“Do they live here?” I asked Kazz.
“Nobody lives here. They just stay here before ceremonies. The teacher lives nearby, in Osaka.”
I was anxious to ask the teacher questions about the Sword of Heaven, but to do so at this point seemed hasty. Instead, we spent the next fifteen minutes in casual conversation, with Kazz translating.
“Do you want some broth?” the teacher asked, pointing to a black pot full of boiling liquid, unrecognizable vegetables, and glutinous rice.
I accepted and it tasted wonderful. Donna, however, declined. The teacher looked concerned, but Donna reassured him that it had nothing to do with the broth, that her stomach was upset from something she ate and she was sure it would be fine soon.
The teacher asked if I had been to Japan before, and I told him only once, when I was researching a book on bathing customs. Pleased that I had taken such an interest in one of the great passions of the Japanese people, he told us that we mustn’t miss the southern island, Kyushu, where people lie on the beach and have themselves covered with sand heated by volcanic water.
When the teacher asked me how old I was, I learned that Kazz and I were the same age, 31. The teacher told us that according to the Chinese calendar, we were both dragons.
“What does being a dragon mean?” I asked.
“Both of you are very stubborn,” he replied with a knowing smile.
Then the teacher asked if Donna and I were married.
I told him no, we weren’t married. We’d only been together for five months. I briefly wondered if our unwed intimacy would offend him, but it didn’t seem to. He replied that we looked like brother and sister, which surprised me when I considered Donna’s Italian background in contrast to my Nordic one. It also struck me as an odd comment, especially since I was sleeping with her. I felt a little defensive until he explained, “Your souls. You both have yasai, gentle souls.”
Although the teacher exchanged glances with both Donna and me, his questions, including the one about us being married or not, were focused mostly toward me. Donna was content to sit back and just listen. I was confident that later, when we were alone, I could count on her as a reality-check. She’d be able to temper my judgment with more detached reasoning.
When Kazz suggested that now would be a good time to ask the teacher about the project, I sat up straight.
“First, tell the teacher that I am honored to help with his peace project, even in such a small way,” I said to Kazz.
The teacher smiled and nodded when Kazz translated my English into Japanese. “But it’s not my project. It is the project of God. We may think differently, but it is God who put us in contact with one another.”
Kazz leaned toward the teacher and asked him to repeat something, then he turned back to me.“Are you a Christian?”
I’d never been asked that question so directly before. “I’m not involved with any organized religion,” I replied.
As a child I had attended Livermore’s Unitarian Church. Sunday services often meant a field trip to the Rosicrucian Museum in nearby San Jose, or to the planetarium in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park rather than a stuffy church sermon. I had always held Christianity at arm’s length, but a Unitarian, I suspected, wouldn’t have had any trouble with me sitting in that room, discussing and sharing religious ideas with a Shinto priest. They might even have invited the priest to come talk in their own church.
“At least I’m not involved now,” I, added since I hadn’t been to a Unitarian service since I was eleven or twelve years old.
“I’ve never had much interest in Christianity,” the teacher said bluntly.
He looked carefully for my reaction. I didn’t say anything, nervously scratching behind my ear.
The teacher smiled.
“Many Christian missionaries come to Japan. They talk from their head. They feel empty inside. They don’t have any personal power.”
Again, he looked at me carefully before continuing.
“They call themselves Christians, but they confuse me. Jesus Christ is another one of God’s projects, a gift to the human world from God. He has much power.”
He spoke in the present tense, and I mentioned that to Kazz.
“He met Jesus during one of our ceremonies,” Kazz said casually.
I shifted my legs uncomfortably under me. “He met Jesus Christ?”
“Yes. He left his body and his spirit traveled to Tibet. That’s where all the great teachers live—Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius…Christ.”
I looked over at Donna, who I knew had been raised Catholic but didn’t formally practice it anymore. She looked as puzzled as I felt. The teacher caught my glance, nodded and said: “Yes, I was very impressed with Jesus. He taught me about the Great Love, how God protects not only some of the people or some of the world, but gives love to all humankind.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I was thrown off by how casually the teacher had brought up out-of-body travel, as if it were a completely natural thing for him to do. I was also surprised that the simplest of all of Christ’s messages—to love unconditionally—was a radically new concept for him. Yet I was deeply impressed that he had cut right to what I considered the essence of Christ’s teachings.
“Yes,” I said slowly, “There’s a big difference between Christ’s teachings and a lot of organized Christianity. But please don’t judge all Christians by the acts of a few.”
“The same with Shinto!” the teacher exclaimed. “Many people think of World War II when they think of Shinto.”
The teacher settled back, putting his bowl away.
“That is such a small part of our long history, the War. Bad spirits were in control.” Now he spoke softly, with heaviness in his voice. “Long ago, in the beginning, Shinto didn’t even have a name. But then Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity came to us from the outside world. These religions had books and dogma. In response, our leaders commissioned a written chronicle of the ancient legends, which became known as the Kojiki. They also commanded a name be given to it: Shinto, or the way of the gods.”
The teacher sat up. “But I am afraid that by giving it a name, we lost the original spirit of Shinto. We caged a powerful bird. During World War II, the bird became sick. Did you know what MacArthur did after he stripped the emperor of his divinity?” the teacher asked. “He outlawed the possession of swords!”
I had forgotten that detail. At that moment the thought struck me as comical.
My country had just blasted two of Japan’s major cities to radioactive dust, and we were scared of swords?
“But the sword represented militarism, like the swastika in Nazi Germany,” I offered, perhaps a little apologetically.
“Then, yes,” said the teacher. “But the sword also represents positive action. In any case, the sword is only one symbol of Shinto. The jewel, which represents the heart, and the mirror, which represents knowledge, are others. When all three of these divine treasures—the sword, the jewel, and the mirror—are worshipped and understood, man is complete.”
I asked the teacher what he did during the war. I carefully phrased the question so that he could, if he wanted, gracefully decline.
“I was in Manchuria,” he replied easily. “I was a commissary clerk.” I assumed that this meant he didn’t see any action, or more bluntly, that he didn’t kill anyone.
Then the teacher asked me, just as carefully, if I had relatives who fought in the war with Japan.
“A family friend. On my mother’s side,” I replied. “He was killed at Pearl Harbor.”
There was an awkward silence. In all honesty, I didn’t know much about the guy. I remembered only that my American grandmother once told me about visiting Hawaii and placing flowers on his grave.
After a long pause, he said, “Before, I prayed to the God of Japan. Now I never pray to the God of Japan. I pray to the God of the Universe, Ameno-Minakanushi-no-kami, or to the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu-Omikami.”
At this stateme
nt, Kazz stopped translating and looked at the teacher intently.
“What?” I asked, noting his concern.
“This is a very radical idea,” Kazz said finally.
“Including the rest of the world in his prayers?”
Kazz glanced at the teacher but didn’t translate. He turned back to me. “The idea of placing Shinto gods beyond Japanese soil is hard for many people to understand or accept. Even within our group, only a few people know.”
I pulled back, once again totally confused.
“What about the project?” I asked. “It isn’t just about saving Japan, is it? It’s about saving the entire world, right?”
“Of course.”
At this point the teacher yawned. His wife was already asleep on a tatami mat. Donna’s eyes were closing. “Soon it will be dawn,” said Kazz, impassively, ignoring my troubled look.“Translating is very tiring. You can ask the teacher more questions later.”
Donna and I were given separate futons and bedding, which we placed next to each other in a corner of the room. I wanted to ask Donna what she thought but she was already asleep. I lay on the cushioned floor, staring at the wooden rafters. For the moment I felt satisfied. So what if the teacher hadn’t fulfilled my fantasies—at least he wasn’t a religious extremist. In fact, both Kazz and the teacher seemed like sincere and reasonable people. Hey, he was open-minded enough to evoke Jesus Christ! Then I remembered the out-of body travel and the fact that the project was secret from most of the teacher’s followers. Before I fell asleep, I had a strong sense that the deeper I delved into the project the less I would understand.
chapter 7
The teacher welcoming a follower to the Mount Katsuragi shrine.
“Immediately upon hearing the news of Hiroshima, sensitive thinkers had realized that doomsday—an idea that until then had seemed like a religious or science-fiction myth, something outside worldly time—would become as real a part of the possible future as tomorrow’s breakfast.”
—Nuclear Fear: A History of Images, by Spencer R. Weart
We woke to a brilliant fall day. The dark night shadows behind the shrine disappeared, becoming yellow and red leaves, and the cold morning air suddenly turned warm as the sun reached past the rice terraces to strike the freshly plowed field below.
I peered out the doorway and saw the teacher. He had changed into an ornate kimono, a plumed headdress, and a pair of black wooden shoes that added at least eight inches to his height. He was standing near a red wooden gate or torii, which looked somewhat like a football goal post with an extra beam on the top. A huge twisted rope, or shime-nawa, dangled from the two vertical beams.
The teacher was now transformed into the exotic figure I had imagined back in San Francisco. Here now was Gandalf or Merlin, a true wizard. However, my fantasy was dashed when I looked beyond the teacher and saw his congregation of about a hundred people coming down the narrow path. They were dressed in Western suits and Sunday dresses. They looked so normal. The teacher greeted everyone cheerfully, not unlike a midwestern Presbyterian minister greeting his parish.
Past the torii, in front of a rectangular lawn, was the shrine itself. Fifteen rows of folding chairs faced the outdoor shrine. There were five steps that led to the top of the base of the shrine, all made of stone. The base was about the size of a small room and about four feet high. In the middle of it was another, narrower, chimneylike stone pedestal, also about four feet high. On top of this was an elaborate miniature wood building with a slanted roof and protruding beams that crossed each other to form a V at the top. Inside this building, out of sight, was a kami, according to Kazz. In front of the building, set on wooden tables at the top of the steps, were offerings to the kami of salt, sake, and fruit. Today’s ceremony was to celebrate the ninth anniversary of the shrine.
After they greeted the teacher, the people in the procession rinsed their mouths and poured water over their fingertips at a stone basin set up outside the wooden torii in ritualistic purification.
Kazz had changed into a suit and tie and was sipping a cup of tea.
“What will the teacher tell the people about me and Donna?” I asked, dressing quickly because I could see that the ceremony would start soon. I was very glad that I had learned on my previous visit to Japan to bring formal clothes, so I had a jacket and tie ready. Donna always wore urban black, and this occasion was no exception.“Won’t they be curious what brought us here?”
“Not everyone needs things answered as quickly as you.”
An attractive woman and three little girls broke away from the group gathered in front of the teacher and waved to us.
“My wife Tazuko and my children,” Kazz explained.
The young girls clung tenaciously to Tazuko’s leg, hiding their heads in her skirt.
“They’ve never seen foreigners before,” Kazz’s wife said apologetically after we were introduced. “Except on television.”
While they walked back toward the teacher and the shrine, I hastily wrapped a tie around my neck and joined Donna, who was waiting for me just outside the torii.
The ceremony started and like in my dream that first night in Tokyo, I had no idea what was going on. Every movement of the teacher and his assistants became deliberate and slow. There was chanting and praying, and during the prayers, Kazz told me, the teacher made many references to world peace. During much of the ceremony, we sat on the chairs along with everyone else. I sat toward the front with Kazz, and Donna sat in the back with Tazuko. Toward the end of the ceremony, each member of the congregation—in pairs—took leafy branches with strips of white linen tied to them and laid them as offerings at the base of the shrine.
I walked forward with Kazz and placed a branch on the altar as well. One of the teacher’s assistants waved a wand of white paper, called haraigushi, over each of us, purifying us. First he flicked the haraigushi over the left shoulder of the kneeled person, then the right shoulder, and then he repeated the motion with a strong flourish. Donna and Kazz’s wife followed behind us. When it was Donna’s turn, she knelt and then turned and gave me a wink.
Finally, after everyone had made an offering to the kami, the entire group turned toward the north, toward the imperial palace in Tokyo, and shouted out a hearty banzai, the traditional greeting of health and long life to the emperor. Donna and I stood looking quizzically at each other. We knew that Shinto was no longer the state religion, and that the emperor had been stripped of his divinity after World War II. Kazz told me later that they were just showing respect to the emperor who remains their spiritual leader.
Afterward we all threw rice in the direction of the shrine, as if the ceremony were a Western wedding and the shrine was both the bride and groom. Then box lunches were distributed that contained sticky balls of rice filled with vegetables, tiny portions of fish and a round, succulent fruit that tasted like a cross between a pear and an apple. We ate the delicious food on the grass in front of the shrine in the ceremonial area.
To a shopkeeper, an import/export man, a craftsman, and a gardener who walked up to us as we ate, I was introduced by Kazz as a visiting American journalist, Donna as my wife. They said a few words and strolled away.
“No one really cares if you are actually married or not,” whispered Kazz,“but in Japan appearance is very important.”
Now the teacher walked up, looking completely at ease in his long robe and large hat.
“You are both invited to his home in Osaka the day after tomorrow,” Kazz translated. “I told him you would come.”
I looked worried, wondering how we were going to get there.
“I’ll take you. In the meantime, please stay at my house.”
Kazz drove back from the mountain, but this time three little girls and Tazuko were crammed in the car as well. Even though the overloaded car listed dangerously around each curve, neither Kazz nor his wife nor the children seemed to notice. Donna and I, however, glanced at each other nervously.
“We live not far,
in Gose,” said Kazz. “We wanted to live near the shrine.”
It was a four-room house with a kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms upstairs. One bedroom was full of books and antiques, which meant that the entire family lived in the other three rooms. Donna and I found a corner near a bookcase and dropped our luggage.
In the tiny kitchen, Tazuko prepared fresh noodles sent by her parents, who owned a noodle factory. The living room was cold, but we sat and ate around a low table with a built-in infrared heater. The noodles were perfectly cooked and tasted wonderful. Tazuko explained that her parents only used organic flour so they were safe from all pesticides and other contaminants. At first our conversation with Kazz and Tazuko was awkward; we struggled to find common subjects of interest. The girls were quiet and just stared at us, barely touching their noodles. Then Kazz told us about his interest in jazz—when he was younger he played the bass—and we were all on familiar ground.
After the meal, Tazuko cleaned up and Kazz went upstairs. “To pray,” his wife explained.
Before we fell asleep, the children came into our room, rosy red from a hot bath, and giggled “Good night” to us in English. We slept in the “library”; the rest of the family slept in one bed.
We couldn’t sleep. A bright light from outside filled the tiny room, and we could hear the children tossing and turning, and outside an occasional car driving noisily along the cobblestone road.
Noise and light have always been especially irritating to me: After moving out of the bomb shelter, I have always sought basement bedrooms that duplicated its tomblike serenity. Sleeping anywhere else has always been difficult.
Donna reached for the earplugs she always carried.
The Sword of Heaven Page 6
