Chapter 6 Pilgrimage Day 12

Diary of the White Bush Clover

Day 12 (17 October) Toyohashi to Nagashino and back to Toyohashi

Since I had arrived at Toyohashi one day earlier than expected, I decided to stay one more night there. In the morning I asked the priest to pray for my notebook and in the afternoon we took a train together to Nagashino, the site of a famous battle where Tokugawa Ieyasu won against Takeda Shingen. Takeda was a samurai from Kai, now called Yamanashi-ken. Kyōto was the capital city at that time. Every samurai wanted to control Kyōto. Takeda tried to go to Kyōto but on the way, Tokugawa, who ruled Mikawa, now called Aichi-ken, fought Takeda and his men at Toyohashi and won. Tokugawa fought a lot of battles and eventually he became the shogun of most of Japan, ruling from Honshū to Kyūshū, in the south, and Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands. After he became shogun, Tokugawa moved the capital to Edo, now called Tōkyō.

On the edge of the small town of Nagashino was a mountain, called Horai-san, famous for its many bupposo, a kind of owl. It rained a little and I realized it had been quite a while since it had rained. It was a little bit cold.

We arrived at the house where the priest was taking me. There was a pub in front. The priest went straight through the pub and entered the house without any introduction. In front of the family altar he lit a candle and some incense and began to pray. The owner was not there so I thought it was strange. The owner was in the pub, singing with the customers very loudly and clapping. I was very surprised. The priest continued praying. I was angry because the priest was a good man, praying at the family altar, but instead of the family joining him, the owner was singing in the pub.

Later on a young woman came in with a donation for the priest. I looked at her face. She was one of the singers in the pub. The priest’s face was smiling as he talked to her but I was not smiling at all. She served the priest some sakē. She was drunk and could not speak properly but their conversation became very serious. She had hated her parents because they did not believe in her. They had treated her differently than her brothers so she left home. At first she worked as a waitress but gradually her life got worse and she fell into the wrong kind of work but nobody noticed. She tried again to work in a restaurant but if they knew about her past they did not want to employ her.

The owner of this pub knew all about her past but gave her a job anyway. So she worked hard for this woman because the pub owner had helped her through a difficult time. There were tears in her eyes as she said, “I want to marry and be a wife and have children.” She did not look like the drunken woman I had seen a moment ago. I felt ashamed of myself. Now I looked at her through rose-colored glasses. I had only seen her from the surface, not her inner self. She was just like a flower blooming from the mud. Her body had been violated but her heart was pure. The way she acted in front of the customers was just part of her job. I was touched by this woman. The priest had known everything about her. Later that evening when we got on the train she came to see us off. She looked like a different woman. Her manner was extremely polite as she said sayōnara to us. Listening to the sound of the train, I reflected on what had happened that evening.