pitiful condition of their skeletal bodies, and remembering how his master's warehouses were so filled with rice that even the mice were well-fed, the captain decided to unload at Sora.
That night the god Ebisu appeared beside the captain's pillow and told him to stop at Zenzuka on his way back to Sakata. But since they had already unloaded the rice there was no reason for them to continue their voyage. The next day, however, the weather was so beautiful they decided to set sail. As they were passing Zenzuka, a man appeared on the small rocky promontory (described in "Second Homes") and, waving with a fan, beckoned them into the tiny bay. As the boat came within earshot of the man, he shouted, "These rocks are precious, so load up with as many as you can."
The captain, thinking this to be a very strange order, was about to reconfirm what the man had said when the man disappeared. Then, remembering the words of Ebisu in his strange dream the previous night, and realizing that the man on the rocky promontory must have been Ebisu, he told his crew about it and ordered them to load the boat with rocks. By the time the boat had reached its home port of Sakata, the rocks in the boat had turned to gold.
The story of the completion of the voyage was carried back to Sora by the crews of other boats, and since that time a shrine has always been maintained on top of the small rocky promontory. In more recent times, giant statues of both Ebisu and Daikoku have stood guard at the entrance to the shrine.
♦ The Ideal Restaurant
While eating lunch in the Korean restaurant in Anamizu, the owner of which also ran the cesspit-emptying business, the person with whom I was lunching told me about a restaurant in Tokyo that a friend of his had told him about. While I suspect that the genesis of this story is probably to be found in an only-too-common enough experience in restaurants and has acquired a patination of fact through its entry into gastronomic folklore, it nevertheless carries an attractive idea. Apparently, this friend of his had gone into a restaurant, sat down, and after perusing the menu had ordered a meal from one of the waiters. When the meal was placed before him, he saw to his displeasure that it was not the meal he had asked for. He immediately complained to the waiter, who replied, "The policy of this restaurant is not to give people what they order."
This kind of restaurant is precisely what we need, I believe, as the perfect antidote to the hell of multichoice pampering that confuses us in so many areas of our consumer life. The idea that we should have everything we imagine we want rather than what we actually might need confines our lives even more blindly to the dictates of our narrowly conditioned egos, so limiting the possibilities of experiencing something we might be unprepared for or might otherwise wish to avoid—experiences that just might contain germs of new growth and knowledge. The nightmarish, extreme scenario in this respect is extended by the future prospect of genetic menus with "the baby of your choice," etc.—a world designed for those who can only live by the assurance of what is going to happen or of what conditions will be in the next second. A world of insurances and lawsuits against the unexpected, against life itself. In our optimism at finding such an establishment, however, we searched out this restaurant for ourselves on a trip to Tokyo, only to find that if it had existed, it had now vanished off the face of Japan.
♦ Mr. Nagao Speaks of Birth and Death
We met Mr. Nagao first at Sora Shrine on the occasion of the village spring festival. We had been told by Mr. Kitayama, the headman, that Mr. Nagao came from a very old family that had occupied the same land for over 360 years and that he had been headman some few years previously and had lots of stories. When we met him, he was dressed formally in black haori, bearing his clan emblem, and hakama (kimono coat and men's silk culottes) in his capacity as the leader of the procession who purifies the path of the kami as it progresses through the village. He was short with a well-earthed body that gave a powerful impression of contained energy. He had a deep crease, probably a scar that ran around his jaw like a chinstrap and merged into the natural creases on either side of his face. He appeared to be in his mid-seventies.
It was January before we were able to arrange to visit him, when he had time after the busy harvest and preparations for winter to sit and talk. His study, where he kept records of the village and received visitors, was a small room on the west side of the house, decorated with his own ink paintings and calligraphy and with a view of the garden. At its center was an open hearth (irori), which instead of containing a wood fire had been cleared to provide space for a large kerosene stove. The room was stiflingly hot after the cold outside, and my spectacles steamed up immediately upon entering the room so that I had to remove them and wave them above the stove to warm the lenses. A television on the north wall of the room and opposite to where I was invited to sit was showing a panorama of mountain peaks. It was unaccountably left switched on for the duration of our visit, drawing my attention away periodically into different areas of Japan, the facial topography of politicians, the occasional flash of a war zone, and so on.
Mr. Nagao made green tea and passed cups to us while directing our attention to several small plates of rice crackers. After passing our cups, he leaned over to some shelves to his right and pulled out a document. Opening it and smoothing it with his hand, he said, "Before the Meiji period (1868-1912) we commoners weren't allowed to have surnames." He pointed, and I noticed that the first joint of each forefinger was bent toward its neighbor. "You can see my ancestor's name here, Satoemon [a given name]. This document shows how much rice families paid as tax. Our family status was based on the size of our crop, the number of mountains [for timber], and the amount of land we farmed. After the war even peasants could own land according to the land reforms, which meant that a period of equality had begun." As he talked, he would now and then point in one direction or another, indicating a temple, house, or field, raising his arm to stress some point he was making. Whenever he did this, what I imagined to be his elbow emitted a loud crack.
"The old family hierarchy is still reflected in the order of sitting in the temples. For example, in our temple, we have kept the old seating arrangements and you are required to donate a certain amount according to your status when the temple needs money for restoration or something like that. My temple is in Yamanaka, about twelve kilometers from here. At present my share is ¥150,000."
He folded the document and replaced it among the shelves, and we started to eat the rice crackers. The television showed the imperial crown princess walking up a flight of steps. She paused at the top to wave to somebody before disappearing into what appeared to be a black hole.
"Our lives have related deeply to rice from our earliest days," he said, spilling cracker crumbs from his mouth. "My mother gave birth to me on rice straw with the assistance of the old woman from next-door. A mother fed her newborn baby three times a day. She had to work in the rice and vegetable fields all day, so she fed her baby in the early morning before she left, at lunch time, and finally in the evening when she returned home. During the day I was put into a kind of round-shaped basket made of rice straw, with a rice-straw rope across each of my shoulders to stop me from climbing out. This is how I grew up.
"In my time, we only had four years of compulsory education. Beyond that it didn't matter whether you carried on or not. I remember that lots of my classmates brought their younger brothers or sisters to school on their backs and looked after them while they studied. I was lucky though. Because I was the family heir I received extra education, but none of my brothers and sisters did.
"In those days, Senjuin temple was always full of people, young and old, daytime and evening. Now it's no good, the young people are not there anymore. I feel closer to the temple than I do to the shrine. When you compare the shrine and the temple, not many Shinto priests live by the shrine but monks always live in a house attached to the temple."
An extraordinary commercial for diapers that showed a baby pissing from a cloud snatched my eyes and held them captive for a few seconds. He produced another old document from the shelves and prodded at it with the crooked joint of a forefinger, "This was written by my grandfather. . . Here he notes the religious gatherings . . . so many . . . January 5, 11, 12, . . . they gathered at the temple." He traced his finger along the characters, speaking each as the tip of his finger contacted it, as though it transmitted the vibration of the brushstrokes to his vocal chords. "Many activities. . . My grandfather recorded what they did and when, and so on. He writes that seven families belong to the Shin sect, Otani subsect; eight