Sado: Japan's Island in Exile Read online

  "You walked?"

  "That's right."

  "From Matsugasaki?"

  "Yes, from Matsugasaki."

  "But how did you. . . I mean. . . You really walked?"

  "Yes, I walked. Is that so strange?"

  "Oh no, by no means, not at all." But he still hadn't got it. "Didn't you come by bus?"

  "No, I walked. As I just told you."

  "On your own two legs?"

  "Of course on my own two legs!"

  "But why?"

  I had had about enough of this. "Look," I said, "I've come here to see the temple. Here it is, and I've seen it. Now I'm going to have a look at the paintings. Is that all right with you?"

  He nodded wordlessly. A foreigner! What could a foreigner be doing here? And walking! When he could just as easily have taken the bus! Why would he do such a thing?

  The paintings were vividly colored modern reproductions of not-very-old originals, whose interest value was more in the subject than the execution. The first showed Nichiren in the boat bringing him to Sado. There was a tremendous storm in progress and everyone was praying in terror or clinging onto some part of the boat and screaming. Only Nichiren looked unmoved: he was depicted holding a pole out over the water, as if to calm the raging waves. The next showed Nichiren in the little hut at Tsukahara, kneeling down with his eyes closed and fingering his prayer beads. In the distance, wearing straw boots, blue trousers, and a yellow jacket patterned with green leaves, the kindly Abutsubo was approaching with a bag of supplies in his hand and a straw mat slung across his head and shoulders to keep off the heavily falling snow. Another picture illustrated the Great Debate: Nichiren was shown sitting on a rush mat with a pile of sutras and documents in front of him on a low table, while the priests of Sado stood around in agitated postures, waving scrolls in their hands and tugging at their wispy beards. Finally there was a painting of Nichiren in his later days on Sado: this time he was shown on a mountaintop beside a red pine, praying with his hands together while a deep red sun rose over the tops of the distant hills.

  Exile on Sado, which was supposed to finish him off, turned out to be just an interlude in Nichiren's career. Most of his two and a half years there were spent amplifying his doctrine and redefining his mission as the savior of his country. Meanwhile, events in Kamakura, including further threats from Kublai Khan and bitter squabbles among the still-dominant Hojo family, had borne out many of his predictions. His stock was up, and the government felt obliged to rethink its attitude. Persistent lobbying for his release by his friends and disciples tipped the balance, and in March 1274, the regent Tokimune issued an official pardon. Soon after it reached the island, early the following month, Nichiren set sail for the mainland and returned to the capital.

  Outside the temple, the garden was more crowded than ever, so I had a quick lunch of fried noodles at a stall in the car park and then set off to hitchhike back to Matsugasaki and resume my journey. Almost at once I got a lift from a local council worker and then another from a young man in a small bus who was driving to Chokoku-ji to pick up a group of sightseers. Traffic then dried up completely, so I unloaded my pack, took off my boots, and sat for a while cooling my feet in the clear, cold water of a rocky stream. An old woman with a net bag full of shiny black eggplant stopped to pass the time of day, and I asked her if she lived nearby. "No, no," she said, "I'm a stranger here. I don't know this area at all. I'm from Tsukahara." This answer seemed a little strange, since Tsukahara was only two or three miles away, but I was intrigued by her use of the old name; it was the only time I ever heard it spoken aloud.

  Finally a battered old pickup swung into view and lurched to a halt in response to my waving thumb. The driver was a stout little man with a head like a watermelon and a carefully waxed mustache that looked as if he glued it into place every morning before breakfast. Beside him in the cab sat his wife, a middle-aged woman with powerful, blunt-fingered hands and brawny forearms. They were dressed for an excursion, the husband in polished black shoes, neatly creased charcoal slacks, a mustard-colored sports shirt, and a gray windcheater, and the wife in those dull, opaque stockings favored by older ladies, a skirt made of something like blanket material, and a brown cardigan with the sleeves rolled up. The cab was cluttered with their belongings, so I made as if to climb up behind. But the wife wouldn't hear of it. "We'll soon clear this stuff out," she exclaimed, and began dragging bags and coats and boxes out of the cab and heaving them into the back. Standing up on the trailer, lashed in place by a web of thick ropes, was a brown fiberglass object that looked like a phone box. "It's a toilet, you see," said the wife. "We're taking it over to Niigata tonight, on the ferry. It's going to a building site. Belongs to my husband's company. Come on, in you get. I'll go in the middle." We squeezed into the little cab and bounced off up toward the mountains. I told them I had walked this way earlier in the day, and made a few appreciative comments about the scenery, the flowers, and the birdsong. The woman was unimpressed. "We wouldn't know anything about all that," she said briskly. "We live by the sea. I was born there — never learned anything about the mountains." She spoke as if the two were mutually exclusive, like different planets. The husband said nothing, but kept turning his head toward me and staring hard, as if he couldn't understand how a foreigner had ended up in his truck. I huddled up against the door and looked out of the window, hoping he would concentrate on the driving. Either he didn't know the road or else he was new to the truck, because he kept misjudging his position and driving with the nearside wheels too close to the verge. At one point, as we plunged quickly down toward another hairpin, I knew for certain we were going to smash into a sturdy concrete telegraph pole; but at the very last second the man twitched the steering wheel and the collision was avoided. Instead there was a loud smash and the wing mirror disappeared. "You should be more careful," said the wife in a gently reproving voice. "Now we'll have to get another of those in Niigata." They dropped me on the main road in Oda and rattled off up the coast with the toilet swaying slightly behind them.

  It was a brilliant day, the sun's fierce heat tempered by a steady breeze that drove armies of white-crested waves across a wide blue sea toward the shore. At Matsugasaki I bought a can of beer and sat in the shade of an old pine to drink it, thinking over the end of the Nichiren story. His pardon arrived, he left Sado, and traveled back to Kamakura. Sounds easy. But the journey was no cakewalk. It was April, a time of changeable weather, and the stony trails, often no more than footpaths, were soft and muddy with snowmelt. Winding along the edges of rivers, zigzagging up wind-blasted mountainsides, threading through black forests, such trails were never easy going. And this north-south route between Echigo and the Pacific was no Tokaido Road. It had no refinements, no sections decoratively lined with cherry trees, no feisty inns with jolly landlords serving hearty local fare and take your pick from my stable of tasty wenches. Travelers had to be on their guard, move in groups, carry their own means of defense. And for Nichiren, there was an extra danger. His reputation preceded him. Something of his story was known everywhere, and its dissident flavor antagonized the conservative-minded provincials whose villages and fiefs he rode through. Three or four attempts were made to intercept and kill him, but these were expected; Nichiren had been provided with an escort of soldiers, ready to fight. They had to be. Every place had local toughs eager for a chance to snap at the heels of the Great Troublemaker. Everyone wanted the standing to be gained from killing the heretic.

  None of them succeeded, and Nichiren arrived back in Kamakura to a tumultuous welcome from his followers. In government circles, it was hoped that two and a half years on Sado had mellowed him out — at least enough to join in the general praying for victory over the Mongols, whose threatened re-run of their recently failed invasion was awaited with dread. Ten days after his return, Nichiren was invited to the regent's residence where, to his wry amusement, his old enemy Hei no Saemon had been given the task of expressing official goodwill. After an inconcl
usive discussion about what would happen next, Nichiren was offered a provisional peacemaking package: money, high ecclesiastical rank and a public grant for his preaching. He refused. Horns were locked as before. Accusations and intrigues resumed.

  After only two months of it, Nichiren had had enough. He retired to a place called Minobu, on the west side of Mt. Fuji, where a wealthy follower built him a hut on a patch of level ground "the size of the palm of my hand" surrounded by high peaks. "This spot is secluded from worldly life," he noted with satisfaction. "There are no people living around here at all." There were no worldly comforts, either. In the depths of winter, the snow sometimes lay so deep that it covered the roof of his hut. "The walls are encrusted with ice and the long, dangling icicles remind me of the garlands used to decorate shrines."

  Some of his supporters were disappointed by his withdrawal from the public stage, but Nichiren himself had no doubts. "I had always resolved to repeat my remonstrances three times," he wrote in explanation, "and then, if they failed, to retire." It was the only course. If he had continued as before, he would have ended up with the same result — another term of exile or, more likely, execution.

  The Mongol menace remained, and in August 1281 they showed up again — this time with a massive force of 140,000 men in 4,000 ships. Despite urgent warnings from their crews, Korean levies who knew the local weather, the slow-moving Mongols were still in mid-disembarkation when they were struck by a massive typhoon. Their fleet was destroyed and the invasion abandoned. In Japan there was wild public rejoicing at the success of this "divine wind," or kamikaze, but the old dissident in Minobu still recognized a lucky break when he saw one. "The enemy's ships were scattered by a typhoon," he wrote, "but all you hear now is people boasting of a great victory, as if they had done it all themselves. The priests, of course, are the same as ever; they pretend that victory was the result of their prayers. But ask them whether they took the head of the Mongol king! Whatever they say, just ask them that!"

  That was his last pronouncement on public events. Early the following year, his 60th, he began to show symptoms of a cancer in the digestive organs. "For ten days I have taken no food," he wrote. "My body feels like stone, and my chest is as cold as ice." A few months later he set out to try a hot spring cure, but died on the journey.

  ***

  I drained the last of the beer and set off again up the road. A few miles beyond Matsugasaki, a construction gang had built a short strip of road down to a narrow beach from which they were now removing pebbles in dump-truck loads. This involved driving the trucks down onto the beach, filling them up, and then reversing back up the hill onto the main road. A woman in a grubby white bonnet had the job of warning oncoming traffic, when there was any. She beckoned secretively to me with a black-gloved hand as I went by, so I went across to her, thinking she had something to show me. But all she wanted was a few minutes' company. "All day I'm here," she moaned, shaking her head, "all day, every day from eight in the morning until six. Nothing happens. No-one to talk to. It's lonely." "Well at least it's a job," I said, trying to look on the bright side. "At least there's a payday at the end of the month." "Payday?" she spat. "100,000 yen isn't a payday. Not when you've got a husband that drinks as much as mine does. And children to support. No, the pay is no good. But that's Sado," she added gloomily. "Sado isn't Tokyo. It's far away — far away from everywhere. That's why there's no money here. All jobs have low pay on Sado."

  One by one, the little villages drifted past — clusters of timber shacks draped with morning glories and huddled together beside stony patches of beach, old women hobbling by with baskets of onions, mangy cats yawning in the shade of dusty yards, battered dinghies drawn up under rickety bamboo shelters, a litter of ropes, nets, floats, barrels, and planks scattered at random on the ground, and here and there a few pathetic piles of yellowing mushrooms or silvery fish spread out on mats to dry in the sun. This was the quietest, least-visited part of Sado I had yet seen and, apart from the smooth tarmac road and the cola machines, the closest to old-time rural Japan — silent, poor, self-absorbed, and locked in unchanging monotony. Even the passage of a stranger was an Event, as likely to provoke alarm as curiosity. One old woman, who had been sitting on the seawall, languidly packing vegetables into a straw basket, suddenly caught sight of me as I rounded the corner; she sprang up in fright, dropped the basket over the wall, and skittered across to the other side of the road like a startled cat, disappearing soundlessly into a dark and cobwebbed doorway.

  Toward the end of the afternoon I arrived at a place called Noura. By this time I was about ready for an Event myself — and so infectious was the atmosphere of torpor along the Uchikaifu coast that the discovery of a gateball tournament in progress seemed like a big deal. There were about a dozen players, all women, taking it in turns to knock their wooden balls around a dusty patch of ground with cut-down croquet mallets. At some stage the balls were supposed to pass through three hoops placed around a central wooden pole, but another important feature of the game involved using one's own ball to bash those of the other players off the playing area. A wizened old woman was showing how it should be done, scampering gleefully from one spot to the next and scattering the opposition with mighty blows of her mallet, while her opponents watched from a bench, exclaiming at her prowess and wagging their heads in dismay.

  Noura had a pretty arc of sandy beach, a few shops, a temple in a wooded hollow, and behind that, an inn with a carefully tended garden. I felt I had covered enough miles for one day; what I fancied was a good soak in the bath and then a quiet beer on the beach. So I opened the inn door and called out for attention. After a few moments, a toothless ancient emerged, his bleary eyes indicating that I had disturbed his afternoon sleep, and shuffled forward to greet the new arrival. At the sight of a sweaty, unshaven foreigner he shivered nervously, then took half a pace backward and began to rub his hands as if washing them. Most unfortunately, he explained, his inn was still closed — in fact his wife was away visiting relatives at present — but if I was looking for a place to stay, he was glad to be able to give me good news. There were inns in the next village, four of them, all already open for the season, all of the very best quality, and all thirsting for custom. "Hardly anyone stays here in Noura," he said with an apologetic chuckle. "But up the road there, that's a different matter. Coaches stop there, often — there's room for lots of people. They have parties — singing, food, everything! That's the way, down there!" He gestured encouragingly at the road outside. "How far is it?" I asked him. "A couple of kilometers?" "Oh no, nothing like as much as that," he said as he began to slide the door shut. "You'll be there in no time! Good-bye!"

  Any inn may be shut at any time and for any reason, but when you're tired and hungry and your needs are modest, and you get turned down in a place that obviously needs every guest it can get, it's easy to get suspicious. Perhaps they don't like the look of you, or they think you won't be able to eat their food, or they're afraid you may make some demand that they can't fulfill. When my wife and I made our first trips to Sado, nearly twenty years before, I used to lurk down the street or hide in the bushes outside while she went in to make the arrangements for a room; if the management caught sight of a foreigner before the deal was struck, there would always be a problem. Nowadays, things were different — but I always prefaced my request for a room with a lengthy speech about where I had come from and what I was doing, just to make sure they realized that communication was possible. It didn't always work, but so what? The next place might be better, or cheaper, or friendlier, or more convenient.

  In the next village there were not four inns, but two. One was boarded up. The other contained no-one but a deaf old granny. "Everyone's out," she told me. "It probably wouldn't be convenient for you to stay." Obviously she would be the one to catch hell if she installed a foreigner while the owners were out. But fortunately, she had good news too. There were four other inns not far away. In the next village.

  There
were, too. At the first three I tried, no-one answered the door. Were they all telephoning ahead, warning their colleagues about a monster at large in the area? No, of course not. Don't be so paranoid. Look, there's the last one — better give it a try. As I approached the door, something squashy happened in my right boot and my sock felt wet. Must have burst a blister. I opened the door and called out "Gomen kudasai!"

  No-one answered, although I could hear voices coming from the kitchen. I called out again. Nothing happened. I tried again, louder. Still nothing. It reminded me of a story about a foreigner who was traveling in rural Japan years ago and suddenly realized he was lost. As darkness fell, he spotted a lonely farm house with a light inside and smoke coming from the chimney. Intending to ask for a night's lodging, he strode up to the house and knocked briskly on the door. There was no answer, so he knocked again. . . And again, and again. After a long interval, the door was cautiously opened and the family came out to inspect him. At first they wouldn't let him into the house — not until he had allowed the farmer to walk round behind him and check his clothes at the back. The explanation, when he eventually worked it out, was that no-one ever knocks at a door in Japan; the visitor always opens it himself and then calls out to the people inside. When they heard the knocking, the family thought it was a tail tapping against their door — the tail of a ghostly, dangerous, shape-changing fox. So they weren't letting the stranger in until they had checked behind him to see if there was a tail there or not. But dammit, surely these bloody innkeepers hadn't mistaken me for a fox? I had opened the door and called out normally, hadn't I? I stood there fuming, allowing anger to boil up inside me — invariably a mistake in Japan. I knew that, but didn't care. I would damned well stand there and holler till these people came to the door, even if I had to wait for an hour. It wasn't an hour, but it felt like it. Eventually a woman came. A room? Oh how unfortunate! They were all just getting ready to go out for the evening! To a relative's party in Akadomari! What a pity! Ha ha! So of course they weren't taking in any guests. Still, that's life. People make plans, things don't always fit in. But there was no need to be downhearted. It wasn't all bad news, not by any means. Because the woman knew a couple of other inns where she was sure I could get a room for the night. In fact she was certain, because she herself had met a couple of people that very day who told her they had stayed there. I held up my hand. "Don't tell me where they are — let me guess. The next village?"