Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (62 page)

We saw a hexagonal building filled with clothing and a few portraits of the deceased. Outside the building, there were more handkerchiefs and towels. In the desiccated, sulfuric landscape, the abandoned garments looked less like an accumulation of offerings and more like the shredded remains of people who had disappeared.

Of all the things I saw at Osorezan, none moved me more than a half-dead grassy field, located not too far from the lake’s waters. It was customary to tie two fistfuls of grass together, a gesture indicating
that though the living and dead are separated, they are still connected. I found two untied tufts and bound them.

The climax of the grounds of Osorezan was the lake itself, a quiet, eerily still, pale-blue caldera. It was ringed with mountain peaks, one of which housed a tall radio tower for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces that was shaped like a mammoth walkie-talkie. During peak visiting times, the shores of this lake are covered with flowers and piles of stones, as those in mourning help the departed by building stone towers the demons have knocked down. Sometimes people picnic here, offering part of their meal to the spirit of the dead.

In 2013 a new monument, dedicated entirely to victims of the March 11 tsunami, was erected along the lake’s shore. The woman from Hokkaido had been there the day before, but she hadn’t dared interact with the shrine. It had felt too powerful and overwhelming. She’d been afraid of it. I went to take a look.

The monument was composed of three parts: First was a large, granite lotus blossom, shaped like an igloo with a wide-open mouth, in which sat Jiz
, and a baby boy and girl. Directly in front of this was a granite altar with half-burned sticks of incense and piles of flowers. On either side of the altar was a pair of rectangular pillars, about three feet high, each of which held a “bell of hope.” We took turns ringing the bell, then walked around to the back of the statue. It was here, said the woman from Hokkaido, that she had become nervous, for the back of the large igloo-shaped lotus blossom was covered with handprints of all shapes and sizes, a reminder that the tsunami had killed people of all ages. We were to find the handprint that most nearly matched ours in size, and then put our hand in that spot and pray.

I stopped to look at the front of the statue one more time. I had missed a small detail in my initial examination: someone had placed three round river rocks on the base of the lotus blossom, and written
the names of the deceased on the stones. Accompanying this were also a handful of coins, one of which was an arcade token for a video game.

I
T WAS CLEAR
to me from childhood that Buddhism was wrapped up in the grim business of death. This gave me the impression early on that the Japanese were unnaturally obsessed with death. Every home we visited had an ancestor shrine, with large-scale, solemn, black-and-white portraits of the deceased person, who never smiled. When we visited my mother’s friends, the first thing we did was to pay our respects to the dead relatives, many of whom my mother had known. She would tell me stories about them—about how Dr. Yamaguchi had fed her after the war when she was hungry. One night we stayed in the home of her former boyfriend, who had died but left behind a wife, with whom my mother was friendly. I couldn’t sleep that night. Our futons had been laid out in the “most honored room” in the house, which included a large black-and-white portrait of the dead man solemnly staring down at me from the wall. I couldn’t take the directness; I was too accustomed to the dead being tucked away, as they are in my own Western culture.

My grandparents’ Buddhist altar was hidden in the back room in a corner. Hanging on the wall above the altar were photos of people unknown to me—my great-grandparents, and great-uncles and -aunts. Their names were etched on black-and-gold
ihai
, or funerary tablets; the inscribed labyrinth of esoteric Chinese characters only reinforced the idea that death was a singularly serious and incomprehensible business. Every morning we lit incense for these people, and if my grandparents received a special treat from a former student—a box of cookies or a flat of apples—the sweets were always put on the altar so the ancestors would get to “taste” the delicacies first.

Empukuji, with its large temple hall, had a mammoth altar, with a two-foot-high Buddha, and a golden chandelier hanging from the ceiling. This was in addition to the private altar Aunt Shizuko had in her home just for relatives. Early in the morning, Aunt Shizuko would offer prayers to the Shint
gods at her Shint
shrine, then give incense to the ancestors and then to the Buddha. Any gift of fruit or cookies were given to the Buddha first, and I had to bow to him when I removed a watermelon from his dais (watermelons in Japan are much smaller and rounder than their American counterparts). This was seriousness of the utmost.

To my own eyes, Aunt Shizuko was a kind of Japanese person—and woman—I’d never seen anywhere else. When we went into town together to see Aunt Shizuko’s friends—a doctor, another priest, a shopkeeper—you could see how they reverentially deferred to her. One of Aunt Shizuko’s best friends was a pub owner named Yuriko, who owned a sprightly poodle and made tasty meals in the three-hundred-square-foot kitchen of her pub, Hisamatsu. Yuriko had a sharp wit, and she effortlessly teased the men who came to drink at her restaurant after work. But around my Aunt Shizuko, Yuriko was restrained and dignified.

I asked my mother about Aunt Shizuko’s seriousness, and her response was, “Aunt Shizuko did not have children.” Over the years, I have often heard this as an explanation for why someone has seemed “off” in Japan. To have children is to be allowed access into a particularly happy and life-affirming viewpoint. Not to have children—or to lose them—is to be in danger of losing hope for the future.

Here in Mount Doom, all these things—respect for the dead, for ancestors, for children, and for lost hope—were crystallized into one very somber but moving place. In a strange way, I felt that I had been rehearsing to be here for most of my life.

T
HE
M
OUNTAIN
W
OMAN
came to pick me up at Mount Doom with my mother and son in the car. As she drove me back to her primordial valley, she asked if I enjoyed my visit. I told her the truth. I said that while I found Mount Doom moving, I was also a little disappointed. I didn’t sense the raw energy that so many other people, like the lady from Hokkaido, seemed to feel. I expected to be scolded for my lack of sensitivity, but instead the Mountain Woman seemed pleased. She told me that Osorezan had once been a far more authentic place to visit. “This is not really a power spot anymore,” she said, when I told her about the lady from Hokkaido. “Didn’t you notice how little the water is burbling? And that hotel,” she sniffed dismissively.

Once upon a time when pilgrims came to Osorezan, they did a proper hike up the mountains. In fact, the correct way to do a pilgrimage was to start at the mouth of the river—Sanzu no Kawa—that eventually fed into Osorezan’s lake. Back in the old days, that river had been a truly haunted place. People often heard ghosts and spirits. One night, about thirty years ago, for example, people in the town of Mutsu woke up because they heard voices crying and wailing in the streets. “I’m cold! I’m cold.” In the morning, they learned of a ferryboat that had sunk during a typhoon. The voices they heard had been the souls of deceased passengers making their way up the river to cross the red bridge at Mount Doom. The spirits then paused at Osorezan before continuing on to the afterlife. Modernity had done away with much of the other world’s power, and made Mount Doom too easy to access. There were fewer ghosts now.

I asked if anyone did the old-fashioned pilgrimage anymore, and she gave me an odd look. “Like I said, the true pilgrimage starts at the mouth of the river. The Sanzu no Kawa. Would you by any chance be interested in taking a look?”

I said that I would. She turned the car around and began to drive to the nearby town of Mutsu.

W
E DROVE ALONG
the coast, past low houses and modest-looking inns before the Mountain Woman turned and parked the car in the lot of a temple. Six oversized Jiz
s sat in a line off to the side, dressed in red capes and presiding over the usual forest of pinwheels. My son was instantly captivated by the motion and the color. I was immediately struck by a strange mark on the gate of the
hond
, for there, in bright gold, was the unmistakable symbol of the Tokugawa shogunate, the feudal family that had ruled Japan from 1600 to 1868. The temple, however, was new; it must have been built in the past twenty years. I wondered what I was doing at a temple that was clearly brand new. Could such a thing be authentic?

The Mountain Woman strode across the parking lot and into a doorway adjacent to the temple; as was the case at Empukuji, the
hond
was connected to a house where the priest lived. My son and I followed the Mountain Woman, while my mother stayed in the car.