Chapter 6 Pilgrimage Day 5

Diary of the White Bush Clover

Day 5 (10 October) Hikone to Sekigahara

After breakfast the priest’s wife made me a lunch of bread, milk and fruit. My rucksack was full. It was heavy but I thanked them. Saying farewell to the priest’s family I walked to Road Number 8. Soon I entered a tunnel. There were no lights, it was very dark. Cars made loud noises passing by me. Lights shone on me. Whenever a car passed I turned my face to the wall. If a driver happened to see me in my black coat he must have thought I looked like a bat clinging to the wall! After a little while I could hardly breathe in the tunnel because of the fumes.

Passing Maibara, there were two ways to go. The left went to Hokuriku area, the right went to Nakasendo. I chose the right. Cars mostly went to the left so I relaxed while I walked, humming a song. I wanted to take a rest so I looked at my watch. An hour had already passed and I had walked four kilometers. I sat down on the bank and ate some lemon drops. School children came toward me in a line. It was a very Japanese picture: thatch roofs, bamboo forest and golden rice fields. After ten minutes I stood up and stretched my muscles. They felt sore but I could stand all right.

I met a student walking with his bicycle. He must have thought I was a young girl, wearing sunglasses, pants and a scarf. He stopped to talk with me.

“I am walking to Tōkyō,” I told him.

He was surprised and asked, “How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Twenty years old.”

It was noon, not night time! We say, yome, toume, kasa no uchi, no kao wa wakaranai, seen in the evening, seen from far away, inside the umbrella, you do not know the face. I thought perhaps the sunglasses made me look young but even so his compliment made me happy. We said sayōnara, wishing health and success to each other. He said he had started from his house early in the morning and was going to Kyōto. The boy went off to the west and I went off to the east.

After walking for a while I found the old original road, the Nakasendo, and next to it was the modern road with cars, running parallel to each other. I started walking on the Nakasendo. No cars were allowed on the old road, which was made of large stones, bumpy now after so many centuries. The gardens of the houses that lined this road had been kept in good condition. Right in front of me I could see a small mountain but I felt it had a lot of power. However, the side of the mountain had been scraped bare, as it was being quarried for sand to make cement. It was very painful to see this, a great shame to see such a beautiful mountain being destroyed by human greed.

I walked slowly until I arrived at a small village where I had planned to stay but there was no inn. I asked a villager and he said I would find accommodations in a place called Sekigahara, four kilometers away. On the right hand side of the road in front of a house there was a ceramic statue of Fukusuke, a fat, happy bringer of good fortune with long ears. The statue was smiling at me as I walked by.

I came to a very old, weathered sign for a pharmacy, which had been there for hundreds of years. When I looked into the store it was filled with old furniture, desks and chairs, which had darkened with age. The owner of the store came out, a very elegant old lady. She asked where I had come from. I explained that I still had to walk ten days more. The lady went into the back of the store and brought out some medicine and gave it to me. She said, “This is a special medicine made only by my family for our family.” She said I would need it on my travels. It was good for anything. Usually they did not sell this to customers. The lady showed me a woodblock print of this pharmacy by Andō Hiroshige, the famous nineteenth century ukiyo-e artist, especially known for The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. That smiling statue of Fukusuke was in the print. As I left she said, “Please come again.”

After walking for half an hour I stopped at a place where there had once been a checkpoint for crossing the border. In the past there used to be barrier gates between the prefectures. Stern-looking officials would stop people to check their personal documents and try to intercept bad people. They do not have these checkpoints anymore but something remains, old buildings, posts. I had started from Kyōto and traveled a long way, finally arriving at this old border station. In the past I would have had to present all my papers to get through but now there was nobody there and I could freely and easily cross the border. A long time ago it used to be a busy place because people wanted to hurry through. But now the only thing left was a stone monument and it was very peaceful. Later I wrote this waka:

kyo yori no

tabiji haruka ni

ayumi kite

ima seki koyuru

fuwa no yamazato

Walking all 

the way from Kyōto,

crossing the old 

border station at Fuwa,

now completely quiet.

After walking a while I reached Sekigahara station, where I found a place to stay, the Sekigahara Hotel, a very big hoteru. I took a taxi from the station to the hotel. The owner of the hotel paid for my taxi because he knew why I was walking. The owner and his wife were very kind. After dinner they joined me in my room and we had a conversation about this area, which is the site of a famous climatic battle during the feudal period in Japan. The owner told me that many samurai died in this area. After the battle the people gathered the remains of the unidentified warriors and made a memorial to the dead. Later they made a little theme park next to the hotel called War Land Park, with a small replica of the battle. Soon after the war monument was built, the owner of the hotel erected a statue of Kannon in the park.

This was the kind of conversation we had, about life being precious and that we should use it wisely. Dew is quickly evaporated by the morning sun. Our lifetime is as momentary as the dew. Because our life is so transient we must realize its importance. Before we die we must try to do as many good things as possible to validate our lives. Let us not die in futility, wasting our lives. We talked this way until sunrise. Afterwards I wrote a waka about our conversation.

kimi mo ware mo

tsuyu no inochi o

oshimu nari

ada ni shiseji to

katari akashitsu

Both you and me,

our lifetimes are as momentary as the dew.

Recognize that life is precious,

do not waste it.

We talked this way until sunrise.