Musashizuka Park

Miyamoto Musashi. I've spoken about him at length before. I reviewed his life's work, The Book of Five Rings, on this here blog a while back. I have alluded to him at relevant points concerning Korean/Japanese history, seeing as Musashi was alive and all when the Japanese invasions of Korea were happening. He figured into some of the civil conflicts that ripped through Japan shortly thereafter, too.

He features prominently in my big sci-fi novel series, too. One of my protagonists is reincarnated from him. Why? Well, Musashi was probably the greatest swordsman Japan has ever known. Famous for fighting in the Battle of Sekigahara and winning over 60 private duels (and never losing once), Musashi is renowned for inventing and promulgating the Niten Ichi-ryu (Two Heavens, One Style) school of swordsmanship—using two blades in combat. Seriously, it doesn't get much more badass than that. Watch this documentary on the man's life. It's incredible. 

What I haven't told you yet is that Musashi, the man, the myth, the legend, is a big part of the reason why I chose Kumamoto as the third Japanese city I'd visit. See, the city used to be his stomping grounds—or rather, his retirement home. After he got over wandering around Japan kicking the daylights out of any strong fighters he could find, he entered into the service of the Hosokawa Tadatoshi, the daimyo of Kumamoto Castle, and became one of his retainers. In return Musashi received 17 servants of his own, 300 koku of rice, a rank and title, and Chiba Castle for his residence. Being the utter badass he was, he still found time to indulge in some duels, all of which he won. But mostly he painted, wrote poetry, and worked to compile his techniques and philosophy in writing. He walked many times to a sacred cave on the far side of Mount Kinpo (called Reigandō, which you shall hear about later) to meditate and write. These memoirs became The Book of Five Rings mentioned at the beginning of this post.

When he finally became too infirm to live in solitude upon the mountain, he was brought down to die (probably of thoracic cancer) at the estate of his beloved lord. The legends say that when the venerable old kenshi felt death's veil falling over him, he asked to be propped up one knee, leaning on his sword. He died that way, and in his final will asked to be buried so he could always watch over his master's lands.

To that end, Musashi's remains were interred in full armor in the village of Yuge at the foot of Mount Iwato, near the road which the Hosokawa clan would take whenever they traveled to Edo (now Tokyo). Musashi's hair was interred upon Mount Iwato itself. His grave marker and tombstone, however, were set elsewhere: in a place appropriately called Musashizuka, in a park erected in Musashi's name. It was there that I headed on the morning of August 7th.

To my everlasting shame and chagrin, I dawdled and lollygagged a bit too much that morning; it was my last full day in Japan and I was feeling lazy. I didn't even get out the door until about 10:30, about three hours later than all the previous days. This would cost me greatly later that evening. 

I had purchased a Japanese headband, or hachimaki, with a red sun and an inspirational saying on it in Japanese, at the Suizen-ji Gardens a few days earlier. It was time to use it. Japanese people often wear these headbands when embarking upon a worthy enterprise, be it a late-night cram session or an election campaign. The headband symbolizes perseverance and success. I would not quit until I had knocked off the two great journeys on that day's to-do list, and to help remind me of my vow I donned the hachimaki and departed my hotel room.

I took the Kumamoto tram to the Shinsuizenji stop, and then I walked up the stairs to the JR commuter rail station and bought a ticket for Musashizuka, four stops and 4-5 kilometers northeast. After an uninteresting ride, I found myself on a hot, humid, sun-swept platform in the middle of nowhere.

I crossed the tracks, headed down a paved road...

...crossed a bridge, hung a U-turn, and walked another 200 yards or so before encountering the park. I entered and beheld these sights:
 

Looks like the venerable kenshi is still keeping watch over his charges.

Some of Musashi's classic moves. Illustrated on a rock. Peachy.

As you can see, the park itself was quite lovely: flowing water, knurled rocks, shady trees and buzzing insects. I bet it must be quite a quiet and reverent sort of place in the hush of winter snow, too.

But the killer-diller was waiting for me a few yards past Musashi's statue. This was his grave-marker:

 

I had this whole paying-tribute-to-someone-or-something-in-the-Japanese-way thing down by now. I flipped a coin into the offering box, folded my hands, and said a little prayer for Musashi's spirit. I had no doubt that he would have scoffed at this scruffy, flabby gaijin, who'd never taken a single kendo lesson in his life, come to pray over him. Nonetheless I hope he heard me.

While I was standing reverently before the marker, an old man in a bucket hat (seen off to the right in the picture below) noticed me and my unusual headgear. He spoke no English and I no Japanese, but nonetheless we managed a sort of conversation. He divined that I was vacationing here and a big fan of Musashi. So, naturally, he asked if I'd taken any kendo lessons. Chagrined, I answered no. It was then a third man joined our conversation: a sweaty, short-haired, middle-aged man in a polo shirt, who'd just walked in the main entrance. Through my pidgin Japanese, I guessed that he was the owner and headmaster of a notable kendo school in Kumamoto, and was here at Musashizuka Park to pay tribute to the great master. The three of us passed twenty minutes in awkward but happy conversation. It was a strange and nerve-wracking discourse, but I walked away feeling more edified by it than anything. It was good to reassure someone Japanese that Musashi lives on in the hearts and minds of the world, even if it was just a sweaty, sticky, flabby, scruffy foreigner like yours truly.

And then I waltzed out of there, taking as many nice photos as I could.

I walked around behind the park on my way out and took one last photo of Musashi's grave marker, from the rear perspective seen below. As I stood there, a cooling breeze on my face, the sun trickling through the leaves in golden droplets, and the peaceful hum of bugs and the songs of birds brushing my eardrums, I was overcome by a great and all-consuming sense of satisfaction. It was something akin to what I'd felt at Lafcadio Hearn's house, but a thousand times more pervasive. I felt calm, at peace, radiating contentment and quiet joy. I had achieved something of which I'd only dared to dream. I had knocked an item off my life's bucket list. I had fulfilled a goal that I'd set for myself years prior. I had paid my respects to a man who had a great influence on my writings. Each of those personal fulfillments made my heart and soul belt out an operatic number.

I wallowed in the feeling for some moments, and then turned and departed. I could feel Musashi rolling his eyes at me from the spiritual planes, but I didn't give a darn.

Next up: REIGANDŌ. Wanna hear how I utterly failed to reach the goals I'd set for myself this morning? Stay tuned.

Kumamoto Castle

Embark with me now upon an incredible journey to medieval Japan, when men were real men, women were real women, beheadings were real beheadings and topknots were real topknots. Back in those days, you were either a rice farmer, a gangster, a fisherman, a merchant, a gambler, a mendicant, a geisha, an innkeeper, a courtesan, a hunter, a musician, a lord, a lady, a soldier or a samurai (and quite a lot of other things, too). It was a time of war, strife, lawlessness, new orders, new beginnings. Japan had just been unified under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the Warring States Period had just come to a close. Now the eyes of unified Japan looked westward to new horizons...and conquests.

When Hideyoshi invaded Korea in 1592 (and Miyamoto Musashi was just ten years old), one of the daimyo's three senior commanders was a fellow named Katō Kiyomasa. By all accounts an über-manly and warlike fellow who forbade his men to recite poetry and hunted tigers with a spear for kicks, Kiyomasa was a brilliant general who helped capture Busan, Seoul and other major Korean cities. He was also a rather gifted architect who built many impregnable Japanese-style castles in the conquered lands, such as the one at Ulsan that withstood an assault by a vastly superior Sino-Korean force.

Kiyomasa brought his martial sensibilities and architectural prowess to bear again when he became the lord of Higo—present-day Kumamoto Prefecture. The hilltop fortress there was already over a hundred years old, but Kiyomasa expanded and upgraded it into a redoubtable keep with wells, towers, and no less than 49 turrets. Overkill is underrated, they say.

The castle survived Kiyomasa and a great many lords and owners that came after. The main, iconic part of the keep burned down in 1877 during the Satsuma Rebellion, but it was lovingly restored (albeit with concrete) in 1960. Kumamoto Castle is now listed as one of the 100 Fine Castles of Japan and is generally thought to be one of the top three in the nation (along with Himeji Castle in Hyōgo Prefecture and and Matsumoto Castle in Nagano Prefecture).

Got all that? Good, 'cause there'll be a quiz later. For now, just enjoy the pics I took as I wandered around in a stupefied haze:

A statue near the moat of Kiyomasa (wearing his special butter-cutting hat).

Past the ticket booth and the main gate. Anybody who got past the main gate would have had to fight their way up this sloping Z-shaped passageway while under fire from above. Oh, Kiyomasa, you sly dog, you!

The main keep, which radio-carbon dating tells us was constructed sometime in 1960.

 

The Uto Turret, one of the largest and best-preserved of the castle's 49 fighting turrets.

Inside Uto Turret.

The Hall of Darkness. No, that isn't poetic license. That's its actual name. It was dark all the time, so the castle defenders gave it that nickname. It was intended, I believe, to further confound any invaders. Kiyomasa's men could just plug up the tiny windows at the top of the walls and leave the attackers in total darkness, and then do what they liked with them.

Center foreground: a total dweeb who photo-bombed this lovely shot of the castle.

I was quite relieved to find that my ninja-versus-samurai LEGO sets were architecturally correct.

This was the best (and most unexpected) part: after climbing all the way to the top of the castle, this was the view that greeted me. That's Mount Kinpo there in the background, on the other side of which is Reigandō, or Spirit Rock Cave, where Miyamoto Musashi spent his final days. But you'll hear about my trip there later.

What I wouldn't have given for a Remington 1858 New Army or a Colt Dragoon right about then. I could have shot out every one of those big floodlights on the ground.

It was a sight both gratifying and sobering: the sun was setting over Kumamoto and its towers and spires, and likewise on my time in Japan. I'd have one more day of sightseeing and then I'd have to get myself to Hakata and the hydrofoil ferry back to Korea. But as I stood there, in the tower, my face kissed by the warm breeze and the glory of a thousand sunsets past flowing through my embroiled mind, I felt...I felt...

...ah, screw it. You know how I felt. You'd have felt the same way.

This rather bored-looking actor was "guarding" the exit to the Hall of Darkness. He didn't mind having his picture taken. Probably the most exciting that happened to him all day.

And just like that, my time at the castle was over. I could insert some trite hogwash here about how I wish I could have seen 'er back in the day, when Kiyomasa was keeping court in the castle's highest room and his vassals pledged their blood-loyalty to him below in the courtyard and dissidents hefted 1800-kilogram rocks and tried to assassinate him and were thrown down wells as punishment, but hey...that's been said before, by better men. So I'll just leave you with this: if I had a castle, Kumamoto is probably what it would look like.

Tomorrow: I try something that Kumamoto is famous for: horse sashimi. Tune in if you want to see your humble Vaunter EATING BASASHI (RAW HORSE MEAT). Not for the faint of heart...

Sagano bamboo forest

You know how there's a scene in every worthwhile martial arts film where the protagonist and an army of mooks (or just one persistent boss) have a duel to the death in a bamboo stand? The greenish trunks go up all around, and the floor is littered with their narrow leaves, dyed beige in death? Usually some of the bamboo trees will be heartlessly severed in twain by a wild stroke of an adamant sword, and the fight will move into the realm of fantasy and conclude in the upper canopy, with the contestants walking on air.

Well, if you've ever wanted to feel what that would actually be like, you gotta head to a bamboo forest. And fortunately, that's just what the quaint, archaic little community of Arashiyama (also known as Sagano) has tucked away in its western depths, near the River Hozu.

I could have gotten into a rickshaw at the foot of the Togetsukyo Bridge and had the driver take me to there, but (a) I didn't know what the word for "bamboo" was in Japanese, and (b) I felt far too sweaty to sit on those red velvet seats and muck 'em up. So I just hoofed it. It wasn't a long walk.

It wasn't a long walk through the forest, either: just a few hundred yards. But in that meager space is packed a lifetime of exotic and delightful imaginings: tigers leaping out of the underbrush, sweating swordsmen—perhaps even the venerable Miyamoto Musashi, who plays a central role in the next stage of my Japanese journey—yelling and swinging their swords between the trunks, white-clad kung fu masters leaping and kicking about in the canopy.

Uh-oh...should I be following this guy?

This is my favorite picture.

I strolled until I reached a T-junction and figured that was enough. It was hot and still in the bamboo stand and I was sick of being soaked. For the umpteenth time I cursed myself for not doing as the Japanese do and traveling everywhere with a hand towel at my collar to sop at my neck and forehead. I made my way out the same way I'd come, noting the proliferation of gravestones, a Buddhist temple and a host of other foreigners (no doubt here for the same reason I was).

Back out to the main street, and I was finished with my expedition to Arashiyama. I felt quite regretful as I bought myself a soft-serve soybean ice cream cone at a shop window and made my way east to the Keifuku tram station. Western Kyoto was the prettiest and most culturally rich thing that I'd done in Japan thus far, and I was loath to leave. Someday I'll go back and eat there, and drink tea, and buy a lot of crappy souvenirs that will sit on the shelves of my man-cave and collect dust, and then I'll feel like I've explored the place properly.

Some random temple off the main street. Sure wish I'd explored it.

Across town lay the next item on my to-to list: the Golden Pavilion of KINKAKU-JI. Before I tell you about it, though, I want to say a few words about THE KEIFUKU RANDEN TRAM. Trust me, it's worth your while. Tune in tomorrow...