so, how about making the trip on the back of a horse? Today we came here thinking to buy some lumber, but since it hasn’t been cut yet we’re going back light in the rear.” I was grateful, but being poor, after calculating the cost of riding, I declined. “Then we’ll tie your shoulder bag on one of our horses,” they offered, so I had them strap my rucksack on. “You walk on ahead,” one told me. “We have to buy some gasoline to take back, and we’ll catch up with you directly.”
I set off hurriedly, relieved of my burden. After Ina, the village of Shitaru appeared and the evening sun on the ocean inlet there was beautiful. While I was walking on the road along the shore, the three men on horseback came up from behind and passed me, looking gallant. It was just like in the drawing of farmers off to get fish, running their horses, in the legend of Ishiyama Temple. They were dressed in light, short-sleeved kimonos, drawers down to their knees, and straw sandals.
It was all fine and good to look admiringly at their retreating figures, but in almost no time they’d disappeared from view. Relying on my map, I passed through Shitaru and started along a road through the mountains, but the men on horseback were nowhere to be seen. Completely at a loss, I asked someone working in a field if anyone had passed on horseback. “They were going at quite a pace,” he replied.
I had thirty-three pounds of rice in my knapsack, along with a change of clothes. Much like in medieval times, one had to carry rice to travel in Tsushima in 1950. Without this rice, more often than not, I’d have been imposing on the farmers I stayed with, for in Tsushima rice was scarce. That aside, I’d not asked the three men their names, or where in Sago they lived. The valley in Sago runs about two and a half miles north to south, and there are six tiny villages in that stretch. I thought things looked bad, but anyway I’d try walking as far as I could. If I took a wrong turn I could always sleep out in the mountains.
In May of that year, when Izumi Sei-ichi (a professor at the University of Tokyo) had come here to do preliminary research, he’d gotten lost on the road from Sago to Ina. He’d set off from Sago past noon, thinking he’d easily come out in Ina by evening, but he had become utterly lost, and didn’t arrive in Ina until ten that night. Izumi-san had warned me, “In many places in the north of Tsushima, the narrow road is the main one, so you have to be careful.” I could see that it was just as he’d said. When I came to places where the valley narrowed and, moreover, where the road divided into two, I was suddenly at a loss. There were no signposts or anything. So I tried walking both roads and looked for the presence or absence of a horse’s hoof. Then I took the road with the hoofprints.
Walking along in this way, it occurred to me that this was probably what the roads had been like in medieval times and before. In addition to being narrow, the road was overgrown with trees, and without the slightest chance of a view there wasn’t even a way to confirm where I was. I can well imagine taking the same road many times and still getting lost. Until you’ve walked a road like this, it’s hard to understand those stories about people being led astray by foxes and raccoon dogs [an animal related to dogs and wolves but more closely resembling the raccoon in appearance and temperament]. And at night these roads are absolutely unwalkable. The sun was probably still shining on the upper slopes of the mountains around me, but this narrow valley road was already as dark as night.
Walking along, I could hear voices somewhere. It sounded like they were calling out. For all I knew they were calling me, so I tried calling too, in a loud voice. And while doing this, I walked in the direction from which the voices had come. I climbed up the valley and came to a pass. But even up there, as the forest was dense, there was no view at all.
At the top of the pass, the three men were waiting, their horses tied to a tree. I paused to catch my breath, and when I said rather emotionally that it was no easy task to walk the roads in these mountains with absolutely no visibility, an old man of nearly seventy said, “There’s a good solution for that. Speak out, so others will know you’re walking here now.” When I asked him in what manner I should speak out, he answered, “Sing. If you’re singing and someone else is on the same mountain, they’ll hear your voice. If they’re from the same village, they’ll know who it is, and they’ll sing too. If the person is near enough that you can make out the words, then you call out to them. By simply doing that, each knows at least the direction the other is heading, and what they will be doing there. So if you get lost, as long as someone has heard you singing, they can imagine what happened and where.” I found that to be rather convincing and realized that a knowledge of folksongs is necessary when walking a mountain road such as this one. When I asked the old man if he would sing, he replied, “Let’s wait until we’ve started walking again,” and mounted his horse.
The road descended through uneven rocks. Astride his horse, the old man held the reins with one hand and the saddle with the other to keep his body from sliding forward and falling, for although there was a saddle it had no stirrups. He explained that the reason for the absence of stirrups was to reduce the chance of an injury; in mountains such as these, one can get thrown from a horse if one gets caught up in the drooping branches. Walking together like this, I came to feel that the folksongs these people sang and every detail of the way they rode their horses were accumulations of a deep wisdom about life itself.
Then, sitting on that unstable saddle, the old man began to sing. And from the moment he began I was struck with admiration. This was definitely a packhorse driver’s song. It was not rhythmical and refined like the songs of the Matsumae and Esashi packhorse drivers, which have become parlor songs. It had the simple artlessness of a horseman’s song, and although the old man was approaching seventy, his voice truly carried well. Atop his horse, he seemed to be lost within his own song. I followed him, running along behind.
When the road became a little better and the valley more open, we came upon a village called Nakayama. The houses, about ten in all, were scattered here and there among the fields. Though the sun had already gone down, none of the houses had lit their lamps yet. At every house the people could be seen out front, putting things in order or talking. The red fire burning for a bath at one house made an impression on me. A young man stood in front of that home, removing dirt from a hoe.
When the man on the horse asked the young man if he wanted to come over, he responded, “At Bon.” This being Bon on the old calendar, the festival would be some ten days later. “You haven’t come much this year.” “Yeah, the last time was in May.” The young man stretched his back and looked at us. He was a bright, round-faced, and sturdily built youth. While it was nearly five miles from Nakayama to Sago Valley, these were neighboring communities. Yet he was saying that since New Year’s, he’d only been to Sago the one time in May. There’s no radio or newspaper, no Saturday or Sunday. Life here is still without plays or movies. When I asked, “Do you spend all your time working?” The old man answered, “No, we make a picnic lunch and go over to Chuzan (a village on the coast) for shellfish in among the rocks, and to fish. We have fun.” Another of the men on horseback said, “This old man has a good voice, so he’s had quite a lot of good fun.” I thought this was because he was enraptured with his own singing and that this had brightened his life, but there was another meaning to what the man had said.
We continued on from Nakayama along a valley road, and at the upper reaches of the Sago River the road descended alongside the stream. Sometimes on the right bank, sometimes on the left, the road passed on whichever side offered even a bit of flat ground. In many places I had to traverse the river from right to left or from left to right, and each time I would pull off my shoes and socks, roll up my pants, and make the crossing barefoot while the men on horseback splashed their way across. When I reached the other bank, I would hurriedly wipe my feet, put on my socks and shoes, and run after them, for they’d have already gone far ahead. Soon I was exhausted, completely out of breath.
I’d not eaten lunch. Even here on Tsushima if I stayed at an inn I’d be given breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But when I asked farmers to put me up, while they’d eat breakfast and dinner, many ate no lunch to speak
