Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (57 page)

I said, “I think you’ve taught me this before.”

“That’s right,” Semp
rolled his eyes. “You with all your strange interests, like shamanism. I thought you would need to protect yourself, so I taught you this a long time ago. And you forgot, didn’t you? You snap, like this”—he snapped again, certain that one made the first snap in the upper right corner of a “Z,” before moving down to the lower left corner for the second snap, and then over
to the right for the final one—“and that clears the spirits out of a room. That’s the short-cut exorcism.” He frowned. “No, wait. When you make the zigzag, you don’t snap. You use three fingers.” All at once, Semp
laughed boyishly. “I can’t remember!” He leapt up neatly from his kneeling position and pulled a book off a shelf.

I pulled out my cell phone and prepared to take a photo of the tome.

“Put that away.”

“But I want to remember the book . . .”

“You are not allowed to look at this book,” he said.

“Is it a Zen book?”

“Of course not. Zen doesn’t teach exorcism. Anything weird like this comes from Shingon.”

He flicked through the pages and very quickly found what he was looking for—strict instructions on how to do a Buddhist exorcism.

Semp
snapped the book shut. “Tell you what,” he said. “Best thing is for me to do the exorcism for you. Then you won’t be bringing along any ghosts to upset the film editor. I’ll give you the abbreviated version now, and you can take notes. But then get your crew, and let’s go back to the temple for the full treatment.” Endo and I furiously took notes, then prepared for the exorcism.

A few minutes later, all of us, except for Okisa—who was down by the van; we had inadvertently forgotten to ask him to join us—were at the
hond
. Semp
had changed from his official casual priest’s clothing into his formal, gold thread–embroidered robes for the occasion.

The new
hond
was roughly two and a half times larger than the old temple. The old
hond
had withstood the earthquake on March 11, 2011, but a subsequent aftershock had rendered it unstable and dangerous. Semp
hoped in time to transform the empty space into
a garden. The inside of the new space smelled of fresh cedar, pine, and tatami and was bright blond in color, a steady contrast to old temples, which are a glossy, molasses brown, the legacy of smoke, incense, and time. There was an antechamber in the back of the new
hond
that housed boxes of bones stored for family members who did not have the means, or perhaps the desire, to bury the remains in an actual cemetery. A robotic vacuum cleaner moved across the wood floor of the antechamber, then disappeared from view.

“I have two of them,” Semp
said a little sheepishly. “It’s hard to keep a large temple clean.”

The vacuum cleaner proceeded across the floor again. It was round, perhaps only six inches high, and made very little noise.

“There’s a funny thing with this vacuum cleaner,” Semp
said. “It moves at an angle. You would think that the best way to clean a room would be to go from side to side. But this robot moves in an X.” He strode over to the vacuum cleaner, knelt down as one does when approaching a small dog, and waited for the vacuum cleaner to collide with his foot. It started with surprise, backed away, and then gingerly moved around the obstruction. Semp
laughed with delight. “Did you see that?” He knelt down to intercept the vacuum cleaner again, and the little machine started once more.