He prays in such a way that first he enumerates the Great Cosmos, then comes the Great Spirit, then the Great Buddha, then the Spirit who watches over us in the Days, then the Protector in the Days, then — the Bodhisattvas! then the Self-Originated One, and then the Benevolence of the Higher Powers! — and following all of them he prays for the fortitude of his own heart and all this up until now, says sensei Inoue, are his own personal transformations of the prayers of Takahashi Shinji, so that somehow, according to his own sensibilities, as the prayer and the circumstances wish it to be, at the end he says: Guardian Angel within the Heart! I ask you, shed Light, O Creator, into my Heart! and then Grant Peace to my Body, O Great Spirit! and: Fill my Heart with Light! and Fill the Kanze Kaikan with Light! and Grant this Prayer to All Those who come to the performance of Seiobo! then I Call upon Those who cannot come! then I Call upon Everyone who once was here, in the Kanze Kaikan! and then he says: Raise up their souls here into the Light! and finally he asks the Great Spirit to Grant me the opportunity to be able to perform Seiobo tonight! and he asks, Grant me strength, and Grant that this strength may flow through me and from me to each individual person! and at the very end he says May the Kanze Kaikan be a torch now in Japan, in the World, in the entire Universe! and Reflect this strength in all Directions during the performance into the Universe! O God, cause this strength to permeate everything! and at the very very end he says: O God the Creator! May Your Strength be in the Performance, and when he says all of this, he concludes with the following words: I Give Over My Fate Entirely!
This is my prayer, says sensei Kazuyuki smiling, and then the stern face is once again impenetrable.
Sensei is everything, says Amoru-san, I’m not good at anything, I don’t know anything, I hate everyone, I only know sensei and I only love sensei, because sensei is everything, and my father was a very hard man, he beat me every day, every single day, once I knocked over a porcelain vase, then he shoved my head into the iron stove, and he slammed the stove door against my head until I lost consciousness; in a word every single day was painful for me, every blessed day hurt, and I wanted to die, for a long time it wasn’t possible, and then finally it was, and I was already an adult when I first saw sensei, and I knew immediately that I loved him, but nothing was possible, so that is why I jumped in front of a car, and I lay in a coma for seven weeks, the blow had struck my brain, I was between life and death, the doctors said there was nothing they could do, but sensei knew, he knew that I loved only him, so as soon as he found out, he came to the hospital and he called me back, I only know sensei and I only love sensei, don’t ask me about anything, because I don’t know anything, and I’m not good at anything, so, well, sensei is my goal, before him there was nothing and after him there will be nothing, and I hope that he, too, will love me forever.
They arrive at the stage door nearly two hours before the beginning of the performance, Amoru-san drove the car, she and the others already receive the more illustrious guests in the foyer of the theater, the tickets are distributed, now and then an older member of the audience is assisted to find a seat more easily there inside the theater; still there are nearly two hours, there is hardly anyone in the labyrinth in the back of the Kanza, but unfortunately for the sensei it feels already like a huge crowd, no one can ever truly be alone here, and that is precisely the reason — and everyone knows this, there are no secrets here — that is why sensei Inoue Kazuyuki arrives so early before the performance, because he wants to be alone, which is of course impossible, because it’s as if the dressing room didn’t even have a door, in vain does the shite have his own dressing room, the coming and going is continual, now this one, looking in, now that one, every single time he has to get up from his chair and greet the visitor, someone looking in at the door, asking if the sensei wouldn’t happen to know when he will be paid, but the sensei just shakes his head, and now there could be a little quiet in the dressing room, when someone else slips in through the door, and after the ritualized greeting that person asks the sensei for advice, because the older brother of his female cousin has leukemia, what should he do; send her to me, says the sensei, but when, he is asked, well, if next week would be good, then, next week, I’m afraid, says the other, that next week might be too late already, well then, when can she come, asks the sensei: is tomorrow afternoon all right, asks the visitor, of course, replies the sensei, and he calls Amoru-san who will arrange the meeting, or if not her, then Chiwako-san, who is very accommodating, and she too can arrange perfectly for the older brother of the female cousin to come, and then she will escort the effusively grateful person out, but when he is about to close the door, two boys run into the dressing room with a large box, they have arrived just now directly from Tokyo on the Shinkansen, they have brought, they say, each interrupting the other, the phoenix crown; fine, nods the sensei, place the box on the table, he shall open it immediately and examine it, the boys, bowing, leave him to himself, but by now the sensei already knows that from this point on he will in no way be able to be alone, and that is why he chooses the same path as always, and not just here, in the Kanze Kaikan, but in Osaka or in the Tokyo Kanze Theater as well, it is an open secret, he accordingly leaves the dressing room, brushes away this or that other person trying to approach him, finally slipping out of their hands, and goes into the toilet of the Kanze, because he has even said openly at times to the people close to him, it is there and only there, in the toilet of the Kanze that he can find tranquility, in the toilet, the sole place where he can be alone for a while; still, before a performance, particularly now, before a performance of such special significance, he has an unconditional need for solitude, to just be by himself, alone, like in his childhood, alone, as in his entire life, disturbed by no one else at all, in peace and tranquility, because this is the place where no one else sees him, where no one else hears him, because only here and now can he finally shut the door — the door to the toilet — behind himself in the Kanze Kaikan, and then he kneels down, and he places his two hands before his face, leans forward a bit, closes his eyes, and begins to pray — he always has to recite in the same way — he begins to pray, from the Great Spirit all the way to I Give Over My Fate Entirely, he kneels on the cold stone floor of the toilet in the smell of disinfectant, he is alone, there is peace, tranquility and silence, and he expresses his gratitude to the Heavens for this peace, this tranquility and this silence in the toilet of the Kanze, then he presses the flush button, as if he had finished his business, and he silently sets off to the common dressing room, so that he may be dressed in the first layers of the garb of Seiobo, so that he may put on the wondrous mask of Seiobo, and so that then within him, in the mirrored room, standing before the as yet motionless agemaku, Seiobo may truly appear.