Seiobo There Below (39 page)

like that
on the ceremonial stage in the Akasawa forest during the Misoma-Hajime-sai, then they observed that on the incoming side, young Shintō priests were carrying freshly carpentered boxes to the stairs leading up to the stage, then after them, on the path in a line, appeared the mute and stern-gazed group of the priests who would lead the ceremony, but they too were clearly agitated about something, because now and then one or the other stumbled on the precarious surface of the shaving-strewn path, in their high heavy black-lacquered priest’s footwear, and so in general it could be said that everyone seemed serious and flustered, if not stricken by stage fright, even the male gathering of the exclusive guests was like that, as if the entire Misoma-Hajime-sai itself were suggesting that no one could be certain of how the proceedings would go, there were rules, and these rules had to be followed faithfully, without error, as if there were general doubt concerning this; something of this was perceptible in the atmosphere from here in front, from the clearing, where they sat among the journalists on the ground; then a shorter line appeared, a new group of priestly persons, who clearly now could only be the very highest leadership, although no one here knew who was the guji, the negi, the kujo, or who the joo was, or the mei, the sei, and who the choki was, or if everyone here even had received a mandate to take part, which was unlikely, there was total uncertainty among the journalists, they kept asking each other, although whoever was asked just laughingly shook his head, in a word no one knew anything, and somehow one had the feeling that the same bewilderment was felt among the chairs below them on the stage as well, when at last at the head of a little troop of priests the chief personage appeared, everyone recognized her features and her bearing, namely the elderly sister of the Emperor had appeared, the saishu of the Ise Shrine; she moved slowly along the path, completed the purification ceremony by the water trough, then with perceptible strain due to her age, she dragged herself up the stairs, and withdrew to the middle of the first row on the stage, taking her place there, which was so to speak the sign that the Misoma-Hajime-sai could begin, the highest-ranking priests were already kneeling, holding out their shakus in front of themselves in front of the hinoki on the left, then crossing over, in front of the hinoki on the right, so that the first part of the Misoma-Hajime-sai ceremony would be completed in both places, of which however it was impossible to understand, or hear anything, although there was silence at the ceremony, namely that here there was no music — the high screeching of the hichiriki and behind it the sounds of the ryūteki, and the shō, protracted and weeping, present at nearly every Shintō ceremony, could not be heard — the forest was enveloped in complete silence, the priest leading the ceremony, Kuniaki Kuni, mutely performed the ritual with his entourage behind him, and only at times was the rustle of robes audible, as the priest turned, stood up, then kneeled down, bowing again to the ground, because from that place, from where they were observing, this is largely what they saw, and this much was largely comprehensible from the ceremony: the priest kneeling in front of the tree, bowing down, getting up, bowing again with the shaku in his hands, behind him the entourage motionlessly kneeling, then they too at times bowed down and got up, and sat straight-backed and motionless again, this is mainly what happened in front of one tree, and mainly in front of the other as well, they had crossed from one to the other, after which the priest leading the ceremony took out from the wooden chests, carried up to the stage, and placed on the little tables slowly, and somewhat hesitantly, the food offerings: the shinsen, rice and saké, fish and vegetables, fruit and sweets, salt and water, they were placed as offerings on the little tables, and then this was repeated in front of the other tree as well, and then it was already possible to see, readying themselves at the bottom of the staircase, the white-garbed woodcutters, who at the given sign proceeded onto the stage, and splitting up into two groups placed themselves around the two trees, but first just the group on the left began their work, while the other group stood motionlessly and waited for their turn to come, and the two of them, the Western guest and the Japanese host, both felt that with this the entire Misoma-Hajime-sai was saved, because up until the point when the woodcutters appeared, it was simply impossible to take this entire Misoma-Hajime-sai seriously, no matter how sacrilegious the thought seemed to them, they were of the opinion, and they even discussed this between themselves in subdued voices, that it was the complete absence of sacredness, or a crushing of the sacredness of the departed taking place on the stage, because the whole thing was so untrue, and there was no credibility to anything, not one movement, not a single gesture of the chief priest, the dai-gūji, or of the kneeling priests behind him, betrayed anything but a tense indecisiveness for everything to go well, for there not to be any mistakes; sheer exertion, this was all that could be seen in every movement and ritual gesture, but not the rite itself, and this atmosphere characterized the spectators as well, the privileged invitees, those supporters who had clearly arrived with generous financial pledges: a tense indecisiveness, thus the movements and the gestures were not the movements and gestures of faith and devotion but those of fear; a fear that somehow it would become visible that here nothing was true, not true, not sincere, not open, and not natural: well, what was missing was exactly that which was the very essence of Shintō, this is what they thought, and this is what they both discussed, concealing themselves among the journalists, when the work began, and with which everything was suddenly saved, because from this point on, the entire gathering watched the operation for close to two hours with bated breath, they watched, and they could not believe their eyes, because what these simple woodcutters, the specially trained workers of the Akasawa forest preserve, were doing, was true and pure, and credible and natural; an art was revealed in their movements, for that matter, in their movements was a very ancient art, and it occurred in such a way that they did not merely fall to the trees with their axes, but employed a particular method, in which of the group of nine, altogether three workers used their axes at once, they always worked in this group of three, surrounding the tree as they stood on the stage, and they did not just begin to chop away in a circle, say from one side, but all three of them together began to chop three holes with their axes, all told, three holes on three evenly spaced balance points of the circumference of the tree, and they did not broaden these cuts, but deepened them, so that accordingly, they cut into the tree from three directions, the location of which was determined by the leader of the group, and particularly in such a way that the tree stood in the direction of the desired pitch, the leader leaned his back against the trunk of the tree, he measured with his arms a distance on this trunk, and with that a point; then another and then another, then he showed these three points, where the holes had to be, to the others, and they already raised their axes, and when the group of three workers grew tired from the axe blows, they stood aside, and three rested workers stood in their place and continued the work so that the three groups alternated with each other, and the three holes grew deeper; and as the two of them watched in the great silence, in which the only sound was the melody of the echoing axe blows, as they watched them from the circle of journalists both began to feel — and they spoke of this again and again — that these workers were undertaking the work they learned to do with hairsbreadth precision, but they did not know, they had not the slightest idea, why what they were doing was exactly the way it was, and mainly they did not know that with every movement as they raised the axe, as it fell backward and then struck down, as they accordingly deepened the three holes until they met and became adjacent with each other at one point in the trunk’s inner part, namely that they were repeating — and with hairsbreadth precision — the momentum, the direction, the strength of the movements of their ancestors, in a word, the order, just as those ancestors had only just repeated the movements of their own predecessors, so that now, the Western friend whispered over to his companion, that is to say every movement of each worker, and every component of every movement — its momentum, its arc, its striking down — is one thousand and three hundred years old, they are artists, Kawamoto-san nodded enthusiastically, too, and only his glittering eyes betrayed that he too understood what the other was thinking, and he too, just like the other, was inspired by the thought; they watched as the cuts in the trees were deepened with the dull rhythm of the axe blows, they saw as they all then met at an inner point, the leader of the group of the woodcutter-artists, motioning, the others stepping back, a few shouts were heard, and it was as if this leader had uttered a short prayer, finally he himself struck the tree a few times at one spot on the trunk, but the two visitors could not see, as from here the figure of the chief priest was in front of that of the woodcutter-artist, at which point the tree gave a cracking groan, then it slowly began to lean downward, and then it was already down below on the ground, its peak turned a little toward the other tree; then someone began to relate, Kawamoto interpreting as well, that the true point of this ancient way of cutting down the tree was that in this way the position of the felled tree could be determined precisely, could be directed with a precision measured in centimeters; Kawamoto translated the words of an older journalist to his friend, but he was just watching the entire thing dumbstruck, mainly, when around the other tree, where the woodcutters had proceeded, the same thing happened, and the tree fell exactly where it had to, that is five meters below the peak of the other one on the ground, so there lay the chosen hinoki trees, and then Kuniaki Kuni stepped closer to one of them, and then before the trunk of the other felled tree, and, if it was possible, the silence only grew deeper than it had been before; Kuniaki Kuni raised the broad piece of paper with handwriting upon it to the height of his head, and there was even deeper silence, and no one moved, the sister of the Emperor — the saishu of the Ise shrine — bowed her head, and at this point so did all of the privileged invited guests, and as they bowed their heads so did the journalists in the clearing facing the stage, Kawamoto was only able to whisper to his friend: “norito” in exhortation, and he followed the others, and the Western friend did the same, but he did not know of course what had happened and what was happening, of course he didn’t know why, he stood with his head bowed, and he didn’t know, just as he would never know what he might have heard if he had understood, but well how could he have understood, for what was audible from the mouth of the priest was, apart from him, not understood by many even among the Japanese, because these words, spoken for the first time at least one thousand five hundred years ago and since then with no variations whatsoever were takaamahara ni kami tsumari masu, kamurogi kamuromi no mikoto wo mochite, sumemioya kamu izanagi no mikoto, tsukushi no himuka no tachihana no odo no, ahagi hara ni misogi harai tamau toki ni, narimaseru haraidono ookami tachi, moromoro no magagoto tsumi kegare wo, harai tamae kiyome tamae to mousu koto no yoshi wo, tamatsu kami kunitsu kami yaoyorozu no kamitachi tomomi, ameno huchikoma no mimi furitatete kikoshimese to, kashikomi kashikomi mo maosu, and so on, they listened, hardly able to hear anything at all, as if the dai-gūji were reciting nearly mutely, then he folded up the piece of paper, stepped back, prayed before the one felled tree, then knelt, prostrated, then everyone raised their heads, the priests repeated the norito in front of the other felled hinoki as well, then the priests departed from the stage in order, and they could still be seen as they proceeded in front of the water trough, finally they vanished at the first bend in the path, but then the Emperor’s relation stood up and she herself left the stage with her entourage, followed by the invitees, and this was the sign, because not only did the others remain there, but everyone pressed forward toward the stage to try to get as close as possible to the woodcutters, who now came forward to shake the hands extended to them, and they were happy, all of them were smiling, and they were touched, and the joy did not want to leave them, they gave everyone some of the wood shavings from the sacred trees, the two friends also went over to them, shook hands with one of the woodcutters, and received a handful of wood shavings pressed into their palms, and it was just then that they noticed, only then did they perceive what an astonishingly powerful fragrance was everywhere, the particular fragrance of the two felled hinoki trees practically burst onto the section of the forest like a cloud, it drew them in, what an extraordinarily sweet wondrous fragrance, rhapsodized the Western friend, it is, nodded Kawamoto-san, because he was happy that his friend was not just experiencing disappointment again, and they would not return home beaten down, although that really happened too; they drove back to Kiso-Fukushima in a decidedly liberated mood, the enthusiasm of the Western friend — at least for a while — somewhat rubbing off on Kawamoto-san, although he was mostly grateful to fate that no larger misfortunes had taken place, they had not gotten mixed up in any sort of unpleasantness, which however could still be counted upon, as it was only afternoon; they were for the most part discussing the norito, gliding along in the traffic on the Meishin Expressway, the norito, the Shintō prayer uttered by the faithful in complete silence, the recitation upon which the benevolence and receptiveness of the Kami addressed in the prayer is wholly dependent — if, that is, it is uttered faultlessly in every instance where it is recited — that was all he, Kawamoto, knew, he said, apologizing while still in the car, because the norito is the most sacred of prayers of the Japanese, he explained further, when he saw on his friend’s face that he would like to
know more, or, as he expressed it, to know as much as could possibly be known, and although Kawamoto-san enlarged upon it for a while inasmuch as he could recall from his school assignments: the norito is connected with the belief that the uttered word has power, but only the word uttered correctly, faultlessly, beautifully has the power to bring good; every time the opposite occurs, the word will instead signify something bad for the community, that is all that Kawamoto-san said: then in a strange confusion, a dispirited mood suddenly weighing down upon him, he became silent, and he did not wish to speak of this or of anything else, time imperceptibly slipped by, and they were already in Kyōto, there was much traffic, but still they made their way, Kawamoto however could see that due to their early arrival his friend really didn’t feel like going home, and so he proposed showing him some of the more unknown inner districts of the city, but then they sat down instead in a ryokan, and they had a fine meal, finally they sat on the terrace of one of the bars on the Kamo River, they watched the river, the couples strolling across the bridges, and Kawamoto Akio listened in ever-growing agony, as his friend had already been speaking for a while about how he would like to continue his research, how he wished to return one more time to Ise, because he would like to talk with the carpenters from Naikū, he would like, namely, to know more, to know everything about how the team of carpenters prepares for each Shikinen Sengū, how do the felled hinoki cypresses arrive there, how does the operation proceed, how do they prepare the hinoki, and how are the dazzlingly simple, pure buildings of the shrine constructed, namely, he explained, he felt that perhaps here, on this path, he must take one more step, because it was obvious that the ceremonies of the Shintō faith were completely uninteresting and had ended up in a woeful state, still though, it could be that the Shintō was still in there somewhere, concealed within the invisible world of the everyday, because surely if this Shintō was still to be found in an ancient movement, as they had experienced today, an ancient movement which had been preserved for centuries, there could be other surprises here too, oh no, thought Kawamoto-san, surprises, most likely there will be some, he nodded on the terrace of the bar on the bank of the Kamo River, and deep in thought he gazed at the people strolling from Shijō, flowing into the Gion, all the while convinced that no, this was enough already, they had been able to see the Misoma-Hajime-sai, they had received permission for that, but the Jingū Shicho would not give them any kind of permission for anything else, yet still to speak with the miya-daikus, yet still, to find out about the toryō, the miya-daikus, and through them the entire construction-leadership of the Shikinen Sengū, my god, how could he explain, brooded Kawamoto, that all of this is not possible already, it was not possible to put the Jingū Shicho in an awkward position with yet another request, even the first one already had gone beyond the limit of the desired norms here, but the Jingū Shicho had been magnanimous, it had given them permission to observe the Misoma-Hajime-sai; anything beyond this, however, beyond expressing their gratitude in a letter to the Jingū Shicho office, to which — Kawamoto tried to get his friend to understand what the correct procedure would be here, they could even add a gift, for example — well, anything else beyond this was unimaginable, but his companion, as if it were just a topic of debate, immediately rejected the thought that he, at this point — as he expressed it — should give up, come on already, don’t be afraid, you can smear all the discourteous things on me later, he said and laughed, but Kawamoto did not really feel like laughing at this, as his guest was already saying that tomorrow they would try to contact Miwa-san by telephone, and they would get to the carpenter’s workshop at Naikū, the location of which, thanks to the previously well-studied map of the shrine, they were familiar with, we’ll get in, the guest looked at Kawamoto encouragingly: but not only was it impossible to encourage him, from his constrained smile, and how he suddenly changed the topic to something else, it became clear that even the plan of this latest “action,” as his friend put it, oppressed him, and in general he was beginning to be worn down by his Western friend’s — of course, from his friend’s perspective, entirely natural — audacity, he knew he would never be able to explain to him that