Oota was the name of the gulf where such vessels, carrying the exiled, traditionally moored; namely that here they had to lower the anchor, at the gulf of Oota, where, in accordance with the command, they had to disembark onto Sado Island, and disembark here they did; day was already turning to night, and after the exhaustion of the trip, lasting at least a full week, though this full week seemed much longer to him, more like a week of eternity extending into some kind of timelessness; they did not remain on deck, of course, but embarked onto the shore, following the stipulation only to travel by day, and spent the first evening, in view of the narrow range of possibilities, in a small fisherman’s hut; no sleep came to him that night, the journey had worn him down, his every limb was aching, in addition underneath his head was a piece of stone but even this did not capture his attention as they lay down in the kitchen to rest, but rather he thought of his children, his wife, and his beloved son-in-law Komparu Zenchiku, to whom he had entrusted those he loved; later on there drifted in among his thoughts a few lines from a poem by Ariwara Motokata, from the Kokinshu, about how autumn was approaching, and whether the mountain, with its shape like a rain-hat, would protect the maple trees from the ravages of the weather, or something to that effect; it was strange that exactly this mountain, Kasatori, shaped like a rain-hat, Kasatori of Yamashiro came into his mind from that poem, this Kasatori emerging from utter nothingness; he could not connect it to anything; as to why, he could not explain it in any terms, as to what caused precisely this verse to emerge in his memories in the depths of night — Kasatori, he tasted the word in his mouth, and he called forth in his mind the form of the mountain, recalled the wondrous colors of the maples of the land plunged into autumn, Kasatori, Kasatori, then suddenly the entire thing fell away from his brain; he looked at the unknown, cold, simple objects in the hut’s gloomy dark; he adjusted the position of his head on the stone, turning now to the left and now to the right, but it wasn’t good anywhere on the stone, which was his head-rest for this night, and although dawn broke with difficulty, with great difficulty, in the end he couldn’t even have said that he was too exhausted as he awaited this dawn, at his age one usually spent one’s time just like that, in a great waiting, even in Kyōto it was almost always like this, long hours in the silence after a brief sleep, a Kyōto dawn — Kyōto, a sacred, immortal, eternally radiant Buddha, it was all so far away already, as if it had been obliterated from reality once and for all, to exist from now on only within himself, oh Kyōto, he sighed, stepping outside through the door of the hut, sniffing the biting sea air, Kyōto, how horrendously far away you are already — but then he was helped onto one of the horses stationed here, as instructed by the Shinpo, and the procession began to head upward along a mountain path, his imagination was already taking him back to an autumnal dawn of long, long ago, not only did he see the unparalleled strength of its crimson, but he even sensed in the depth of the maple trees that unmistakable scent that made him so giddy at such times, for example, an autumn in Ariwara, on the mountain-side celebrated in song; they struggled upward along the path, he searched for the maple trees, but here they were not to be seen anywhere, the journey was wearing the horses down, the tiny path was serpentine and it was steep; the guide who had been entrusted to lead him on horseback slipped at times in his hemp-woven sandals — the worn-down waraji — on the stony ground, and at such times the reins grabbed him, rather than him grabbing the reins, it went on for a long time like this, and why deny it, he could hardly bear it, he couldn’t even name the year when he had last been seated atop a horse, and now on this dangerous ground; their one bit of luck was that it wasn’t raining, he determined, and in vain did he try to discover a beautiful glade in the forest along the path, or catch the song of a nightingale or a bulbul, continually he was forced to concentrate on not falling off the horse, on not sliding down from the saddle during a perilous washed-out stretch, he had no strength left for anything else, so that when they finally reached the Kasakari Pass and he addressed the peasant leading his horse saying, is this not Kasatori? — No, the peasant shook his head, but then there is something here in common with that word; the convicted man pressed him further, with the Kasatori in Yamashiro, no there isn’t, the peasant replied in confusion, this is Kasakari, so nothing, the rider pondered, and was he completely certain of this? he asked, but did not even wait for a reply, almost simultaneously with his question he conveyed that the journey had worn him out a bit, and he requested a stop to rest, just a brief rest, which did him well, too, and they spent just one half-hour underneath the thick foliage of a wild mulberry tree, yet his strength returned, he spoke saying they could now go on, he was helped again onto the horse, the procession started again, and they quickly reached the Hasedera Temple, which as he knew from the peasant, belonged to the Shingon sect, but to whom else would it belong; he would have smiled to himself if this name hadn’t evoked in him the memory from home of the Hasadera in Nara, which, however, was so painful that he said nothing to the peasant, only nodded, it’s well that it belongs to the Shingon sect, and although magnificent flowers suddenly came into view by the side of the temple — from where he was it seemed for a moment that they could have been well-tended azaleas — he didn’t call out to stop the horse, because he didn’t want to, he didn’t want a memory from Nara to torment him anymore, because right then he would have been tormented further by his daughter’s dear face and his son-in-law’s dear face and the picture of Fugan-ji, their family temple, the memory of an important prayer uttered there would have tormented him; well, better to be tormented by the journey, then, let us go on, he motioned, but the peasant, misunderstanding him or believing an account would bring joy to the venerable gentleman from Kyōto, spoke to him as they went along, and so the peasant was continually pointing backward toward Hasadera, where there, before the main altar, was a statue of the Eleven-Headed Kannon, but the gentleman from Kyōto didn’t say anything, so the peasant did not even begin to enumerate in detail what this famous Kannon in the Hasadera even was; he just trudged upward along the pass, grasping the horse’s reins, and he didn’t even dare to speak until they reached Shinpo, when night was already falling, and thus the district regent, insisting fully on the strictest of formalities, had already designated for the exiled man a place in a nearby temple, the Manpuku-ji, which could not convey to Ze’ami anything of itself on that day, as Ze’ami was so exhausted that they had him lie down on the spot prepared for him, he had already closed his eyes, lying on his back as always, he adjusted the blanket and immediately fell into a deep sleep, and slept for nearly four hours straight, so that the temple displayed itself to him, not then, but only the next day, only then did the convicted man from Kyōto see what kind of a place he had ended up in, he pushed back his blanket, pulled on his robe, and went out into the temple garden, which later on, until he changed his residence, was to give him so much joy, particularly one pine tree which he discovered at the edge of a high cliff, and which grew out and clung to this cliff as if it were holding tight to it, and this sight was often heart-wrenching for him, and at such times, so not to be overcome again by profound emotion, in the face of which he proved, during this period, to be so weak, he listened to the mountain winds as they caressed the foliage in the trees, or in the shadow of a tree he watched water trickling down the tiny veins of a moss-patch, he watched and he listened, he asked nothing of anyone, and no one asked anything of him, the silence within him became immutable and this silence around him became irrevocable too; he looked at the water in the little rivulets in the moss, he listened to the murmuring of the mountain winds up above, and from every quarter he was inundated with memories, no matter where he looked, an ancient recollection, dim and distant, fell upon the image or the sound, and he began to pass the days in such a way that he no longer could sense that one morning had come and then the next, because the first morning was exactly the same as the one that followed it, so that he began to feel that not only were they coming one after the other, but that all told, there was just one single day — one single morning and one single evening — he stepped out of time and returned to it only occasionally, and even then just temporarily, and on these occasions it was as if he were seeing the Manpuku-ji from a great height, or the Golden Hall in the middle of the garden, with the Yakushi Buddha inside it on the main altar, all from a great height, from the height of a slowly circling hawk; well at such times it occasionally happened that he came back for a little while and, sitting underneath a beautiful cypress tree in the moss garden, h