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 me drumming on the day of the festival. You must come.
"Sora is a very small village, but there used to be maybe five shrines altogether. But I think it was in Taishō 3 (1914) that all the shrines were made into one shrine— the present one. You know, Sora Shrine. The kami-sama in that shrine is the ancestor of the Hosoki family. You know, the house with the gate with the thatched roof. That's theirs. They were the oldest and richest family in the village. The present owner of that house is now living in Osaka.
"When we had five shrines it seemed everyday was a festival! People from other villages joked, 'You had a festival only yesterday, and again today?'" He put on a mask of amazement and we all laughed. "These days we only celebrate twice a year, April and September." He picked up his cup. "In those days the roads were very narrow so it was difficult to carry the portable shrine through the village. Sometimes we had to put it in a boat. These days it's easy but we don't have enough young men to carry the mikoshi on their shoulders."
He suddenly stood up. Whenever he stood up or sat down, it always took me by surprise. The effect was due to the shortness of his legs, causing his body to be already close to the ground. It was more as though the earth came up to meet him or fell away from him, similar to the way a baby is all of a sudden sitting or standing. "I must get back to my babā (old wife). She'll be wondering where I am."
I followed him to the genkan and watched him carefully negotiate the step and put on his shoes. He backed out through the doorway, bowing deeply and thanking us politely. We met his bows and thanked him also politely and very gratefully.
It is highly unlikely in the above story about the Koyasu Jizō, that the monk called Ikkyū was in fact the famous fourteenth-century Zen Master and poet of the same name, in spite of his eccentric and wild reputation. There is, however, an apocryphal story about him that, while expressing something of his own personality and the spirit of his Zen, does concern pissing.
Ikkyū was on a ferry where he met a fellow passenger who was a monk from one of the esoteric schools, most probably Shingon. The monk criticized Zen for ignoring magic, and in order to impress his captive audience he proceeded to invoke a tutelary deity called Fudō-Myōō (considered to be a manifestation of the Cosmic Sun Buddha Dainichi), who appeared in a halo of fire. Everyone was very frightened except Ikkyū, who calmly announced that he would match the monk's magic with his own. He would produce water from his body and extinguish the flames. So saying, he lifted his robes and pissed on the flames until Fudō-Myōō disappeared.
The roof of a temple
hangs in the dusk,
like the wings
of a great bird,
hatching Buddhas.
♦ The Story of Zenzuka
In the summer and up until late autumn, we were in the habit of swimming daily from the small beach in the little bay of Zenzuka, which was to the Sora side of Helmet Mountain surrounded by forest and small rice fields. We later learned from one of the women who worked in the fields around Zenzuka that they had been wondering all summer long what it was we did in the sea each day. They had come to the conclusion that we must have been diving for shellfish or something. Swimming for its own sake was not something that had entered their minds.
Sadly, the beach at Zenzuka collected a great deal of rubbish at times, thrown into the sea from villages down the coast and from over the sides of ships. A lot of the items washed up bore Korean hangul characters. It was sometimes necessary after a storm to clear up the beach before entering the water, which was always crystal clear and filled with an extraordinary variety of fish.
Zenzuka had always been a special place to me. Even the name "Zenzuka" carries an exotic and mysterious resonance like Zanzibar or Mandalay, and on hot summer days with a cool breeze off the sea, kites fishing in the bay, snakes sunbathing on the paths between the rice fields, and cicadas buzzing like mysterious energies coiling and uncoiling among the trees on the slopes of Helmet Mountain, it was like briefly being on a day visit to one of the heavenly realms. I was not at all surprised then to discover that there was a story about Zenzuka.
During the Kyōhō period (1716-36) there was a great famine in Noto that affected Sora very seriously. One day a boat carrying rice from Sakata in Yamagata prefecture was forced by a strong headwind to anchor in the tiny harbor of Sora to wait for a more favorable wind before continuing its voyage south. As soon as the starving villagers saw the boat, they thought a shipment of relief rice had reached them at last. Realizing their mistake, some of the villagers were forced to beg. On seeing their desperate plight