CHAPTER 84
With all this walking, the heat and weariness inevitably took their toll on us. It’s not that we were actually ill; rather it was the disturbing feeling that one’s soul had suddenly moved on to inhabit someone else. Though I continued to talk to K as normal, I felt anything but normal. Both our intimacy and the antagonism I felt toward him took on a special quality that was peculiar to this journey. I suppose what I am saying is that, what with the heat, the sea, and the walking, we entered a different kind of relationship. We became for the moment like nothing so much as a couple of wandering peddlers who had fallen in with each other on the road. For all our talk, we never once broached the complex intellectual topics that we usually discussed.
Eventually we arrived at Chōshi.1 One extraordinary event on our journey I will never forget. Before leaving the peninsula, we paused at Kominato to take a look at the famous Sea Bream Inlet. It was many years ago, and besides, I was not particularly interested, so the memory is vague, but I seem to remember that this village was supposed to be the place where the famous Buddhist priest Nichiren2 was born. On the day of his birth, two sea bream were said to have been washed up on the beach there, and the local fishermen have avoided catching bream ever since, so the sea there is thronged with them. We hired a boat and went out to see.
I was intent on the water, gazing entranced at the remarkable sight of all the purple-tinted sea bream milling below the surface. K, however, did not appear as interested. He seemed preoccupied with thoughts of Nichiren rather than fish. There was an impressive temple in the area called Tanjōji, or “Birth Temple,” no doubt referring to the saint’s birth, and K suddenly announced that he was going to go to this temple and talk to its head priest.
We were, I may say, very oddly dressed. K’s appearance was particularly strange, since his hat had blown into the sea, and he was instead wearing a peasant’s sedge hat that he had bought along the way. Both of us wore filthy robes that reeked of sweat. I urged K to give up the idea of meeting the priest, but he stubbornly persisted, declaring that if I didn’t like it, I could wait outside. Since there was no arguing with him, I reluctantly went along as far as the temple’s entrance hall. I was privately convinced we would be turned away, but priests are surprisingly civil people, and we were immediately shown into a fine large room to meet him.
I was far from sharing K’s religious interests back then, so I didn’t pay much attention to what they said to each other, but I gathered that K was asking a great deal about Nichiren. I do remember the dismissive look on his face when the priest remarked that Nichiren was renowned for his excellent cursive writing style—K’s own writing was far from good. He was after more profound information. I don’t know that the priest was able to satisfy him, but once we left the temple grounds, K began to talk fervently to me about Nichiren. I was hot and exhausted and in no mood to listen to all this, so my responses were minimal. After a while even this became too much of an effort, so I simply remained silent and let him talk.
It must have been the following evening, when we had arrived at our night’s lodging, eaten, and were on the point of turning in, that things suddenly grew difficult between us. K was unhappy with the fact that I had not really listened to what he’d said to me about Nichiren the previous day. Anyone without spiritual aspirations is a fool, he declared, and he attacked me for what he obviously saw as my frivolity. For my part, the question of Ojōsan of course complicated my feelings, and I couldn’t simply laugh off his contemptuous accusations. I set about defending myself.