Kusamakura (4 page)

Nevertheless, how a thing looks depends on how you see it. “Listen to the bell,” Leonardo da Vinci told his pupils. “It is a single sound, but you all hear it variously.” A man or a woman too will appear very different depending on your point of view. Since I’ve come here to devote myself to the unhuman, this is the perspective on humans that I will take, and it is bound to be different from the view I would have from the midst of a life lived deep in the cramped little streets of the crowded world. Very well, granted that I can’t altogether escape the realm of human feelings; at least I can probably maintain the light detachment experienced by the viewer of some classic Noh drama. The Noh drama, after all, has its human feelings. There is no guarantee you won’t weep at a play like
Shichikiochi
or
Sumidagawa.
⁵
But what we experience in these plays is the effect of three parts human feeling to seven parts art. The pleasure we gain from a Noh play springs not from any skill at presenting the raw human feelings of the everyday world but from clothing feeling “as it is” in layer upon layer of art, and in a kind of slowed serenity of deportment not to be found in the real world.

How would it be if I chose to view as actions in a Noh drama the events and people I meet with in the course of this journey? Of course I can’t altogether do away with human feeling, but since this journey is essentially poetic in intent, it would be good to use the “unhuman” I seek to good effect and row its little boat as far upstream as possible. The southern hills and bamboo groves of those ancient poems are of a different nature, of course; nor can I treat humans quite as I do the skylark and mustard blossom; but my ideal is to approach that state as far as possible and do all I can to view humans from its vantage point. The poet Basho after all, found elegance even in the horse peeing by his pillow, and he composed a haiku about it.
⁶
Let me emulate him, then, and deal with the people I meet on this journey—farmer, townsman, village clerk, old man, or old woman—on the assumption that each is a small component figure in a landscape scroll painting. Unlike figures in a painting, of course, they will all be conducting their lives with a willful independence, but to treat them as a normal novelist would—to pursue the reasons behind their individual actions, delve into their psychological workings, and go into all the ins and outs of their human entanglements—would be merely vulgar. Of course they may move about. One can view the figures in a painting as moving forms, after all. But however much they move, those figures remain confined to the flat surface. Once you conceive of them as leaping out of the painting, you’ll find them bumping up against you, and you’ll become ensnared in the troublesome business of self-interested interactions with them. And the more troublesome they become, the less able you are to view them aesthetically. No, I shall aim to observe the people I meet from a lofty and transcendent perspective, and do my best to prevent any spark of human feeling from springing up between us. Thus, however animatedly they may move hither and yon, they won’t find it easy to make the leap across to my heart; I will stand watching as before a picture, as they rush about inside it waving their arms. I can gaze with a calm and unflinching eye from the safe distance of three feet back. To express it another way: being free of self-interested motives, I will be able to devote all my energy to observing their actions from the point of view of Art. With no other thought in mind, I will be in a fine position to pass lofty judgment on the presence or absence of beauty in all I view. . . .

Just as I reach this conclusion, the sky grows suddenly ominous. The seething cloud that a little earlier began to loom overhead has quickly fractured and spread till all around me seems nothing but a sea of cloud, and now a gentle spring rain begins to fall. I have long since left the mustard blossom fields behind and am now high among mountains, but how close they are I cannot tell, owing to the veil of fine, almost mistlike rain. When a gust of wind from time to time parts the high clouds, I catch glimpses of the blackish shape of a high ridge off to my right. It seems that just across the valley from me runs a mountain range. Immediately to my right is the foot of another mountain. An occasional pine or some such tree appears suddenly from deep within the dense misty rain; no sooner is it there than it is gone again. Weirdly, I find myself unable to distinguish whether the rain is shifting, or the tree, or my own dreamy vision.

The path has grown surprisingly broad and flat, and I have no difficulty in walking now, but my lack of rain gear makes me hurry on my way. The rain is dripping from my hat when I hear, about ten yards ahead, the tinkle of a little bell, and out of the rainy darkness emerges a packhorse driver.

“Would there be anywhere to rest around here?” I ask.

“There’s a teahouse a mile on. You’re pretty wet, aren’t you?”

Still a mile to go, I think, as the driver’s figure envelops itself in rain like some shadowy magic lantern form and becomes lost to sight once more.

I watch as the fine-grained rain gradually thickens to long continuous threads, each twisted by the wind. My
haori
has long since become saturated,
⁷
and the water has now penetrated my underwear, where it grows tepid from the heat of my body. It’s an unpleasant sensation, and I tilt my hat low and step briskly out.

If I picture myself, a sodden figure moving in this vast ink-wash world of cloud and rain shot through diagonally with a thousand silver arrows, not as myself but as some other person, there’s poetry in this moment. When I relinquish all thought of the self as is and cultivate the gaze of pure objectivity, then for the first time, as a figure in a painting, I attain a beautiful harmony with the natural phenomena around me. The instant I revert to thoughts of my distress at the falling rain and the weariness of my legs, I lose my place in the world of the poem or painting. I am as before, a mere callow townsman. The swirling brushstrokes of cloud and mist are a closed book to me; no poetic sentiment of falling blossom or calling bird stirs my breast; I have no way of understanding the beauty of my own self as it moves lonely as cloud and rain among the spring mountains. . . .

To begin with, I tilt my hat and stride out. Later, I simply walk with eyes fixed on my feet. In the end, I am plodding unsteadily along, with shoulders hunched. The branches filling my vision sway in the blowing rain, which drives in relentlessly from every direction upon the solitary traveler. This is a bit
too
much of the unhuman for my taste!

“Anyone there?” I call. There is no response.

Standing beneath the eaves, I peer in. The smoke-stained paper screen doors beyond the entrance area are firmly shut, and what lies within is invisible. Half a dozen forlorn pairs of rough straw sandals dangle from the eaves’ rafters, swaying listlessly to and fro. Below them is a neat row of three boxes containing cheap cakes, with a scattering of small coins at their sides.

“Anyone there?” I cry again. Several plumped fowl, asleep atop a hand mill that is tucked in one corner of the entrance, awaken with a start and set up a raucous cackle. Beyond the threshold a clay hearth stands, wet and partly discolored by the rain that is still falling. Above it hangs a blackened tea-kettle, whether earthenware or metal I cannot tell. Happily, the fire in the hearth is lit.

Since there is no reply, I take the liberty of going on in and sit myself down on a bench in the entrance area. The fowl flap noisily down from their perch on the hand mill and hop up onto the matting of the raised floor. They might well walk right into the room beyond if the screen doors weren’t standing in their way. The rooster gives a lusty crow, and the hen takes up the cry more softly. They seem to view my intrusive presence as they would some fox or dog. On the stool sits a smoker’s tray, about as large as a two-quart measure. The coil of incense inside it is sending up a tranquil curl of smoke, as if oblivious to the passage of time. The scene has a simple serenity. The rain gradually eases.

After a while footsteps are heard from within, then one of the grimy screen doors slides smoothly open. An old woman appears.

I have been expecting someone to emerge sooner or later. The fire in the hearth is lit, after all; coins lie scattered about the cake boxes; the incense is left nonchalantly burning. Someone must eventually appear. But this casual way of leaving the shop open and unattended is rather different from the city ways I’m used to. And to simply go in and make myself at home like this, despite receiving no answer to my call, and to sit there patiently waiting, feels a little like stepping into an earlier century than the twentieth. All this is intriguingly otherworldly, that “nonemotional” realm I aspire to. What’s more, I take an immediate fancy to the face of the old woman who has emerged.

Two or three years ago I saw a Hosho School production of the Noh play
Takasago,
¹
and I remember being struck by the beautiful tableau vivant it made. The old man, brush-wood broom on his shoulder, walks five or six steps along the bridgeway leading to the stage, then turns slowly back to face the old woman behind him. That pose, as they stand facing each other, remains vividly before my eyes to this day. From where I was seated, the old woman’s face was more or less directly facing me. Ah, how beautiful! I thought, and in that moment her expression burned itself like a photograph into my heart. The face before me now and that face are so intimately alike that the same blood might flow in both.

“I’m afraid I’ve come in and made myself at home.”

“Not at all. I had no idea you were here.”

“That was quite some rain, wasn’t it?”

“You must have had hard going, with this unfortunate weather. My goodness, you certainly are wet! Let me get the fire going and dry things off for you.”

“If you’d just build up that fire a little, I can stand beside it and dry off. I seem to have got rather cold sitting here.”

“I’ll get it going right away. How about a cup of tea?” She rises to her feet and chases the fowl away with a quick “Shoo! Shoo!” Clucking indignantly, they scramble off the age-stained matting, trample through the cake boxes, and flee out to the road, the rooster depositing a dropping in one of the boxes as he goes.

“Here you are,” says the old woman, reappearing in no time with a teacup on a tray made from a hollowed piece of wood. In the bottom of the cup, which is stained a blackish brown from years of tea, three plum blossoms have been casually sketched with a few quick brushstrokes.

“Have a cake.” She fetches me a sesame twist and a ground-rice stick cake from one of the boxes the fowl trampled through. I look them over warily, wondering if I’ll find the rooster dropping, but evidently it remains somewhere in the box.

The old woman pulls her kimono sleeves back up her arms with a cord looped over her sleeveless work jacket, then crouches down in front of the hearth fire. I take out my sketchbook and draw her profile as we talk.

“It’s lovely and quiet here, isn’t it?”

“Yes, just a little mountain village, as you can see.”

“Do you get bush warblers singing?”
²

“Yes indeed, you hear them every day. They sing in summer too around here.”

“I’d love to hear one now. When none is singing, you really long to hear one.”

“Unfortunately it’s not the day for it. They’ve gone off somewhere to get out of the rain.”

The hearth has meanwhile begun to emit a crackling sound, and suddenly a scarlet flame shoots up a foot or more into the air, sending out a rush of heat.

“Here you are then, come and warm yourself,” she urges. “You must be cold.” A column of blue smoke rises to meet the edge of the eave, where it thins and dissipates, leaving faint wisps trailing in under the wooden roof.

“Ah, this feels good. You’ve brought me back to life.”

“The rain’s cleared off nicely now. Look, you can see Tengu Rock.”

The storm has resolutely swept across the section of mountain before us, in apparent impatience at the spring sky’s timid clouds, and there, where the old woman points, a towering rock like a rough-hewn pillar now soars against the brilliant blue left in the storm’s relentless wake. This must be Tengu Rock.

I gaze first at the rock, then back at the old woman, then finally I hold them both in my line of sight, comparing. As an artist, my mind contains only two old woman images—the face of the old woman of the Noh play and that of the mountain crone of Rosetsu’s painting.
³
When I saw Rosetsu’s painting, I understood the eerie power inherent in the ideal image of the old woman. This was a figure to set among autumn leaves, I thought, or beneath a cold moon. Seeing that Noh play at the Hosho theater, on the other hand, I was astonished at how gentle her expression can be. That Old Woman mask could only have been created by a master carver, though unfortunately I failed to learn the artist’s name. This portrayal brought out a rich, tranquil warmth in the image—something that would be not unfitting depicted on a gilt screen, say, or set against spring breezes and cherry blossoms. As this old woman stands here, bare-armed and drawn up to her full height, one hand shading her eyes while the other points into the distance, her figure seems to match the scene of the mountain path in spring better than does the rugged form of Tengu Rock beyond. I take up my sketchbook again, in the hope that she will hold the pose just a little longer, but at that moment she moves.

“You look in fine shape, I must say,” I remark, as I idly hold the sketchbook toward the fire to dry it.

“Yes, praise be, I keep in good health. I can still use a sewing needle, and spin flax, and grind the dumpling flour.”

I have a sudden desire to watch her at work at the hand mill, but since I can’t very well request this, I change the subject. “Nakoi is a bit over two miles on from here, is that right?”