we descended the hillside and walked through the forest, we came across a clearing where someone had made a vegetable garden. While admiring the neatly weeded rows of winter vegetables, a very ancient-looking woman who might have stepped out of a folktale emerged from the forest to one side of the garden. On seeing us, she broke into a smile and we all bowed "Konnichiwa." "Where are you from?" she asked, looking from Masako to me, and obviously surprised to see a foreigner.
"We've just moved into Sora. Into Mr. Sawada's house beside the vermilion bridge," answered Masako. "My husband is from Britain and I'm from Tokyo. But we've decided to live in the Japanese countryside."
"Ah, good. Mr. Sawada's house. Yes, I know," she said smiling. "You've come to a good place. The land here is very soft and gentle, like the people. We never have earthquakes here. In all my years I never remember there being an earthquake."
Three nights later, I had just gone upstairs and begun to undress when, as I put out my hand to hang my shirt on a large ikō (a lacquered stand for hanging kimono), it appeared to move away from me. At the same time, my body registered that certain feeling of instability that had become familiar while I was living in Tokyo. But I did not, in those few seconds, make the connection, after the reassurance we had received from the old woman on Helmet Mountain, until I realized that not only the ikō but the room, in fact, the whole house was moving—we were having an earthquake!
We hurried to the radio and waited for any reports, and learned that the epicenter had apparently been deep under the sea near the town of Wajima on the other side of the peninsula. There had been some damage to the harbor, and a car had fallen into the sea, but there had been no injuries or loss of life.
I hoped that the locals would not associate the appearance of a foreigner in their midst with the earthquake, as some form of retribution devised by the local kami.
♦ An Offer I Could Not Refuse
While trying to acquaint ourselves with the topography of the area, we were walking through the village one afternoon when something made me turn and glance over my shoulder. I just caught sight of the back of a priest in yellow-and-white robes disappearing around the corner of a house. The experience for some reason gave me a powerful feeling of déjà vu that registered in my body physically, like a shock. I had expected to see the black robes of a priest of the Jōdo Shin sect of Pure Land Buddhism in the village, but this brief flash was far more exotic. Without thinking of any other Japanese sect, I had for some reason immediately associated the image with Tibetan monks, some of whose robes share similar colors of yellow and white. Nevertheless, when I thought about it I realized that this association possibly made sense, if in fact the temple in the village belonged to the Shingon sect, since there are many shared features between the two forms of Buddhism; hence, my association at some subliminal level, perhaps.
We had already decided that we should call on the temple, and I was now curious to see if my hunch was correct. A few days later we paid a visit, bearing the customary gifts, only to find that the priest was out, but to be invited back later by the priest's wife, who told us that the temple did indeed belong to the Shingon sect. A day or two later, the priest, Reverend Tani, phoned and invited us to dinner the following evening.
When we arrived at the temple, we were shown into a room at the back of Reverend Tani's house, where he served us green tea while we sat around a hibachi (a traditional form of heating). Almost his first words were: "How long do you think you will stay in this village?"
I answered him honestly, that I never tried to plan too much ahead in my life but rather preferred to wait and see which direction it tended toward. After a few more minutes of general conversation he suddenly asked: "Do you think you can live in this village?"
My reply, in the affirmative, seemed to please him, because he extended an arm across the hibachi and warmly shook my hand with a broad smile on his face. Then Mrs. Tani silently slid open the karakami and announced that dinner was ready.
We were shown into a large, long room with three low, lacquered tables placed end to end and covered in dishes containing various kinds of vegetables, shellfish, meats, and fish. Already sitting at the tables were Mrs. Tani's uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Shinde, who live in the fishing port town of Ushitsu some thirty kilometers up the coast from Sora, and her father, Reverend Terakoshi, also a Shingon priest.
We introduced ourselves in the traditional, formal Japanese manner, kneeling on the tatami and bowing deeply to each other. It was explained that Mr. Shinde worked in a senior post on the Ushitsu District Council and had played a key role in preserving and promoting interest in a large Jōmon period (Neolithic) site close to where he had also been in charge of the founding of a hot-spring spa (onsen), to which we were later to become frequent visitors. Reverend Terakoshi had a large and beautiful temple in a nearby town.
Seated on cushions (zabuton) at the table, we first toasted each other with chilled Japanese beer before commencing the feast that was set before us. I had hardly lifted my bowl of miso soup, however, when Reverend Tani turned to me and said: "I want you to come and look after this temple and live in it rent free. We have to go to another temple in Nakai. Do you think you can do that?"
We had been in the temple little more than half an hour, and already we were being asked if we would take care of it. I was so taken aback that without any space to think about it I immediately agreed, saying we would be very pleased to do so. Later, Reverend Tani told us he too was taken completely by surprise, as he had had no idea of making such a request. To add to the strangeness of the circumstances of the offer, Reverend Tani, at the time, had no idea that I had been a Buddhist for nearly twenty years, albeit of a different school from the Shingon sect. Or that I had on two previous occasions in my life, been on the point of taking ordination as a Buddhist priest.
Only one thing concerned me, and that was how the people of such a small conservative village would accept the idea of a foreigner moving into their temple. This had obviously occurred to Reverend Tani also, because a few days later he asked us not to mention it to anyone until he had had a meeting with the temple elders, since the unexpectedness of his asking us had preempted any plans that would need to be made.
Some weeks later, we had gone for a walk through the village at night, when suddenly there were voices up ahead of us in the dark, coming from the temple end of the village. Against the only street lamp at that end of the village, the silhouettes of a group of people could be seen coming toward us. As they drew close and we greeted one another, they recognized us and one of the men detached himself from the group, while the others carried on down the street.
Approaching us in the dark, the man bowed and said to Masako, "We are delighted that you are going to take care of the temple and we would like it if your husband would use one of the rooms over the temple to work in. But I'm sorry, we do find it a bit difficult to think of anyone but a priest living there because all our ancestors are there."
We explained that we understood their feelings completely and thanked them for their generosity in allowing me to work there, while promising to do our best in looking after the temple.
As we continued our walk, it dawned on us that they must have just come from a meeting with Reverend Tani, and we hoped they would not think that we were already on our way to the temple on some prearrangement with him to be informed of the outcome of the meeting.
By the end of the year, the barrier to our living in the temple had dissolved, but by that time I had found that cycling or walking to and from the temple each day, and dividing the hours between working at my desk and working in the temple and its garden, a very agreeable rhythm.
All spring and summer long and well into the autumn, I worked upstairs in the temple, and during breaks, cleaned the hondō (the main hall containing the image of
