I didn’t sleep again that night.
When the first hint of morning light filled the tent, I shook Dan and told him to get moving. Outside, billowy clouds were already visible.
“Hurry!” I urged. I knew we would have to start now, before the day turned the snow to slush—or worse, before the clouds turned into a storm.
While Dan lashed on his crampons for footing on the icy slopes, I fumbled with the stove, boiling snow for tea.
Other climbers were already moving silently up the mountain behind our camp. We hurried through our tea and breakfast of cold milk and cereal. I packed the Shinto god along with a lunch of nuts and raisins and drinking water into my day pack. We left the tent standing, to be retrieved later in the day on our return.
In the gray dawn, we climbed for an hour until we reached a heart-shaped patch of uncovered rocks and boulders. A bank of rocks and gravel loomed ahead of us, and the peak rose beyond. Dan was breathing heavily and we rested. So far, the weather had remained unchanged. But now the clouds began to move.
“We don’t have much time,” I said urgently. “Let’s go.”
Two hours later, when we were still an hour from the summit, the storm hit. Freezing clouds filled the air with snow, and a powerful wind blew the flakes nearly horizontal to the ground. We struggled through the howling mess, determined to reach the top, but the thin mountain air forced us to take small, deliberate steps.
At the base of the summit, we smelled the sulfur springs. During a much worse storm in 1888, John Muir had immersed himself in the hot water to save his life.
“Not far now,” I gasped to Dan, whose face was buried deep in his parka. I pointed into the white air. “Just over there.”
We weren’t a hundred yards from the summit when Dan tore back his parka and threw up, splashing tea and cereal against a frozen boulder.
He refused my offer of help, and dragged himself to the summit. In a ring of protective rocks, he lay moaning and retching, classic symptoms of altitude sickness.
Rest, I knew, wouldn’t help: only a lower elevation could. I only had a few moments. I pulled the god from my pack. There has to be a crevice in the ice or a crack in the rocks, I thought. But the storm made it nearly impossible to see. The shrieking wind blew pieces of snow and ice into my face. If I ventured too far from my friend, I might never find him again.
I wanted to place the god on Mount Shasta. But how? Because of the storm, my only choice was to drop the god on the hard ice, in full view of other climbers. It would almost certainly be picked up by someone and taken back down the mountain. I was exhausted by a night without sleep, and sat down in the snow defeated.
Bad spirits!
I gripped the stone god. The storm howled around me. I could faintly hear my friend vomiting his guts out.
I tried to calm myself, to banish the thought that the storm—a common occurrence, after all—was a sign. But even as I dismissed the madness of my thoughts, I could hear a cacophony of voices—my own included—screaming:
“Turn back! Turn back from this crazy project. Turn back before it’s too late.”
After a few minutes, I stuffed the god into my pack and scrambled back to Dan. We quickly descended. A thousand feet lower, the clouds dissolved into blue sky and my friend revived. I looked back at the summit, now clearly visible, and wondered if I would be able to place another god again—or if I even dared to try.
After I returned home to San Francisco, despite my failures to place the second god, I clung to my initial belief that the Sword of Heaven was a meaningful peace project. I took Juan Li’s advice and sent three gods with sympathetic friends to distant places—and one with a man who responded to the newspaper article. For the next few months the placing of the gods went smoothly.
Nadav Elder, an Israeli who studied architecture in San Francisco, took one to the Sea of Galilee. He brought home color pictures of himself in a tiny boat in the middle of the sea, with the god’s cloth wrapping around his head.
Julie Christensen, the friend who was having lunch with me when the package of gods appeared on my porch in San Francisco, took one to the mouth of the Mississippi River. In a letter she wrote to Kazz, she explained that Atchafalaya swamp near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is one of the last great swamps of the Mississippi river basin. “While everyone else went fishing, my brother and I took a small boat into the swamp. The canals are winding and intersecting, sometimes only eight or ten feet wide. Finally the trees parted and we entered Lake Bigeux, a relatively deep body of water where several canals and bays converge. We selected a spot in the center of the lake and left our package there. It was a hot, humid day, and my brother decided to swim a bit before we headed home. He dove from the boat and surfaced with a strange expression—the water was cold! Fifteen feet from the boat in any direction the water was very warm, as it usually is, but right around us it was very cold. I suppose there was a spring below us, but I have never heard of springs in the swamp. It is here we placed the god. The story of your efforts has touched the hearts of a great variety of people. I am pleased and honored to have participated in my small way. Good luck to you.”
Lynn Ferrin, a magazine editor in San Francisco, placed a god in Canada. After a two-day dog sled ride, she placed it in the Athabasca River in western Canada, within Jasper National Park in the province of Alberta. The river runs almost 800 miles from the mountains across the plains to Lake Athabasca. In the lake, the waters mingle with the waters of the Peace River system and ultimately reach the Arctic Ocean through the Mackenzie River system. Lynn threw the god in at a spot with a beautiful view of the snowcapped mountain range to the west. “It was wonderful to take part in this project,” she wrote, “and I hope that the spirit of the god travels a long way in the far north.”
Hugh Leddy, a broadcast engineer from Chugiak, Alaska, envisioned placing a god while Zen monks, Buddhist priests, and a TV crew participated in a sort of media event. I sent him a god, but his ambitious plans fell through; he finally ended up placing the god quietly in a bay near Homer with his wife and children and some kayakers who happened by.
“The first impression I got, even as I stood in front of the little country post office in Chugiak was that what I was holding, even before I opened the paper-wrapped, brown cardboard box that held it, was emanating a gentle and benign but quite awesome impression of strength… I felt I had just been handed a trust—a mantle of responsibility had in some way come to me…it was up to me to ensure the kami arrived at whatever place turned out to be its intended destination.
“Originally, I had planned to take the kami to Little Diomede, an island in the Bering Sea that is only three miles away from another island called Big Diomede which is part of Russia. Nothing happened as planned.
“Once we got to Land’s End on the Homer Spit, the wind was biting cold—and, apart from ourselves, the beach was deserted. It was the end of the season and the charter and tour boat businesses had folded in their shutters, locked up, and gone home. There was no means available to take the kami any farther. Two kayakers, Willy Stark and Meg Kurtagh of Homer, Alaska, were about to take off to paddle across the deep water. There was no room for me either in his kayak or hers. Reluctantly, realizing I was but one link along a chain, I agreed to let them paddle out and place the kami where it had to go. I took pictures from the beach. Thanks for trusting me with one Shinto god.”
Like me, Hugh learned the project wasn’t as simple as it seemed. It had a mind of its own.
PART TWO
Conflict within
weakens the power
to conquer danger
without.
chapter 6
Kazz praying at the shrine.
On August 31, 1983, the Soviets shot down Korean flight 007, killing all 269 people onboard. President Reagan responded by calling the USSR an “evil empire,” even though the flight had strayed into Soviet airspace. In the early fall, NATO launched a major exercise called “Able Archer 83.” The Soviets thoug
ht this was a precursor to a major attack and prepared a major offensive of their own. Were these the sparks that would set off the next world war?
November 19, 1983: In my dream that first night in Tokyo, Kazz was behind me, and I could sense him smiling with pride. In a misty, featureless foreground I perceived four or five ghostly figures dressed in white robes. They were hurling long, vicious daggers at me. But ten feet before me, the daggers turned into dinner knives, the kind with dull, rounded tips. I easily deflected them from my body with my hands, and they fell harmlessly to the ground. I didn’t feel fear or concern. Rather, I felt awkward, as if something were happening that I didn’t understand—as though I were part of a game for which I didn’t know the rules.
I awoke from my puzzling dream in the tiny hotel room. I didn’t know what time it was. My internal body clock said midmorning, California time, but the darkness outside reminded me I was at the Asia Center Hotel in Tokyo, in the middle of the night—only a few days away from finally meeting the mysterious Kazz and his venerable teacher.
I heard Donna stir and then roll over on her side. Our relationship had evolved a lot since I had told my friend Dan about her on Mount Shasta four months earlier. Not only did we share the swimming pool, art, and bed, but when I told her about the Shinto project she was intrigued. She saw it as a wonderful performance piece, and the Shinto priest who had started it as an artist in his own right. All it needed, she said, was a Philip Glass score. In November, when I asked if she’d join me on a trip to Japan, she didn’t hesitate. She had been fascinated with Japan for a long time, and was curious to meet the man behind the Sword of Heaven project.
It was raining lightly, typical autumn weather in central Japan. Restless, I clicked on my reading light and quietly opened my briefcase to reread the letter I had received from Kazz a few weeks earlier. His back was better, and he was once again placing gods.
“I just came back to Japan after I have placed the gods in three places, Madras, Colombo, and Mauritius Island. We have 40 Gods left. My teacher is concerned. Time is short. If it is possible for you to come to Japan before the 23rd of November, please write. We have a special ceremony then.”
I shook my head, placing the letter on the table. “He’s right about time being short,” I thought. “The world is more dangerous than ever.”
I had rationalized our trip to this expensive Asian archipelago in a number of ways: a photo project, a travel story, a book promotion. But in all honesty, Kazz’s invitation was all I needed. I owed it to myself and the others who had placed gods through me to meet the people behind this ambitious project, even if the trip were a financial bust.
I heard Donna call out,“I’m wide awake! What time is it?”
“Four,” I said, gently stroking her cheek. “Eleven in the morning California time. We’ve got hours until sunrise.”
I hugged her and held her for a long time.
“Careful. My stomach. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten the duck they served on the plane.”
And then she stretched, her arms nearly touching the two walls of our tiny room.
“I can’t go back to sleep,” she said. “What shall we do?”
I knew from my last trip to Japan, eight years earlier, that the only place open at this hour was the Tsuki fish market. I suggested that we go there.
The streets were empty, and there was little sign of the massive human energy that transformed Tokyo from the rubble and ruin at the end of World War II into a gleaming, modern city, one of the most populous in the world. At the fish market we joined a few other blurry-eyed foreigners among the throng of Japanese fishmongers strolling around the vast indoor 50-acre marketplace. There was every type of fish imaginable for sale, in every form: frozen, dried, or freshly cleaned. The waters surrounding the four main islands that make up Japan are fertile, but the huge tuna and whales obviously came from the far corners of the world. We passed a stand oozing the smell of fish broth.
“I’m not sure this was a good idea,” Donna said, still nauseated from our in-flight meal.
By then it was 7 a.m. and the sun was rising, brightening the gray Tokyo sky. We went out into the now-crowded streets to find a bus back to our hotel.
There, Donna went for tea, while I went up to our room to call Kazz. A woman answered the phone. In seconds Kazz was on the phone welcoming Donna and me to Japan. His voice was cheerful, but his English slow and careful.
“The ceremony is on Wednesday. I’ll meet you at the station in a couple days, on Tuesday,” he said. Then he gave me directions. We were to meet him south of Tokyo, three hours by the Shinkansen, or bullet train. Just hearing Kazz’s voice on the phone thrilled me. There is a real person behind the letters, I thought. And I’m going to finally meet him!
It was twilight when we arrived at Kashiharajingumae, a small train station between Nara and Osaka. We were met by neon advertisements blasting messages about donuts and burgers. Into this chaotic scene walked a man wearing a jogging suit, his long black hair wild as if he had just finished a long run. He called out my name, mispronouncing it. It was Kazz.
I don’t remember if we bowed. Our meeting seemed so Western, with him in a jogging suit surrounded by fast-food joints. I just grabbed his hand and shook it. After I introduced Donna, Kazz grew silent, donning an impassive Asian public countenance. He gripped our baggage and led us to his car.
“It’s old,” he apologized.
“What? The car?” I joked. At most it was three years old.
“The Japanese don’t like used things. We were given it as a gift.”
The silence returned. Donna climbed in back, and I sat on the left, where in America the driver’s seat would be. In Japan the driver sits on the right, British-style. In the awkwardness of our continued silence, I wanted to grab the nonexistent wheel.
Finally Kazz broke the silence as we drove away from the station. “There is much to tell.”
I was relieved. I hadn’t known how to handle his silence, and I was dying to talk. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Tonight the teacher is preparing for tomorrow’s ceremony. The mountain is only an hour’s drive.”
What mountain? Juan never mentioned a mountain. I sensed a widening gap between Kazz and me, and I wanted to fill it with answers as fast as possible. At that moment, however, I knew intuitively that I needed to restrain myself.
“Was that your wife who answered the phone?” I asked instead.
“Yes.”
“What does she think of all your travel?” Donna asked from the backseat.
“She understands.” Kazz managed a smile, as he half turned to her. “Most of the time.”
The small town and its neon melted into darkness behind us. We followed narrow cobblestone roads past smaller towns and villages divided by dark patches of what I assumed were rice fields. Even though we were far from the intense urban density of Tokyo, the countryside felt carefully shaped and planned out. Nothing seemed out of place, not a single cobblestone. An hour later we began climbing a steep mountain road.
“This is Mount Katsuragi. Soon we arrive at Tenkenjinja, the shrine of the Sword of Heaven,” Kazz said, as he twisted the steering wheel to follow the sharp curves in the road. “The teacher is waiting.”
At the mention of the teacher, I felt a childlike eagerness and impatience. My vision of him was pure fantasy, a high lama of Shangri-la, old, frail, and wrinkled. I’ve always loved James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, the book that introduced Shangri-la to the world. Perhaps I’d be like Conway, the book’s main character, and the teacher would reveal some marvelous secret that would change my life.
“How did you meet him?” I asked.
Maybe Kazz was deliberately trying to sustain the drama to make our meeting more mysterious, because he didn’t answer. Instead, he said simply, “Please wait.”
We were silent a long time. Then Donna, bless her heart, said, “At least tell us his name.” Her vision of the teacher clearly was more objective than
mine. She saw him as a talented artist creating a masterpiece and therefore very human. She had her feet planted firmly on the ground while I floated in a cloud of fantasy.
Kazz gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Hakuryu Takizawa.”
“Hakuryu Takizawa?” she repeated.
“Hakuryu means White Dragon. Takizawa is his family name,” Kazz said. Before she could say anything more he pulled the car to the side of the road. “Here we are.”
It was dark, but we could faintly see a valley far below. I saw the black outline of a crow sitting on a bare late-autumn branch. The new moon was just emerging over the hillside terraces. The darkness began to glow with a dull silver sheen.
“It’s late,” I said.
“No problem,” replied Kazz as he opened the car door and led us down a steep path to a dimly lit house.
The man who watched us walk through the door was no frail lama. He leapt from the floor, moving quickly across the tatami mats, and put out his hand in a hearty Western-style greeting.
“Yokuirashaimashita!” he said in a deep voice, welcoming us in Japanese. He was slender and tall, approaching my own height of six feet. He was wearing a white, two-piece garment: a long skirt under a robe-length coat. His eyes were piercing. They darted between me and Donna with the happiness of a grandfather seeing his grandchildren for the first time, without the sagelike reserve that I had expected, especially after Kazz’s reticence.
He greeted Donna by clasping her small hand carefully between both of his and smiling deeply at the same time.
He turned to his student and spoke rapidly in Japanese. Kazz motioned us toward the center of the room, where a kerosene heater glowed warmly. There was also a cooking pit with coals that filled the room with steam and the smell of food.
The room was large and open, and in the back, in the shadow of the kerosene heater, two figures came towards us. One was an older woman, her head bowed as she walked forward; the other was a tall young man. The teacher’s wife and son offered polite greetings, and then returned to the back of the room where they had been sleeping.
The Sword of Heaven Page 5
