great-grandfather,
wasn’t it?”
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“That’s right. It was when my great-grandfather was still a
kid.”
“Right, we’re listening, we’re listening. They went looking
for him all through the village, ringing a bell, and it caused a
big stir. After three days he turned up around Uge-san’s place,
carrying a bunch of fruit from the andromeda tree, didn’t he?”
“Well I’ve heard the story plenty of times too. It seems he
crawled his way through Uge’s cave. Normally, it’s frightening
just to get near that cave, but with something to guide him, I
guess he was able to sneak through. A white-tailed monkey
came along and stood in front of him and asked, ‘Hey there,
are you going?’ And he led him along, so I heard.”
“A white-tailed monkey!”
Although the elders had heard the story any number of
times, when it came to the climax they all let out a sigh.
“That white-tailed monkey was really an amazing one. Some
of the old timers actually saw it alive, up until about twenty
years or so ago.”
“That was quite some feat for him to make it back alive from
Uge’s cave.”
“Well, ever since he was a kid he had a good spirit. He did his
best to help others and he lived to a good old age. He knew the
mountains well and knew where the tall hemlock trees were,
and where the monkeys hid their wine, and where Matsutake
Mountain was. My father told me all about it. He also knew
about the mountain gods, and whenever he ate in the mountains
or slept there he never failed to offer the proper greetings
to them. If you didn’t, he said, your life would be in danger.”
“So he must have gone to the white monkey and asked to be
guided, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what they always said in our family. And they told
us that the insects too had souls. They were beautiful if you
looked at them in the daytime.”
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“That’s right, and when folks came to the cherry tree and died
there they were guided across Moonshadow Bridge, weren’t
they?
“Sure they were. At the front entrance to the village there
was Utazaka and at the back there was Moonshadow Bridge,
leading off into the mountains. The ones who came in through
the back way often came for reasons they didn’t talk about,
isn’t that so?”
“Sure it is. And there are many of those folks buried down
there at the bottom of that dam.”
“They were led here by little bugs, something like fireflies.”
“And the water we drink comes from the lives of people like
them.”
For a while there was silence and everyone stared at the
dark, mirrored surface of the lake. Then Chiyomatsu called
out to the insect in the palm of his hand.
“Hey there, it looks like you’re a survivor from Amazoko.”
Two women, trying to look into his palm, spoke by turns in
low voices.
“Whose soul do you suppose it’s brought us?”
“I wonder if it’s a soul without a destination.”
It seemed that their memories—their thoughts of this face
and that face—were floating about. Once again, a thick cover of
clouds started to hide the moon.
“Ah . . . the smell of sunshine has faded. It’s getting chilly.”
Chiyomatsu glanced about, saying “there,” and “there,” as
he placed the little insect in the dark grass. Masahiko noticed
that a different stream of air had blown in from beneath the
clouds.
“It’s been a good night.”
“It sure has. Good songs. And such voices. Thanks to them
we’ve had a good dream.”
Oshizu spoke in an animated voice.
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“It’s been a good dream all right. Just now I crossed Moonshadow
Bridge and went up to the lake in the womb of Amazoko
Mountain. I heard Omomo-chan’s singing all the way as I
went.”
“And what did the lake look like? Was it blue?”
“It had a semi-transparent greenish color. And it had lots
of red coral that had sunk down into it. Come to think of it,
the coral on Sayuri’s family altar for the gods may have come
from the same place. That was Oki no Miya, and it sure
moved me.”
“What?—Oki no Miya is in the womb of Amazoko Mountain?
If that’s so, that’s where the waters of life spring from.”
“So that’s the sort of dream you had, was it? But you know,
that time when my great-grandfather came back from Ugesan’s
cave they say he was holding a small piece of red coral.
His parents were amazed. They said it must have been one of
the mountain god’s treasures and he’d be cursed for stealing it.
They told him to return it right away. ‘If you go through Ugesan’s
cave,’ they said, ‘you might not make it back alive. But
Benten-sama of the Mirrored Lake is a relative of the goddess
princess of Oki no Miya. If you send a message to Benten-sama
and ask her, she’ll return it for you.’”
“So Chiyomatsu, that must be why the women in your family
took such care with the ceremonies on the twenty-third night.”
“Well, I guess you could say our family was pretty careful
about the ceremonies for the river and the moon. It was something
that was left to us by our ancestors. They say the village
of Amazoko had a special role. It carried out the rites that
looked after the whole water system.”
Kappei was snoring away where he was seated.
“Kappei. Kappei! It’s getting time to head back down. Are
you still dreaming? Come on, it’s time to wake up. Wake up
now.”
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Oshizu took off the short coat she’d been wearing and gave
Kappei a shake as she draped it over his shoulders. The coat
was well padded with cotton and still had a slight body
warmth left in it. She wrapped it gently around his shoulders.
As if in a daze, he mumbled, “. . . Mimigawa.”
Above the lake, the gentlest of air currents, like the brushing
of a mulberry wood comb, began whispering softly.
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