SHIRAKAWAGO

For those of you interested in such things as superb places to visit (the rest of you can go to the kitchen and have a grilled cheddar sandwich with lemon thyme on home-made bread if you want; there's some nice tea there, too)-- Ernest Fenollosa, Tsarevich Nikolai of Russia and the mystery of Dr. Usui having serially interrupted my highlighting of the Emergency Equinox Vacation-- I herewith return to my ruminations on that wonderful experience.

As I indicated, we pretty much randomly wandered within a predefined area north of here, the greater part of which wandering was on surprisingly modern roads along rushing jade rivers and long jade lakes between steep mountains. One of our objectives was the renowned and beautiful village of thatch-roofed houses named Shirakawago, now a world heritage site. Nestled in a long curve of the Shirakawa river where it widens into a narrow valley, the village houses are almost exclusively roofed with thatch in the traditional way, known as gasshozukuri ("praying hands-fashioned") because of their resemblance to steeply praying hands with the fingertips folded through one another.

[Following are excerpts from my journal]
Outside the house we're staying in (many of them are ryokan), all the night is filled with the sound of water. Water is everywhere in these mountains: streams rivers ponds lakes paddies trickles drips waterfalls, running trickling plashing tinkling roaring spraying runneling: every single thing water can do, it does here. Outside, the sound is of fast water roiling by, with some falling onto stones in a small but steady way; ears know all this stuff. We came here in the night, so I have to wait till morning to see what kind of waterbeast lives close by.

The woman comes and slides our door open, tells us that the bath is ready. Big old square deep wooden bath made of tightly fitted cedar boards, hot water steadily overflowing onto the stone floor in gouts of steam. Still a lot of snow on the ground outside, so the floor wants to be cold, but the water wants it hot; they argue in the air. The water in the bath is about 600 degrees. The Japanese like it hot. I get my legs in and let them go numb for a while, then put my hand under the running cold water to fool the rest of my existence while I lower it slowly into liquid hell and stay there for as long as I can bear it. Now back in my room in my cotton yukata and nothing else I steam, I generate indoor clouds, I am a walking demonstration of infra-red. Echo returns from the bath, says "That was the perfect temperature."

And after a night's sleep, I find a small river roaring by outside, very intent on its destination. The village itself in the morning is a slow river: the houses, the outbuildings, the craft shops, the views, all move at rural speed. And the people unfailingly friendly, despite living day to day in what has essentially become a living museum, in which the residents are a big part of the exhibit. They are handling it very well, though too many of those who live here are elderly now (like so many small rural towns in Japan), at the end of the day sitting close together in the last of the sun the way they always have, white-haired, old-clothed, talking, gesturing, oblivious to the tourist stream that is intrigued by their ancient sense of fashion, and by the fact that they sit there outside in the cold just talking; and when these are gone, all this will truly be a museum of how they once lived, before all this happened.