The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. From the earliest times there have always been some who perished along the road. Still I have always been drawn by windblown clouds into dreams of a lifetime of wandering. Coming home from a year's walking tour of the coast last autumn, I swept the cobwebs from my hut on the banks of the
Sumida[138] just in time for New Year, but by the time spring mists began to rise from the fields, I longed to cross the Shirakawa Barrier[139] into the Northern Interior. Drawn by the wanderer-spirit Dosojin,[140] I couldn't concentrate on things. Mending my cotton pants, sewing a new strap on my bamboo hat, I daydreamed. Rubbing moxa into my legs to strengthen them, I dreamed a bright moon rising over Matsushima.[141] So I placed my house in another's hands and moved to my patron Mr. Sampu's summer house in preparation for my journey. And I left a verse by my door:
Even this grass hut may be transformed into a doll's house5
Very early on the twenty-seventh morning of the third moon, under a predawn haze, transparent moon barely visible, Mount Fuji just a shadow, I set out under the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka. When would I see them again? A few old friends had gathered in the night and followed along far enough to see me off from the boat. Getting off at Senju, I felt three thousand miles rushing through my heart, the whole world only a dream. I saw it through farewell tears.
Spring passes
and the birds cry out—tears in the eyes of fishes
With these first words from my brush, I started. Those who remain behind watch 5 the shadow of a traveler's back disappear. . . .
On the first day of the fourth moon, climbed to visit the shrines on a mountain once called Two Wildernesses, renamed by Kukar when he dedicated the shrine. Perhaps he saw a thousand years into the future, this shrine under sacred skies, his compassion endlessly scattered through the eight directions, falling equally, peaceably, on all four classes of people. The greater the glory, the less these words can say.
Ah—speechless before
these budding green spring leaves
in blazing sunlight
Matsushima: a group of 260 small islands off the coast of Japan.
When translated into English, the haiku does not always maintain the seventeen-syllable form of the original Japanese poem.
Mount Kurokami still clothed in snow, faint in the mist, Sora wrote:
Head shaven
at Black Hair Mountain
we change into summer clothes
Sora was named Kawai Sogoro.[142] Sora's his nom de plume. At my old home—called 10 Basho-an [plantain tree hermitage]—he carried water and wood. Anticipating the pleasures of seeing Matsushima and Kisakata, we agreed to share the journey, pleasure and hardship alike. The morning we started, he put on Buddhist robes, shaved his head, and changed his name to Sogo, the Enlightened. So the "changing clothes" in his poem is pregnant with meaning.
A hundred yards uphill, the waterfall plunged a hundred feet from its cavern in the ridge, filling into a basin made by a thousand stones. Crouched in the cavern behind the falls, looking out, I understood why it's called Urami-no-Taki [View- from-behind-Falls]
Stopped awhile inside a waterfall— summer retreat begins
* * *
After all the breathtaking views of rivers and mountains, lands and seas, after everything we'd seen, thoughts of seeing Kisakata's famous bay still made my heart begin to race. Twenty miles north of Sakata Harbor, as we walked the sandy shore beneath mountains where sea winds wander, a storm came up at dusk and covered Mount Chokai in mist and rain reminiscent of Su Tung-p'o's famous poem.[143] We made our way in the dark, hoping for a break in the weather, groping on until we found a fisherman's shack. By dawn the sky had cleared, sun dancing on the harbor. We took a boat for Kisakata, stopping by the priest Noin's island retreat, honoring his three-year seclusion. On the opposite shore we saw the ancient cherry tree Saigyo[144]saw reflected and immortalized, "Fishermen row over blossoms."
Near the shore, Empress Jingu's tomb.9 And Kammanju Temple. Did the empress ever visit? Why is she buried here?
Sitting in the temple chamber with the blinds raised, we saw the whole lagoon, 15 Mount Chokai holding up the heavens inverted on the water. To the west the road
leads to the Muyamuya Barrier; to the east it curves along a bank toward Akita; to the north, the sea comes in on tide flats at Shiogoshi. The whole lagoon, though only a mile or so across, reminds one of Matsushima, although Matsushima seems much more contented, whereas Kisakata seems bereaved. A sadness maybe in its sense of isolation here where nature's darker spirits hide—like a strange and beautiful woman whose heart has been broken.
Kisakata rain:
the legendary beauty Seishi wrapped in sleeping leaves
At the Shallows
the long-legged crane cool,
stepping in the sea
Sora wrote:
Kisakata Festival—
at holy feasts, what specialties
do the locals eat?
The merchant Teiji from Mino Province wrote: 20
Fishermen sit
on their shutters on the sand enjoying cool evening
Sora found an osprey nest in the rocks:
May the ocean resist violating the vows of the osprey's nest
After several days, clouds gathering over the North Road, we left Sakata reluctantly, aching at the thought of a hundred thirty miles to the provincial capital of Kaga. We crossed the Nezu Barrier into Echigo Province, and from there went on to Ichiburi Barrier in Etchu, restating our resolve all along the way. Through nine hellish days of heat and rain, all my old maladies tormenting me again, feverish and weak, I could not write.
Altair meets Vega tomorrow—Tanabata— already the night is changed
High over wild seas surrounding Sado Island— the River of Heaven
Today we came through places with names like Children-Desert-Parents, Lost Children, Send-Back-the-Dog, Tum-Back-the-Horse, some of the most fearsomely dangerous places in all the North Country. And well named. Weakened and exhausted, I went to bed early, but was roused by the voices of two young women in the room next door. Then an old man's voice joined theirs. They were prostitutes from Niigata in Echigo Province and were on their way to Ise Shrine in the south, the old man seeing them off at this barrier, Ichiburi. He would turn back to Niigata in the morning, carrying their letters home. One girl quoted the Shinkokinshu poem, "On the beach where white waves fall, / we all wander like children into every circumstance, / carried forward every day . . ." And as they bemoaned their fate in life, I fell asleep.
In the morning, preparing to leave, they came to ask directions. "May we follow along behind?" they asked. "We're lost and not a little fearful. Your robes bring the spirit of the Buddha to our journey." They had mistaken us for priests. "Our way includes detours and retreats," I told them. "But follow anyone on this road and the gods will see you through." I hated to leave them in tears, and thought about them hard for a long time after we left. I told Sora, and he wrote down:
Under one roof,
courtesans and monks asleep—
moon and bush clover
We managed to cross all "forty-eight rapids" of the Kurobe River on our way to the 30 bay of Nago. Although it was no longer spring, we thought even an autumn visit to the wisteria at Tako—made famous in the Man'yOshu—worth the trouble, and asked the way: "Five miles down the coast, then up and over a mountain. A few fishermen's shacks, but no lodging, no place even to camp." It sounded so difficult, we pushed on instead into the province of Kaga.