syrup-station and travel lodge we are given settai of tea and tangerines by the proprietor: a brief blessing. Then: smog masks and wraparounds; helmet down and push.
When we find a bas-relief finger on a squat pillar pointing down a muddy footpath through birches and alders, it is like the manifestation of the saint himself. Joyfully we turn off the road and hurtle as fast as we can down the old path among the birch trees.
The henro path leads us into a rich, timeless agricultural landscape. We cycle through grass-roofed villages, along narrow causeways between flooded paddies where mud-smeared wading robots tend crops of tall, slender shoots—tatami reeds, Mas informs me. Absurdly, I feel like the hero in a spaghetti Western. Though my plastic rainsheet bestows some characteristics of the Man With No Name, this awareness comes not from any change in myself, but in my surroundings, so pervasive yet subtle it is several kilometers farther before I can pinpoint it. On every house. On every shop. On every vehicle and robot and biogas plant and windpump and gatepost and signpost: the mark of the eagle and the lightning: Protected by Tosa Securities Incorporated.
“Like a set from a Kurosawa movie,” agrees Mas, drawing alongside. Troubled in spirit, we press on and the rain steepens into a general downpour.
In an attempt to expose us to a wider world than typography and corporate logos, the mandarins of Graphic Communications decreed that we attend weekly lectures on whatever particular hobbyhorse the tutorial staff liked to ride. The only one I remember was Jake Byrne, our year tutor, proposing his outrageous/right-wing/racist/xenophobic theory of sociological inertia. Reader’s Digest condensed version: national characteristics as bred in bone as hair/eyes/coloring: re Japan:zaibatsus collapse, arcologies burn, Euro/Islamic graverobbers dismember, honorable salaryperson throws off business suit out come swords/armor/helmet waiting in the attic, hello boys it’s the Last Remake of Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior. If Masahiko can no longer see the Japan of his childhood in the Japan of his thirty-somethings, perhaps we should not be surprised to find this prosperous farming land the fiefdom of some neo-feudal private security company.
I feel very far from the Approved Tourist Route.
The inscription tells us that the shrine has stood for three hundred and twenty-eight years, and implies that it will be here long after the incongruous modern green of a private golf course straddling the henro path has returned to nature again. Its guardian is newer, and more transient, than even the golf course. Mas dismounts, crouches down, obscenely fascinated. His raincape sheds sheets of water. Small tearing animals have ripped away lips, cheeks, eyes; the ears have been reduced to two knobs of gnawed gristle. Where it has been tattooed, the skin has remained intact by virtue of some preservative feature of the inks. The plastic helmet is impervious to both elements and animals, the plastic ident tag likewise, concealed among early summers burst of rain-wet bluebells, aconites, and wild garlic. On the edge of the rough, the head of the young akira keeps watch on the plaid trousers and Mr. Dormie club-bags and biopower golf karts. Are the junior account managers and sales executives applauding beneath their corporate golf umbrellas— golfu is too important a thing to be surrendered to a mere monsoon—when Mr. Chairman hits one straight down the middle aware of the barbarism not a hundred meters from the thirteenth tee? What are the Acceptable Levels for an uninterrupted round of Royal and Ancient?
Mas has found an accountholder’s plastic smartcard among the wet spring flowers. Embossed on its plastic face is the ubiquitous thunder-eagle of Tosa Securities Inc.
“Christ’s sake, Mas, leave it.” Foolish pilgrim, who does not recognize an omen.
It is only a few hundred meters across rough, fairway, and Number Thirteen green—we
When we find a bas-relief finger on a squat pillar pointing down a muddy footpath through birches and alders, it is like the manifestation of the saint himself. Joyfully we turn off the road and hurtle as fast as we can down the old path among the birch trees.
The henro path leads us into a rich, timeless agricultural landscape. We cycle through grass-roofed villages, along narrow causeways between flooded paddies where mud-smeared wading robots tend crops of tall, slender shoots—tatami reeds, Mas informs me. Absurdly, I feel like the hero in a spaghetti Western. Though my plastic rainsheet bestows some characteristics of the Man With No Name, this awareness comes not from any change in myself, but in my surroundings, so pervasive yet subtle it is several kilometers farther before I can pinpoint it. On every house. On every shop. On every vehicle and robot and biogas plant and windpump and gatepost and signpost: the mark of the eagle and the lightning: Protected by Tosa Securities Incorporated.
“Like a set from a Kurosawa movie,” agrees Mas, drawing alongside. Troubled in spirit, we press on and the rain steepens into a general downpour.
In an attempt to expose us to a wider world than typography and corporate logos, the mandarins of Graphic Communications decreed that we attend weekly lectures on whatever particular hobbyhorse the tutorial staff liked to ride. The only one I remember was Jake Byrne, our year tutor, proposing his outrageous/right-wing/racist/xenophobic theory of sociological inertia. Reader’s Digest condensed version: national characteristics as bred in bone as hair/eyes/coloring: re Japan:zaibatsus collapse, arcologies burn, Euro/Islamic graverobbers dismember, honorable salaryperson throws off business suit out come swords/armor/helmet waiting in the attic, hello boys it’s the Last Remake of Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior. If Masahiko can no longer see the Japan of his childhood in the Japan of his thirty-somethings, perhaps we should not be surprised to find this prosperous farming land the fiefdom of some neo-feudal private security company.
I feel very far from the Approved Tourist Route.
The inscription tells us that the shrine has stood for three hundred and twenty-eight years, and implies that it will be here long after the incongruous modern green of a private golf course straddling the henro path has returned to nature again. Its guardian is newer, and more transient, than even the golf course. Mas dismounts, crouches down, obscenely fascinated. His raincape sheds sheets of water. Small tearing animals have ripped away lips, cheeks, eyes; the ears have been reduced to two knobs of gnawed gristle. Where it has been tattooed, the skin has remained intact by virtue of some preservative feature of the inks. The plastic helmet is impervious to both elements and animals, the plastic ident tag likewise, concealed among early summers burst of rain-wet bluebells, aconites, and wild garlic. On the edge of the rough, the head of the young akira keeps watch on the plaid trousers and Mr. Dormie club-bags and biopower golf karts. Are the junior account managers and sales executives applauding beneath their corporate golf umbrellas— golfu is too important a thing to be surrendered to a mere monsoon—when Mr. Chairman hits one straight down the middle aware of the barbarism not a hundred meters from the thirteenth tee? What are the Acceptable Levels for an uninterrupted round of Royal and Ancient?
Mas has found an accountholder’s plastic smartcard among the wet spring flowers. Embossed on its plastic face is the ubiquitous thunder-eagle of Tosa Securities Inc.
“Christ’s sake, Mas, leave it.” Foolish pilgrim, who does not recognize an omen.
It is only a few hundred meters across rough, fairway, and Number Thirteen green—we
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