Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan

by Ferguson, Will

  Fascinated with the futuristic control panel, I pushed various cryptically marked buttons, I turned the radio WAY UP and then way down, I fiddled with the air conditioner and its sinus-numbing face-blast, and I set the alarm for exactly 06:48. I then clicked on the television set and I was suddenly staring at a huge pair of hooters. Mr. Ogawa, apparently, had decided to treat me to some adult entertainment. This would have been fine, except that I hate watching smutty movies. Everyone in them is always having so much more fun than I am. Hell, in most movies, the actors have more fun in the first ten minutes than I have had in my entire life. (I’ve suspected that the reason so many tight-lipped types get worked up over pornography is primarily sour grapes. “If I’m not going to get invited to a ménage à cinq, no one is!”)

  Even worse, the movie Ogawa had chosen for me was an American flick, which meant everyone was completely naked within five minutes and there were at least four people in the frame throughout. This might have been exciting were it not for the fact that in Japan the naughty bits are video scrambled, so what I was staring at was in essence one big writhing abstract rendering. A Cubist orgy in my little capsule. From what I could gather, it was a religious experience of sorts. (“Oh, my God!” “Oh, my God!”) I tried squinting, which did focus the images but also gave me a severe headache and some very bizarre dreams.

  3

  LORD TOKUGAWA was the inspiration for the James Clavell novel Shōgun, and Himeji Castle was featured prominently in the miniseries.

  When Lord Tokugawa defeated his enemies in 1600, he established himself as shōgun (or ruling generalissimo) of a united Japan. His rule was still shaky, however, especially in the rebellious Western provinces, so he sent his son-in-law, Lord Ikeda, to take control of the trade routes and assert the Shōgunate’s authority.

  The booklet from the Himeji Tourism Board described the castle’s long and illustrious history:

  Before this castle galloped warriors on the feudal chessboard who fought with furious gusto and were parties disjointed and clashing, subject to no central or effective secular authority. Most of the men were inured to brigandage and found a life of gain by the sword irresistible.

  Can’t you just see it? Samurai armies clashing on the plains, warriors inured to brigandage, the swords irresistible, the occasional high-pitched lapel fight. By the time I reached the main gate (named, I noted with approval, Sakura Mon, the “Cherry Blossom Gate”), I was quite taken with the drama of it all.

  You approach Himeji Castle through a maze of stone wall canyons that lead you astray by their very lack of apparent logic or overriding plan. Labyrinthine inner walls send you through narrow passages, past ambush points, and up to the main doors and then, just as quickly, turn you around and force you to make a 180-degree rotation so that—Zen-like—the only way to get to the castle is to walk away from it. These complex ground plans at Himeji are unparalleled anywhere in the world.

  No one has ever taken Himeji Castle by force—or even bothered trying. One of the reasons the Tokugawa shōguns lasted as long as they did, and stamped their oppressive mark on Japanese society so effectively as they did, lies within these complex walls.

  There are legends, scandalous, sexual, and supernatural, associated with the castle. Himeji has ghosts the way some places have mice. The best-known legend is centred on a stone drinking well, inhabited by the spirit of a young maid. Her name was Okiku, and she was tossed down the well for breaking one of her lady’s plates. At night, when the winds blow through, you can hear the voice of Okiku counting, endlessly counting, her mistress’s plates: ichi-mai … ni-mai … san-mai …

  From the main tower, I made my way back down to the main gate, and I was about to leave when a thought struck me, much in the way that a gong is struck. I looked up at the walls that swept above me like a wave about to break, and I thought to myself, Ninjas had it easy. The walls at Japanese castles are made of irregular boulders, and though the stones at the corner edges fit as tightly as joinery, the sheer face of the walls—often four stories high—is a rough-and-tumble jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t look particularly difficult to scale. As a teenager I had read books about ninja assassins and I was always amazed at how they were able to “scale castle walls by their bare hands.” But castle walls in Japan have all sorts of handholds.

  To prove my point, I decided to climb up. To make sure I had evidence of what I assumed would be a triumphant feat, I accosted a Japanese tourist and asked him to take my picture. He was a bit nervous because his tour group would soon be departing, but I assured him he could just take the picture and leave my camera on the bench. Before he could protest further, I scampered over and quickly made my way up the face of the wall. It was easy. Incredibly easy—at first. I had failed to notice that, although the walls began on a gentle curve, they soon turned and ran straight up—where overhanging eaves blocked a final ascent. I got about three stories up in the air when I suddenly realized I was clinging to what was, in effect, a sheer vertical surface. I couldn’t go up, I couldn’t go down, and—in the middle of this—the Japanese tourist had called security guards who were now yelling at me to return. I was a cat up a tree. Coming down would be much more difficult than going up, and I was now in a state of barely contained terror. Slowly, painfully slowly, I descended, groping for space with my feet and refusing to look down, or up. I was hugging the wall the entire way, and as soon as I was back on stable ground, my knees went weak.

  The Japanese tourist handed back my camera, angrily—and rightly so—and then raced off in search of his group, which had long since vanished and had probably already visited a dozen temples, several museums, and at least one souvenir shop by now. The guards, meanwhile, were berating me for pulling such a stupid stunt, and all I could say was, “I was trying to be a ninja.”

  4

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I tried to outwalk the urban clutter of Himeji City, but after hiking for over an hour I was still beside a traffic-choked, exhaust-bathed, stop-and-go disaster. I stood there with my arm held out, fighting to keep a smile on my weary, dusty, sticky face, and wishing desperately someone would pick me up. Someone did.

  He was a repulsive little man, and I will change his name to—ah, fuck it, he’ll never read this. His name was Sukebe Hashimoto. He was a carpenter and—he claimed—a world traveller who had sailed the Seven Seas and visited every brothel and flesh house from Bangkok to Amsterdam. “Women like it as much as men,” he said within minutes of our having met. “You just have to remind them who’s the boss.”

  When he grinned his mouth curled up past his ears and his brow furrowed like the Grinch in the Seuss book. His teeth were yellowed piano keys and his breath reeked of stale cigarettes and old fish. Every time we passed a female, whether she was sixteen or sixty-one, he would nudge me in the ribs and ask me if I wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex with her. Of course I wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex, but he made it sound so dirty.

  Hookers, young girls, strippers, women, sex: the man had a wide repertoire of topics. And as he detailed his imaginary exploits and molested passersby from afar, I thought to myself, Wow, guys really talk like this. I thought they only did in comedy skits and feminist films.

  The day was hot and the traffic was terrible. We crawled away from Himeji, slower than continental drift, and along the way we passed a Japanese gas stand with its well-groomed fleet of attendants who ran out like cheerleaders every time a car pulled in. One girl waved cars back into traffic and bowed to departing customers.

  Sukebe grinned at me. “What d’you think of her, eh? eh?”

  She had a nice bum. “She has a nice bum.”

  “Haw! You pervert!” He was almost squealing in delight. “You like our women, eh? Like to screw, eh?”

  He then pointed to my crotch and said, “You must have a big dick. I bet you do, all you gaijins are big. Big!” He made a fist and held out his forearm.

  This was not the first time I had been leered at like this. In Japan, white males have al
l the nasty sexual innuendoes surrounding them that blacks do among whites. At first, I took it as some kind of lewd compliment, but it isn’t. What it says is this: You are animalistic, a caricature, abnormal. When I was teaching high school, one of the gym teachers was absolutely obsessed with my dick. At parties he would make juvenile jokes and ridiculous gestures. I tried to defuse him first through bravado. When he held up his hands, like a fisherman exaggerating the size of his catch, I would say, “No, no, that isn’t true, I am much bigger than that.” But this only egged him on, until finally I decided to hit back, below the belt so to speak. The next time he started carping on and on about how well-endowed white men were purported to be, I said, “That isn’t really true. It’s not that our penises are big, it’s just that Japanese penises are so small.” His smile withered. The joking ended. He never hung out with me much after that, which suited me just fine.

  My present travelling companion, meanwhile, was all but slavering. He was, I realized, less a man than he was a slug, a sack of phlegm that had somehow assumed human form. At one point he came dangerously close to actually grabbing my crotch. I smiled grimly and considered bouncing his forehead off the dashboard. That such an invertebrate had learned to operate a motorized vehicle was rather amazing.

  Finally, I thought, to hell with it. No ride is worth this. “Big?” I said. “Big?” My little friend’s eyes gleamed. “It isn’t true,” I said. “It isn’t that we foreigners are big, it’s just that—”

  And once again I saw a smile wither and a once jocular rapport chill. He stared ahead, snarling at traffic, and then, abruptly, stopped the car and let me out. It had been a very short ride.

  “Thanks for the lift!” I said in an overly singsong manner.

  He muttered some reply, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,” and drove off. I was quite proud of myself.

  Although it was the type of encounter that makes you want to wash your hands afterward, this short hop had put me far enough away from the downtown core to allow me to breathe a bit freer. The city had thinned out by this point, and the traffic was no longer bumper to bumper. The Human Slug had barely disappeared when the next driver pulled over. It was a large freight truck. Large by Japanese standards, you understand. Which is to say, it was quite small. You don’t see the fourteen-wheel, rocket-fuelled, amphetamine-powered cannonball rigs we have back in North America.

  The driver, a young man in his mid-twenties, gave me a hand to shake even as he pulled his truck back into the flow of traffic. “Going to Osaka?” he asked—ominously.

  5

  JAPAN IS A LONG twisted rope. To cross over, to traverse the spine of the country, is to go against the grain. No roads go straight across. To get from one sea to the other, from the placid Inland Sea to the cold and stormy Sea of Japan, I had to zig and zag from one route to the next.

  The truck driver I hitched a ride with dropped me off on the side of an expressway. “Are you sure this is legal?” I asked as I got out.

  “Sure. Completely legal. Don’t worry.”

  I was on a high curve of asphalt, miles from the nearest town. A silver river ran through the valley below like a trail of mercury. Farther out, railway tracks cut a suture line across green fields, adding to the sense of space and distance.

  I walked into the landscape. I was on the watershed of Japan; to one side the mountains sloped toward the Inland Sea, on the other they sloped north toward the colder, wilder Sea of Japan. The air was clean and the views were panoramic. As long as the highway patrol didn’t drive by, I was fine.

  I walked toward what I thought was a small village. It turned out to be a graveyard, stacked up along the side of an embankment. There was a scattering of farmhouses nearby, but little else.

  “What on earth are you doing way out here?”

  It was the first question asked of me by a couple in a large family sedan when it pulled over. He was puzzled. She was concerned. “Are you lost? Are you in trouble?”

  They were Masaru and Teruko Ito. Masaru was a kindly man, with a heavy face and gentle eyes. His wife, Teruko, although in her fifties, had the energy of a schoolgirl. They were on their way into Maizuru City, and they welcomed me into their vehicle and fretted over me like parents anywhere. They had a daughter my age, they said. She could speak English, a little, and wasn’t it a shame she wasn’t here to meet me.

  In lieu of her daughter, Mrs. Ito flirted with me instead. Did I have a girlfriend? Sort of. Was she Japanese? What did I think of Japanese girls? “Well,” I said, “like you they are very attractive.”

  She laughed. “He’s charming,” she said to her husband, and he gave me a congratulatory nod.

  We compared our countries, our lifestyles, our differing approaches to dating and romance. And wasn’t it a shame that their daughter—who was single, by the way—wasn’t it a shame she wasn’t here to meet me.

  The Cherry Blossom Front was only now coming to this side of Japan. “They use officially designated cherry trees,” said Mr. Ito. “The trees are planted at one hundred and two different weather stations across Japan, and the degree of blossoms is carefully monitored. That’s how they decide the percentage of flowers and the location of the Front itself.” It sounded very scientific. And it was.

  Mr. Ito warned me that the cherry blossoms were late this year. The radio had announced that they were only at sixty percent bloom. His wife paused, suitably worried on my behalf, and then immediately launched into an inquiry about Western weddings. Was it true that the bride and groom kissed, right up there in front of everybody?

  We began our descent in lazy looping corners, down from the mountains and into a patchwork of fields and rolling foothills. We passed stands of top-heavy bamboo, listing in the wind like giant feather dusters, and soon came upon the naval port of Maizuru and the Sea of Japan. I had expected to see the cold blue colour of slate, with relentless waves and windswept houses perched along its shore, but for all the foreboding images, it wasn’t that bad. A few waves, yet not much worse than the calm, flat waters of the Inland Sea.

  “You should see it during a storm,” said Mr. Ito. “It attacks the coast. Frightening.”

  “But exciting,” said Mrs. Ito. “Storms are full of life.”

  A flutter of cherry blossoms flitted by outside the window. Mr. Ito frowned. “Those don’t look sixty percent in bloom,” he said, and we then had a long, guy-oriented discussion about whether the flowers were fifty percent in bloom or only forty percent. We compromised in the spirit of friendship and decided that they were in fact forty-five percent in bloom. Mr. Ito formally apologized to me on behalf of the cherry trees.

  “The younger trees blossom later,” said Mrs. Ito, making it sound almost poetic. “The older flowers are pink, the younger ones are whiter—purer.”

  “So there is beauty in age,” I said.

  And both Mr. and Mrs. Ito laughed. “You are too charming,” she said, accusingly.

  They were supposed to drop me off outside of Maizuru, but when I told them I was heading to the Bridge of Heaven, they decided, with that unspoken agreement that married couples have, that they would take me up the coast, I made a perfunctory protest, but they insisted, and we swept through Maizuru without stopping, swinging in and out of inlets, up along the coast, and then, coming up quickly on my right, was Ama-no-Hashidate, the Bridge of Heaven.

  It is a natural, wooded causeway, a thin ribbon of forest unrolled across the bay. It began as a sandspit, created slowly over thousands of years as grass took root and then pine trees. This narrow bar of land divides Miyazu Bay almost in two. On the one side are choppy waves, rolling in from the Japan Sea. On the other side, in the lake-like lagoon silted with sand, is a calm mirrored surface. When viewed from above, it forms a trestle of forest that seems to float just above the water, an “avenue of pine trees.” The Bridge of Heaven.

  It was here, in the murky depths of time, that Japan was born. It was here that the drunken sexual forays of the siblings Izanagi and Izanami brought f
orth the thousands of deities and countless islands of Nippon. A male jewelled staff was plunged into the primordial wetness, withdrawn, and then waved, scattering its drops of seed across the void. When Izanagi and Izanami met—here on the Bridge of Heaven—they made the first, primal observation. “You have something that I do not have,” said the sister.

  “And you have a hidden place that I lack,” replied the brother. Not the best pickup lines in history, but soon there were babies poppin’ out all over. The two were so fertile that children were born from tears, sweat, sighs. The land was ripe, and everywhere moist life bloomed. The world began in forest and sea and rain, thick, wet, and humid, pregnant with possibilities.

  “The Bridge of Heaven is three-point-five kilometres long,” said Mr. Ito. “According to the official tally, four thousand seven hundred and sixty-three pine trees grow along it.” We had parked the car and were now waiting for the pedestrian swing bridge to be brought into position. “No cars are allowed on the Bridge of Heaven,” said Mr. Ito. “But we can rent bicycles.”

  Against my further protests, they paid for the rental and we set off down the Bridge of Heaven. Mrs. Ito kept swerving in and out ahead of me, almost crashing, gasping in laughter, as Mr. Ito trudged on, straight as an arrow and just as unwavering. The sand slowed us down now and then, and the wind came in with determined blasts.