Song of Fire

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Song: “Four Haiku” by Jon O’Bergh
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The sun never set as we chased it across the sky on the plane to Japan. The man beside me was reading Playboy when the plane took off; in mid-flight, he switched to Catholic Digest, apparently unperturbed by any contradiction.

I had long been intrigued by Japanese culture, its aesthetic sense of beauty in simplicity and the subtle wisdom of Zen. I wanted to visit, but the prospect of a long journey by myself to a far land just seemed too daunting. Other than a trip to Canada— which hardly counted as foreign — I had never been outside the United States. One day at work, while filing copies of The Houston Post Travel section, this headline jumped out at me: “Don’t Pass Up a Trip to Japan – Even If It Means Going Alone.” Who could ignore such a deliberate message? So I began my preparations, studying the language, reading guide books, and learning about Japanese history.

At the Narita airport, despite the proliferation of signs in English, I wandered back and forth through the lobby, disoriented and shocked to actually be standing on Japanese soil. A Japanese man finally approached me, breaking the spell, and helped me locate the bus into town. The autumn twilight was spreading across the sky as I approached the inn where I would spend my first night. My room was sparely furnished with a futon spread out on tatami mats. In the corner was a sink at which I had to kneel to perform my ablutions. I went down to the men’s bath, washed and carefully rinsed, then settled into the ofuro to soak.

Breakfast the following morning was presented like a work of art in a lacquered box that opened to reveal asymmetrical compartments containing carefully arranged food. One of the items had been crosscut with grooves that left tiny raised squares like the back of an armadillo. Half of a boiled egg was cut with sawtooth lines and sprinkled with a handful of black sesame seeds. Small bundles of spinach were carefully tied with seaweed. On closer inspection, the apparent asymmetry of the compartments revealed a harmony. The irregular polygon of the two smaller compartments, with their variety of angles, reflected the shape of the larger compartment: harmony arising from the interaction of the shapes rather than their mere repetition.

While waiting for the bus to the train station, a drunk man approached me and sat on the bench. He smiled and mumbled words I couldn’t understand, but kept extending his hand to shake mine. I smiled in return and each time politely complied. A trio of schoolgirls nearby bowed their heads and shyly giggled. When he at last left, one of the girls turned to me and, with small inclines of her head, apologetically said “Sumimasen. I am so sorry. Please excuse him.”

From Tokyo, the train to Kamakura passed through the sludge and corrugated steel of Yokohama, eventually arriving at the one-time shogun outpost of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The narrow streets and pathways through the town wandered, crossed and converged in random patterns, passing over small creeks and sluices that ran between the homes and winding past fences of wood, bamboo, steel and stone. Occasionally I encountered a cyclist, the jing-jing of the bell gently creeping up on me from behind.

I came upon the towering Daibutsu, a large bronze Buddha patiently weathering the elements in the open air, the gently inclined curve of its posture evoking a humble gentility and peacefulness. Here was absolute symmetry, left and right a mirror of each other. At the Hasedera temple, thousands of figurines adorned the mossy ledges and steps leading to the richly gilded and colorfully painted hall of the great wooden Kannon: the Buddha of compassion, known in India as Avalokitesvara and in China as the goddess Quan-Yin. My mother had kept a small statue of Quan-Yin on our patio beside a statue of St. Francis. Did her quiet regard for these two beautiful embodiments of compassion influence my feelings without my even being aware of it? I trekked through a cave with several rooms that revealed images of buddhas and bodhisattvas carved into the walls, a candle burning before each, and in one low-ceilinged room where I remained alone for several minutes, there was a curious European ceramic statuette in one corner: a bonneted girl with a shepherd’s pole.

Leaving Tokyo a few days later, I headed north to Nikko, an ostentatious memorial to the seventeenth century shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. The fine craftsmanship of the Nikko shrines and their setting in a green, mossy cedar forest save the site from vulgarity. Crowds teamed and trammeled at the popular Toshogu Shrine, but later that morning I found the quieter Daiyun area. Everywhere towering cryptomeria shaded pathways, creeks ran over rocks, and moss and lichen carpeted the old stone lanterns, steps and walls. A small, bent oba-san and I traded greetings of “ohayo gozaimasu” and bowed to one another. The twinkle of a smile lit up her face as she hobbled past.

Late in the day I came unexpectedly on an abandoned shrine, its cobblestones dislodged in disarray, the vermillion paint faded and floors covered with dust. Leaves dropped like light snow from the trees and rustled the hushed gloom as the afternoon sunlight filtered through the cedars. I sat there awhile, completely alone, the only sound the falling of the autumn leaves.

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