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SIGNS OF PROGRESS
[From the archives]

On the way up the Lake road to Omimaiko, passing through the ancient cedar forest I stopped to visit the little shrine of the sumo wrestler of a thousand years ago, who changed sumo from a ritual involving a fight to the death, to the the sport it is today. There is an ancient stone monument there, with a barely discernible bas relief of the wrestler; and a ritual wooden-roofed sumo ring, painted the traditional colors, right next to the highway, cars flashing by... as I stood there in the residual silence that sudden awareness of such a length of time affords, I wondered what must this spot have been like one millennium ago (though spannable by only 10 centenarians), where the legendary wrestler was born and grew up, became renowned for his prodigious strength, and whence he set out for Kyoto, so far away along the Lake and over the mountain, on rugged paths beset with thieves... I stood there letting my mind fill with the image of this place way back in time from now, the way then but a footpath, nothing around but forest and a few thatch-roofed houses, the Lake as clear and clean as any beginning... it was difficult to hold on to that vision, because the now we have, unlike the nows of old, is so stridently insistent, like a badly spoiled child, with its toy cars and toy boats, its flashing signs, its virtual desires, its places to see and times to go, sun-moon-starcycles pretty much ignored, like old monuments...

[The traditionally painted sumo ring has since been torn down and completely replaced by a never-used parking lot. RB]