Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (94 page)

“Oh, yes,” he replied easily in Japanese.

“Where was it?”

“
On
san
was working,” he said. Older sister is working.

From what I had read, the
zashiki warashi
liked to appear to children and play with them. Perhaps my son did not understand my question, so I put
The Legends of T
no
aside, and went on to read another book.

A
MONG THE PLACES
I wanted to visit in T
no was the site of the five hundred
rakan
. A
rakan
is best understood as a disciple of Buddha, and throughout history it’s been a popular if challenging undertaking for a temple to commission and display large “fields” of
rakan
sculptures, which are usually carved out of stone. Other temples forgo displays of hundreds of
rakan
in favor of hundreds of Jiz
s. But in either case, the effect and the point of the installations are the same: the enlightened beings are there to honor the dead.

Just a few days earlier we had all gone to the Adashino Nembutsu temple in Ky
t
, which is famous for the Jiz
bon in August. There the small, worn faces of over eight thousand Jiz
s were neatly lined up in rows, many wearing red bibs. My son found the gridlike arrangement fun, as though all the rocks comprised a kind of maze. Now we were in T
n
, and the taxi driver who took us to the foothills of the site asked us to please stay together and to speak loudly at all times. The day before, a bear had been spotted roaming the mountains.

It was only eleven in the morning, but already somewhat dark in the forest; the canopy of leaves overhead was thick. The taxi driver banged a metal can with a stick to fend off any nearby bears, and peered beseechingly up at us as we climbed. I mistook his nervousness
for neurosis. It had been the driver’s idea to visit the
rakan
first thing in the morning; he didn’t want to drive later in the day. I started to wonder what the big deal was—Where were all the statues? Was there really a bear? All I saw was a rocky, mossy hillside.

Then, as though suddenly animated, a face peered out at me through the moss. Below this, someone had left a tiny amulet made out of a toothpick and blue origami paper. Then I saw another face, and another. It was as though the rocks were coming to life, triggered by our presence. Faces creaked and pushed through the soggy greenery to have a look at the humans. The higher we climbed, the more faces emerged. These were the
rakan
, carved in 1782 by a priest who hoped to pacify the spirits of hundreds who died in a famine; throughout history, T
hoku struggled to raise rice and other crops, which grew so easily in areas closer to the capital, and famine had always been a problem. To me, the rocks represented T
hoku’s pain—the fear of famine, of not keeping up with the west of Japan—those areas closer to the capitals of Ky
t
, and later, T
ky
.