extremities of his body and converge in his chest, so that their collective momentum caused his body to bob up and down as his throat acted as their escape valve. "A long, long time ago, we had no doctors and no midwives in this village. Only the old women of the village. By the way, we call the midwife toriage babā, a woman who takes a baby out of its mother's body. In those days, it was a very serious and worrying business for women, you know, if their babies had difficulty getting out of their bodies.
"In this village, when a woman gives birth her husband's not allowed in the room. Not even any of her boy children should be there. It's all women's business. Not men's. I was told that if I broke that custom, I would have been punished. I don't know what sort of punishment I would have had," he giggled. "Anyway, only women could attend, to help in the birth.
"The village people began to think they needed some kind of protection for women in childbirth. Eventually, they decided to have Jizō-sama [sama is an honorific], and one of the village people carved a Jizō-sama out of stone." Then he added, scratching his belly, "I don't know where the stone came from." He picked up his cup and, looking lovingly into it, took a sip.
"People knew that spirit should be put into Jizō-sama, you know, otherwise it would only be a piece of stone. It is the same as putting spirit into a carved hotoke-sama [hotoke is colloquial for Buddha]. But none of the village people knew how to do it.
"Now we have a temple here, and you know the temple people very well. But a long time ago there was no monk here. There might have been someone like an unqualified monk, but he didn't know how to put spirit into Jizō-sama. So the people decided to wait for a traveling monk to visit the temple. You know, in those days lots of monks traveled from village to village chanting and begging.
"One day at last a monk arrived, and one of the men asked him, 'Aren't you Ikkyū-sama?' And the monk replied, 'Yes.' I don't know whether he was a Zen monk or a Shingon monk, but I was told his name was Ikkyū. Anyway, people asked Ikkyū-sama to put a spirit into Jizō-sama, and they were very curious to know how he would do it." He took a careful sip of saké and then started a giggling fit. "So they gathered round and watched Ikkyū-sama with great interest. Do you know what he did?" He was bobbing up and down and giggling uncontrollably. "Ikkyū-sama tucked up his robe and he pissed all over Jizō-sama's head!"
It took a time for our collective laughter to subside, and I realized at this point that he had for the last few minutes been intermittently touching his genitals, as if contacting the source of the story's charge or completely identifying with the narrative. "Then Ikkyū-sama said, 'Well, this Jizō's now got a spirit so it is all-powerful. If you believe in this Jizō, women in the village can deliver their babies safely.' Then he left."
He was giggling again. "The villagers looked at each other. They were a bit upset. 'How disgusting! How filthy!' they said to each other. And they decided that this Jizō-sama should be cleaned, so they carried it down to the river and scrubbed it.
"That night, Jizō-sama appeared in the house of one of the men who had washed it and said, 'Why did you wash me? I want to be pissed on again, otherwise I can't be Koyasu Jizō. And don't wash me again!' Then Jizō-sama disappeared. I think it was a kind of revelation he had in a dream."
I refilled his cup and our glasses, and he mopped his face very thoroughly with his towel as I asked him why he thought Jizō needed to be pissed over in order to put spirit into him. He was silent and looked up at the ceiling and then down at the table. He took in a breath and let it out and stared off into a horizonless perspective. "I've been wondering why Jizō-sama needed to be pissed on over his head. You know, I think the reason is this. A baby comes out around this area." He was pointing toward his still-open fly, and I was wondering if it was actually pissing that was involved here and not something else. "I heard this story from old people when I was small. I might be the only person who knows this story, that's why I can tell it to you. Was it interesting?" We assured him that it was very interesting. "Do you think I'm a funny old man? A long, long time ago old people told me this story," he repeated, as though trying to emphasize a genuine provenance for it. "These days we have a clinic in Kabuto and a hospital in Anamizu, but still people are looking after Jizō-sama."
As I refilled his cup again, I thought how this story must have attracted him since he was such a great public pisser himself. He replaced his cup on the table after it was filled and told us how he was only allowed to drink two cups a day, but they were big cups, and the cup he was presently drinking from was small by comparison. This was followed by more giggles, before he continued, "The other Jizō-sama near the school is not old. It was put there in my parents' day. When I was young, the road up the hill to Kabuto was very narrow and lonely, so a village man donated the Jizō-sama to guard people traveling along it. He died about thirty years ago."
There had once been a very strong shamanistic tradition, particularly amongst the women in these country areas, and I was curious about his memories of any local healers. He thought for a moment. "Old Woman Yoshioka, who lived two doors away from my house, used to heal people. But when doctors arrived in the area, people gradually stopped visiting her.
"I also knew a man and a woman in Ukawa [a nearby village] who healed people. They could even talk with your dead relations for you. The man made people sit and pray in front of a folding gold screen, which was supposed to produce healing energy. I heard that one very rich man bought the screen and slept in front of it every night, but that he was never healed and just got worse. In the end, he became skin and bone. By the time his family took him to a doctor it was too late. The healer was reported to the police, but he earned lots of money with his swindles.
"I think there used to be healers in all the villages. I knew a man who destroyed a Buddha image he had bought from someone who had told him that if he worshiped it his sick daughter would be healed. But his pretty daughter died. I knew an old woman in this village. Her house was near the farmer's cooperative. I don't know whether she could really heal or not."
Old Man Gonsaku sipped at his saké and, giggling, seemed to change raconteural gear. "I once worked as a boatman, shipping logs and charcoal and other things from this village, Kabuto, and Ukawa to Takaoka City on the other side of the bay. I was employed by a Toyama man."
He suddenly stopped and pointed at the tape recorder with a thick, hardworked forefinger that bore evidence of a lifetime's labor. "This small machine is recording what I am saying now?" I assured him that it was. I was constantly intrigued by many of the villager's amazement at and apparent ignorance of the sophisticated technologies their own country produced. "Yes," I told him, "You'll be able to listen to your voice later on."
He was giggling and holding his genitals again. "I used to be . . ." he hesitated and looked from me to Masako and then back again to me. "I used to be a bit of a waster, indeed. I spent all my money on, you know, sixteen is very young, and all my fellow boatmen were older than me. They took me to a brothel. I was probably only fifteen at the time. They all clapped, saying that I had become a man. Of course, it was before I got married. Anyway, I wasted all my money. So in the end my employer and my parents made an agreement that I wasn't to be paid directly. It was to go to them first."
From time to time he picked up his cap and looked inside it. I thought at first that this action meant he was preparing to go home but soon came to realize that it was like a ritual for recollection or concentration—almost as though the circle of the cap kept him within the sphere of the particular arena of memories he was recounting.
He was silent for a while and raised his head to look up at the ceiling. Suddenly he was bouncing up and down again and giggling. "My taiko drumming is the same type as Wajima's (a town on the peninsula, famous for taiko). In Wajima four drummers play on one drum, but in this village two drummers play on one drum at festivals. One of the drummers died some years ago, so now I'm the only drummer here. I never learned from anyone how to play; I just watched and listened to others playing. You can see
