OTSU INCIDENT, PART II

Last week, you remember, I posted a post about not being able to make it to the Otsu Incident exhibition at the Otsu History Museum, and said I would post about it when we finally made it there. The exhibit ends on Monday, so we decided to go today since Monday would likely be busy for us and Sunday likely busy for the Museum.

So there we were, on our way at last, having been to the Museum before and confident in the normal way of getting there again whenever in our lives we might want to, and we took what appeared to be the same turning as before into the ancient maze of west-side mountain streets that still thread through that part of Otsu, as in all old cities in Japan built around rice paddies (don't get me started on Tokyo), and wound up in some narrow cul de sac under an overpass high in the upper reaches of junglehood, so we headed south, thinking we were lost northward, and wound up in another maze of a big park we remembered seeing as part of the vista from the Museum balcony, and since the upward roads were conveniently closed to traffic we parked and began to walk, but it was getting late; entry to the exhibit closed at 4:30 so we were hustling in what by now we knew was the right direction. Then we saw a map in the park that seemed to indicate that if we continued the way we were going we might not get there, but if we went this other special way we'd get there no-o-o-o problem, and being the trusting souls that we are, we opted for the latter and set off on a stone path into the woods, and I do mean woods, it was Hansel and Gretel in the orient, as the sun was setting and the Museum was closing but whatya gonna do, we had no other plans.

So we plunged on, up and down and in and around through bamboo groves and across stone bridges and up and down stone staircases, and then when we had at last arrived at what appeared to be the end there was nothing like a museum. Instead there was a map on one of those helpful tourist guide poles that said the Museum was back somewhere we'd just come from so we figured forget it and started back, took a wrong turning and, emerging from a wildly overgrown path through tall bamboo, wound up... at the bottom of some stone steps... that led up to the gate... of a temple called Homyo-in, before which an old sign said in Japanese "Grave of Ernest Fenollosa." Sure, I thought. But having little better to do we went up there and through the gate into the grounds of the temple, which had clearly seen much better days, there was a tarp over the roof and all buildings were closed up tight with no one around, and all the gates open, but the view was splendid, as we were in shadow while all below and the Lake was still sunlit.

And over there just ahead a bit was a crudely hand-lettered sign pointing up some stone steps into the forest behind the temple, we went up there into the deepening shadows and sure enough, there was the actual grave of Ernest Fenollosa himself, the most seminal western scholar in Japanese history, and recipient of the highest imperial honor ever bestowed upon a foreigner, among his countless other honors and accomplishments. And here he was resting almost a century now in this very quiet and apparently little-known place. The man was a hero in my own past; countless times I had seen his name in just about everything I'd ever read about Japanese culture. Indeed, part of my reason for being in Japan could be traced back to him and his work. Among many others he influenced Hearn, Pound, Yeats, all the way up to Rexroth, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder in our own day, the list lengthens and widens and his influence goes on. Yet with all my time in Japan I never even knew he was here, at this now declining and unvisited temple that he loved for its beautiful view. (He had become a Tendai Buddhist at this temple (imagine the radicalness of that in Victorian times!!), and spent much time here.

Fenollosa died suddenly during a visit to London in 1906 and in his will requested that his ashes be placed here. The temple still has the telescope, globe, favorite chair, oil lamp and gramophone he left on his last visit, but they wouldn't let us in to see anything; a person on the intercom from deep within who didn't even want to come to the door said they don't show the place anymore. I had the distinct feeling that they weren't all that interested in, or appreciative of, the heritage in their charge.

There were no flowers at the grave, and only a few coins had been placed on the stone base. I left a one-word note pinned to the stone with a twig I cut from a nearby sakakitree. Perhaps just as amazing as Fenellosa being here, and just as generally unknown: right beside Fenollosa's grave is the grave of William Bigelow, scion of a very prominent Boston family, who also became a Tendai Buddhist and was assistant curator (Fenollosa was curator) of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, to which Bigelow bequeathed perhaps the world's greatest collection of ukiyo-e and other priceless objects of oriental art. But the amazement didn't end there: facing their graves is that of Kakuzo Okakura (Tenshin) who with Fenollosa first cataloged the incredible treasures of Horyuji in Nara, and later wrote the classic Book of Tea. What fascinating stories are here, right here, and not a soul around; nor, apparently, likely to be. Never did make it to the Otsu Incident, but instead stumbled onto something much more profound, that had no doubt been intended all along.