by Ben Stevens
Even more shocking – for this particular gaijin, at least – was when the funeral guests then proceeded to form a long line, for the honor of using a very large set of chopsticks to pick up a piece of bone and deposit it in a large urn.
The closest relative, friend, husband/wife etc of the deceased is always the one to pick up the horseshoe-shaped hyoid bone belonging to the neck, which is supposed to resemble Buddha seated in meditation.
The bones are then crushed into ash, and the urn sealed – for people who were very large, or rather ‘big-boned’, two urns are sometimes necessary…
‘…Quick, get a dustpan and brush,’ mutters Unki-san now.
I do so, and Unki-san briefly puts his hands together, closes his eyes, gives a slight bow and mutters an apology at the spilt ash and bones, before using the dustpan and brush to carefully sweep it up – avoiding any accompanying carpet fluff – and deposit it back in the urn.
We then realize that we need some more wood (in the form of thick sheet timber that won’t rot like the plywood shelving), if we are to continue the slow process of making up the new shelves.
So getting in my mother-in-law’s white car, I drive us the short distance to the ‘OK Home Centre’.
This is a large store where you can buy everything from nails and paintbrushes to a garden shed. Whenever I come to the OK Home Centre, however, I very quickly start to feel a tad irritable.
This is primarily – nay, wholly – due to the fact that they have a short, Muzak version of Yankee Doodle playing near-permanently on loop.
Sure, there’s the odd, spoken promotion for some new brand of paint, or an announcement that selected potted-plants are currently on special offer… But then it’s straight back to that awful, high-pitched synthesizer version of a song which (a quick internet search informs me) has its origins in the ‘Seven Years War’ (1756 – 1763).
So exactly why, therefore, does it need to be played, on constant loop, inside a glorified DIY store situated in Nagasaki, Japan in the 21st century?
Try as I might, I just can’t see any possible goddamn connection…
See? I’m getting tetchy already.
And I really, honestly do feel for the staff. They all of them have a slight nervous twitch, and in a few cases a distinct thousand-yard stare. If I worked here, I’m certain that I’d be certifiably insane by now. This is surely mental cruelty, to subject someone to the same song played over-and-over again, throughout the course of their working day…
(Then again, back in the days when I worked on a construction site, I had almost the same feeling whenever I was forced to listen to London’s ‘Capital FM’…)
As we select two sheets of timber, I comment on this fact to Unki-san. He looks at me as though I’ve gone daft.
‘This is the store’s theme tune, though – it’s how they promote themselves,’ he informs me seriously, as though it’s self-evident, as we carry the sheet material to the checkouts.
I pull an ‘Oh, right’ expression, while wondering exactly how on Earth playing Yankee Doodle on endless repeat serves to promote your store…
The woman serving holds the scanner up to the label on one sheet of timber, to read the barcode and price. Her hand is shaking slightly, and I swear I see a solitary tear glistening in the corner of one eye…
We also get a saw, in order to cut the two sheets in half so that they will fit in the back of the car.
We load up and quickly get inside the vehicle. The rain is continuing to hammer down, the lush green mountains that surround Nagasaki City shrouded with mist. I’m obliged to turn the front wipers on full for the drive home.
‘Looks like we’ll be busy making new shelves for a while yet,’ remarks Unki-san, looking out of the passenger window at the deluge. Outside it is extremely humid, and so I have on the car‘s air-con.
I nod and breathe deeply, Yankee Doodle continuing to reverberate inside my mind. From previous visits to the OK Home Centre, I know it will be several hours before I’m able to forget that damn song…
Cup o’ Cha
A number of ‘major’ services take place at the temple each year, when every spare chair and zabuton (a long cushion, placed on the tatami mats for people to sit upon) has to be put out in the main hall, for congregations numbering up to five hundred people.
Such services include the two Ohigan-‘s’ – spring and autumn – when, for two or three days, the hours of daylight and darkness are balanced exactly the same.
Ohigan has some relevance to the Buddhist belief that once we die our soul flies west – ‘further than where the sun sets’, according to my head-priest brother-in-law, Taigi.
The complete explanation is, of course, much more complicated than this. But, quite frankly, after that lovely line concerning our souls departing our Earthly bodies and flying west towards the setting sun, Taigi completely lost me.
And he was even – entirely for my benefit – speaking his excellent English at the time.
Complicated stuff, Buddhism.
It’s a tradition that people coming for the Ohigan service bring a small package of rice with them. Hundreds of such packages are thus placed on a large table in front of the statue of Buddha in the main hall.
After everyone has gone, a few of us at the temple empty all these packages into large blue plastic containers.
The accumulated rice is used throughout the year to make such things as obento – the traditional Japanese ‘packed lunch’ of rice (of course), vegetables, pickles and such – that are distributed to visitors on other occasions.
This symbolizes the temple’s good relations with the surrounding neighborhood, and harks back to a time when, in times of crop failure and famine, a temple’s stored supply of rice could quite literally save lives.
But the biggest day in Daionji’s calendar takes place one Sunday during the rainy season, when a number of priests and senior monks from other temples belonging to the ‘Pure Land’ branch of Buddhism are invited to partake in a long service, and a meal afterwards.
Preparations for this day are lengthy. (This occasion has no official ‘name’, as such. Each Pure Land temple within a certain radius holds – at different times throughout the year – such a day)
Along with the extra chairs and zabuton, thin red carpets have to be put out in the main hall, for the honored guests to enter and leave upon.
Unki-san (my boss) and I then go to the back of the temple, to a quiet, rocky area that’s situated directly behind the temple mausoleum.
There grows a small bamboo grove, and selecting two long lengths of green bamboo, we cut them down with the small noko (‘saw’) we keep in out ‘utility belts’.
Flags bearing the temple’s crest are fixed to the end of each length of bamboo, before the two lengths are tied with rope – at an angle of forty-five degrees – to the two main pillars outside the front of the temple main hall.
Come Sunday morning, it’s very quickly bedlam. An outside ‘gaadoman’ (‘guardman’) company has to be called in, to supply staff to direct the traffic coming to and from the temple. Only one narrow road, running up a steep slope that leads to the car-park, services the temple – and it is only wide enough for one vehicle at a time.
Meanwhile, those visitors who’ve come by foot stream up the one hundred stone stairs that lead to the temple. As it’s still the rainy season, approximately four hundred dripping umbrellas are deposited in a huge wooden box just outside the temple genkan (entrance.)
Inside a large tatami room, I finish setting up a line of low tables, where the assorted priests and monks will sit and eat, following the two-hour long service. I put gleaming white cloths on each table, and put out cushions for those dining.
My wife and mother-in-law then put out all the delicately-patterned plates, chopsticks, glasses, and so on. The air-conditioning is on so powerfully that the room is almost cold.
In the kitchen, a number of women are preparing the food. It looks delicious – plates of sashim
i, sushi and two massive, dressed crabs. There’s also kujira or whale, which I have eaten but didn’t much care for. In texture and taste, the flesh seemed to me to be basically like ‘fishy bacon’.
My mother-in-law doesn’t much like whale, either. At school, she says, she was obliged to eat it almost every day – it was then very much a basic ‘foodstuff’, despite the foreign reputation it has today of being found primarily in high-class Tokyo restaurants – and that was enough to put her off it for life.
And there’s fugu tempura. Yep, battered ‘pufferfish’ – that denizen of the ocean which will kill you if it is prepared incorrectly. This is due to the fact that it carries the poison tetrodotoxin in its skin, liver, testicles and ovaries. (Dependant on its sex, one presumes.)
Incredibly, some people choose to deliberately taint the flesh of the fugu with a little of the poison. Despite the fact that it’s over 1200 times more toxic than cyanide, in minute quantities (apparently) it won’t kill you. Instead, you’ll just experience an ‘interesting’ tickling and partial numbness of the lips and tongue…
I mean, c’mon now – is it really worth it…?
Actually, I have eaten fugu just once. Like whale, it proved something of a disappointment – it tasted just like salty white fish.
Bando Mitsugoro, a Kabuki (a type of ‘Japanese theatre’) actor, who’d been declared a ‘living national treasure’ by the Japanese government in 1973, is perhaps the most famous victim of the humble fugu or pufferfish.
Quite what was going through his mind is anyone’s guess, but at a Kyoto restaurant in 1974, Bando ate no less than four helpings of fugu liver, merrily informing the other diners that he was immune to the poison the liver contains.
The resultant convulsions proved otherwise. Bando died in agony several hours later, all attempts at treatment useless. Some people can be saved if medical intervention occurs swiftly – being placed on a life-support machine is pretty much essential – but the ‘living national treasure’ had simply consumed way too much of the poison.
As it is actually illegal to serve the liver of the fugu, the restaurant where Bando consumed his final meal received a ten-day suspension as punishment. Some considered that the owners of the restaurant had got off very lightly indeed…
To this day, around fifty people in Japan die each year after consuming incorrectly-prepared fugu. Many chefs do not have the qualifications, or license, needed for them to legally prepare and serve the pufferfish. But if an ‘honored customer’ requests it, they’re often quite prepared to bend the rules…
Sometimes with fatal consequences.
…The meal for the visiting priests and monks is about to be served, when there is suddenly a minor crisis. By several cautious sniffs, it’s discovered that a sort of meat-and-egg ‘roll’ is a little – err – past its sell-by date…
Before it can incapacitate any of our special guests today, the offending item is quickly given to the temple dogs as a special, late-morning snack.
The service over, the robed priests and monks leave the main hall and enter into the room where they will eat their lunch. I’m still assisting my wife and mother-in-law, and so pour out beer and cold mugicha (non-alcoholic barley tea – very refreshing, though for some gaijin something of an acquired taste) for those sitting at the table.
Then I see my wife and mother-in-law get down on their knees, and perform a bow with their hands touching the floor. This is given to a tall, strikingly bald priest who is something like the ‘head’ of the Pure Land branch of Buddhism in Kyushu.
Having him come to this temple today was a real honor – usually there has to be a very special reason for him to visit anywhere.
My wife catches my eye and, with a quick, discreet movement of one hand, beckons me over. The priest gives a slight smile as he sees me approach. His face is like an open blue sky. Just looking at him makes me feel extremely calm.
Having walked over to him, I now start to perform a formal, forty-five degree bow. (Incidentally, when bowing, men usually keep their hands by their sides, while women place them one over-the-other in front of their lap.)
‘Kneel,’ hisses my wife, who is continuing to do just that. ‘You have to kneel!’
I don’t really want to do that, but, as I then remind myself, when in Rome…
The ‘head-priest’ (HP) does give a slightly embarrassed chuckle as I begin doing my homage – or whatever this act of kneeling is supposed to signify – and with a wave of his hand he beckons for not just me, but also my wife and mother-in-law, to stand back up.
The priests and monks are left to their meal, and I go to the main hall to help put away the extra chairs and long cushions, and to take down the banner hanging from the temple’s large san-mon or main gate.
Later, near to the nokotsudo or mausoleum that’s right at the back of the temple, I hear chanting and suddenly there appears the HP.
He’s still dressed in his gleaming, Gandalf-like white robes, his eyes half-closed as he mumbles what I assume is something like a ‘blessing’ for this temple.
This man just radiates presence, and an absolute tranquility. His face is so serene, like one of the old statues that are dotted around the temple and up the mountainside.
He sees me. His eyes sparkle compassion and a deep understanding for human nature. He continues to mumble as I stand very still, the hairs up on the back of my neck. His eyes are deep, like lonely pools of water hidden in some ancient forest.
His low-pitched chanting reverberates in my ears, in my mind. It doesn’t matter that I can’t understand what’s being said; I don’t even attempt to try.
I can feel it with my heart – that is the essential thing here…
Then, very slowly, I start to realize that I actually can now understand what he’s saying. What he’s been obliged to repeat several times, as I emerge from my stupor, is basically this:
‘Is there anywhere round here I can get a cup of tea?’
His eyes continue to stare calmly and kindly into mine, as I blurt out an apology and advise him to try the temple office.
One of the two women who work there will certainly make him his desired beverage. (By ‘tea’ he means ocha – green tea, served hot or cold.)
He thanks me, and then starts walking away, now chanting again.
‘A Big Noise… A Big Light…’
On August 9, 1945, at 03.40 a.m., the US B29 Superfortress bomber ‘Bockscar’ took off from Tinian Island. Piloted by Major Charles W Sweeney, and carrying twelve other crew members, Bockscar also had on board a 10,000 lb atomic bomb, over ten foot in length, nicknamed ‘Fat Man’.
Bockscar’s primary target was the Japanese ‘castle town’ of Kokura. But although the B29 bomber made three separate passes over Kokura, heavy cloud cover meant that the bomb could not be dropped with any accuracy.
With the plane experiencing both an acute shortage of fuel and a faulty engine, Sweeney decided to press on to Bockscar’s secondary target – Nagasaki.
Originally, Kyoto and Niigata had been proposed as alternative cities on which to drop the bomb, with Kyoto eventually being vetoed because of its religious significance.
Nagasaki was not a popular choice, despite the fact that it had a large shipbuilding yard and a military port. The city was too ‘spread out’, it was thought, and divided in places by mountains and valleys. It would make it difficult to assess the destructive impact of any atomic bomb.
A tragic irony of that day was the fact that Nagasaki had already been repeatedly bombed. Thus, when they heard the air-raid sirens, many people did not even bother to run to the shelters, and instead continued to go about their daily business. (In fact, not even the trains were stopped.)
‘Fat Boy’ was dropped from 28,900 feet, exploding at exactly 11.02 a.m. – at 1,650 feet above the city – with the explosive power of 21 kilotons of TNT.
‘A big noise… a big light…’ was how the explosion was once described to me, by someone who witnessed it firsthand. The
se words came from Nakamura-sensei, who taught judo at Daionji temple until he passed away in January 2007.
At the time of the atomic bombing, Nakamura-sensei was a young soldier stationed on an island just off Nagasaki.
I believe, although I have no way of checking it now, that the island was ‘Gunkanjima’ – ‘Battleship Island’ – so-called because that was the ‘shape’ the outline of its many buildings resembled.
Once the most populated place on Earth – with respect to the island’s actual size – it was abandoned in 1974 when its coal-mining facilities were closed. The crumbling buildings and apartments still exist, and can be surveyed from a safe distance if one takes one of the regular boat tours there. It has a somber, haunted feel to it, which is why it’s also known as ‘Ghost Island’. (At the time of writing, the latest James Bond movie Skyfall contains scenes shot on Gunkanjima.)
Nakamura-sensei became one of the hibakusha – literally, ‘explosion affected people’.
Hibakusha weren’t among the victims dying horribly from injuries and radiation poisoning in the days, weeks and months that followed the bombing.
Yet, because of the fallout from ‘Fat Boy’, they would suffer from such health problems as anemia in the years to come, which in turn entitled them to free medical treatment and a ‘pension’.
It also caused them to experience significant discrimination – along with their children, who were also classed as hibakusha – as they were considered to carry the threat of disease or death, and consequently were often refused housing and employment.
For the past two years, on August 9 at 11.02 a.m., I’ve rung the temple bell. A rope is used to swing a log, suspended by chains, into the bell that weighs several tons. The bell is tolled six times, once every ten seconds.
I think of all those who died in the explosion, and afterwards, but especially I remember Nakamura-sensei.
He taught me judo during the six months I spent in Japan, from the summer of 2006 until early 2007. For most of that time, I was his only pupil.
