Wing-Beaten Air: My Life And My Writing

By Yorifumi Yaguchi

          Acclaimed Japanese poet Yorifumi Yaguchi has turned his writing attention to telling what he experienced as a child growing up on the island of Honshu in the late 1930s and '40s. When life became incomprehensible, Yaguchi put his experiences into poems. His audience grew beyond Japanand included Robert Bly, Denise Levertov, and William Stafford, who became his friends. Recognized in Japan as a major poet and also as an outspoken advocate for peace, Yaguchi here uses his extraordinary voice to tell his life story in prose and poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781680992793

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

There is a town in the northern part of the main Japanese island of Honshu called Ishinomaki. The great poet, Matsuo Basho, once visited there and wrote about it in his famous book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. There’s a story that says he only ended up in Ishinomaki because he got lost on his way to another place, Hiraizumi, one of Japan’s most ancient cities. It’s also said that he climbed Mount Hiyori in the city so that he might gaze at the Pacific Ocean, but in his gazing he mistook a small island called Tashiroshima for the famous Mount Kinka. The river Kitakami runs through Ishinomaki on its way to the join the Pacific.

I was born in Ishinomaki, in a suburb known as Kama, on November 1, 1932. I have a brother who is two years older than me, and a sister who is four years younger. There was another brother, Mitsuru, younger than me, but he died. I don’t really remember him. I do remember my younger sister, Souko, who died as well. I remember how I wet her lips with a scrap of damp gauze as she lay dying. That was when I was in the later years of grade school.

Kama in Japanese means an iron pot or kettle, the sort used to boil rice, but I don’t know why the place where I was born should carry such a name. I’ve heard it said that Ishinomaki is an Ainu word, from the language of Hokkaido’s indigenous people. Perhaps it is.

My parents rented a house in the middle of a field. In front of the house there was a big orchard of pear trees and, at the back, facing the north, we had a field of vegetables. Across the field stood a farmhouse. The sea was not very far away and you could always hear the sound of waves. Usually, they were calm, but sometimes they sounded as if they were rushing in our direction, set on doing us some kind of harm.

My father had been born in an area known as Oumagarihama, in Yamoto town, near Kama. People there made a living by farming and fishing. My father’s family owned boats and employed local fishermen to crew them. My father was his father’s second son, which meant he did not take over the family business. Instead, he found work at the municipal office in Ishinomaki. His family name was Furukawa.

My mother’s father was a Buddhist priest of the Soto sect and she was the eldest child. She was a Yaguchi. My father agreed to take her name when they married and so became a part of her family.

It seems my mother’s father wanted his new son-in-law to become a priest. My father agreed to this and was given a new name appropriate to a Buddhist priest. But then he died, aged just 42, before he could be ordained. My mother had a younger brother and sister. This sister married a priest, who also took the Yaguchi name. This man, my uncle, became a priest near the village where my grandparents lived. My mother’s brother took over the family temple.

My Grandparents

If you look for Ishinomaki in an atlas you will see that it is in Miyagi Prefecture. My mother’s father, though, grew up in Yamagata Prefecture, which is adjacent to it. He was said to have been born to a wealthy farmer but, at some point in his life, decided to train for the priesthood. I heard that he even went deep into the mountains in order to purge himself of the world. Afterwards, he became a Buddhist missionary and served at a temple of the Soto sect in Asahikawa in Hokkaido. He later married the daughter of a Shinto priest and had children. He was invited to become the priest of Kannonji temple in the village of Kamaya in Miyagi Prefecture. Kamaya is a small village on the banks of the Kitakami River. The temple is set apart from the village houses at the foot of a mountain. My grandfather went there with four trainee priests, who later took charge of other temples in the area.

From time to time, secret Christian tombs and images of the Virgin Mary come to light in the small villages along the Kitakami River. They date from the time in the 16th century when clan members of the Christian nobleman, Lord Konishi Yukinaga, fled there to escape persecution and lived out their lives worshiping their God in secret. Such tombs are found even in Ishinomaki sometimes, often on the grounds of Buddhist temples.

HIDDEN CHRISTIANS

Yes, it’s true, there is

The cross, faintly scarred

On each flat stone.

I was astonished, Mr. Shousuke

Said. "I never dreamed we had

Christians in our families."

He scratched his head, bewildered,

Spoke again, saying that he knew

His history, how Yukinaga’s folk

Had gone to ground round there

And then lived out their lives,

The Virgin’s secret devotees.

And we thought they were Buddhists!

The Misses Saito and Yamada piped

In chorus. They disliked Christians

And were troubled now that

All their empty closets

Were bone-filled suddenly.

"What a shock! Who do we

Worship now?" they moaned.

The monk, with his own problems,

Ignored them. Too old to be

A Catholic father, how could he

continue his present calling

In this place of Mary.

I often used to visit grandfather’s temple when I was a child, staying there for weeks at a time. The temple was a quiet place in a lovely setting. It was also home to many books on strange and wonderful subjects. I came across a volume on the arts of the ninja once in some out of the way place, and set about trying to master them. This was at a time when children’s books and comics were filled with ninja stories. Most of the children then were obsessed with ninja stories. They each had a hero they wanted most to be like, a famous ninja such as Sarutobi Sasuke and Kirigakure Saizou, who were the servants of Lord Sanada Yukimura, a 16th-century samurai.

Seated third from right, with a white beard, is the author’s grandfather, Gisen Yaguchi, a Soto Zen Buddhist priest, and other family members circa 1942 at Kannonji temple in Kamaya, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. As a child, the author spent considerable time in his grandfather’s temple. Also shown are the author’s uncle, Shingi Yaguchi, in priest’s attire behind the author’s grandfather, and his grandmother, Hirose Yaguchi, seated at far left. Behind his grandmother, holding an infant, is the author’s aunt, Fujimi Yaguchi, who died a few years after the photo was taken.

NINJA

Sarutobi Sasuke and Kirigakure Saizou

Knew charms that made them disappear

Or metamorphose, becoming monkeys,

Bears and eagles.

Old Flying Monkey, Vanish-in-the-Fog

Were heroes to me then. Imagine

My delight when, in the dark

Forbidden space of grandpa’s attic

I found that scroll with all their secret

Mysteries revealed. Thinking of

The time I heard Grandfather enter there,

And the sound of feathered strutting,

The wing-beaten air, I understood

The black dust-covered scroll I found

Among the temple attic’s trash to be

My own family’s hidden birthright.

I fumbled out the secrets one by one,

A long and serial revelation, made

Slower by the awe-filled drumming

Of the blood in my head, fearful

Music that transformed my hands,

To stone, made of my thumbs and fingers

A lead patrol of ninja deep in forbidden

Country. For days I practiced to unlock

Our secret legacy, until the time of sudden

Startling success when I spoke the words

That sent me slithering across the floor

In unaccustomed snakeskin dress.

Such charms! Such comprehensive joy!

Each spell a novelty, a brand new toy to

Play with. Snake first, next raven-black

Wings lifted me into the high pines’

Highest reaches. Looking down through

New eyes I spied Grandma washing rice

Below me on the little river’s beach. I fluffed

My borrowed finery, tried to swap a branch

Or two before trusting space again.

But stumbled. Transformed again,

Black bomb, tumbling smut, plunging

Pleading, wheeling, dealing

Renouncing magic, if only in return

Wings will work again or earth turn

Feathery. Grandma looks up at the screech.

Of that crazy crow, arrogant again,

Soaring against the blue, gliding, wheeling.

Soon enough after the sky was filled with

Different wings and, otherwise enraptured,

Drunk on blood and sacrifice, I set aside

My magic, forgot its art and method.

Remembered it again only after everything

Was ashes, the sky made clean again

With thunder and the lightning’s flashes.

I recalled the coiled scroll, my flights

And slitherings. But not the charms themselves,

The spells the paper held within its rolls. Had

I dreamed it after all? I searched in Grandpa’s

Temple, found only dust and dusty feathers.

Grandpa and Grandma were memories themselves

By then. I questioned what I might have lost, but

No one answered me. I could only hear the noise

Of young men in cars racing their engines.

The voice that spoke dragon charm and made

The eagle spell is quite forgotten in their noise

And stink. Like the old master Kirigakure

Saizou, it has vanished in the smoke.

There was one corner of the temple that scared me so much I used to have bad dreams about it. This place, part of the main room, was home to a drawing of the Buddhist hell. There, I would stand transfixed, held in a sort of horrid fascination, as I looked at the souls in torment—chased by the flames of a terrible fire, held down by demons as their tongues were ripped out of their mouths, dropped in a huge cauldron of boiling water. I knew their silent screams would follow me no matter where I ran, and so I remained, my eyes locked on the horrors of their suffering.

Every morning, my grandfather would sound the great temple bell, striking it with a large hammer and then offering prayers to the big statue of the Buddha in that main room where hell was kept in one corner. All the while, during the prayers, drums were beaten and small bells rung. Afterwards, shorter prayers were offered to the other images of Buddha the temple housed and to the other gods. These prayers were for the protection of the villagers.

After fulfilling his duties in this way, my grandfather went out to the garden and prayed at each one of the small shrines there. Finally, he would pray to the 10 or so stone statues that stood by the small path leading to the mountain behind the temple. The expressions on the faces of these small jizo, the Buddhist protector of children and travelers, were very gentle. Often, I would find snakes sunning themselves along the path or coiled by the statues. Grandfather told me that these creatures, too, were gods.

At dusk, it was my grandfather who rang the big bell. The sound of its ringing eddied through the temple grounds, out to the village houses and the countryside beyond, as if a great rock of sound had been dropped into a deep still pool. I was told this evening bell dispelled the bad spirits that lived in the village and kept the peace there. But I am sure, as well, that its ringing signalled to the villagers that the time had come to stop working and return home.

Grandfather enjoyed having me with him when he went to call on the people of his parish. This was particularly true during the summer lantern festival of Bon, when the spirits of the village dead were welcomed back to Earth. I went along with my grandfather, a bag hanging from around my neck to hold the offerings we expected to collect.

In the doorway of each house we visited would be one of the charms Grandfather had made to ward off evil spirits. Grandfather would replace these old charms with new ones, which he would have made just the day before. Each wooden charm held the image of the deity Fudo, the Immovable One, his bulging eyes filled with a righteous anger. Now, when I think of these charms and the powers that were attributed to them, I think of the lamb’s blood that was smeared on the lintels of Jewish houses at the time of the Passover.

Grandfather always began each visit by praying quietly in front of the house and then, as if by magic, the door would be opened and the master of the house, or his wife, would appear, bow politely and accept the new charm. We, in return, received gifts: a small bowl of rice or a little money to go into the bag around my neck.

Some of Grandfather’s flock lived in the next village and we had to walk a long way to visit them. I remember one summer day when we made our way slowly along the path that ran through the rice paddies. As we walked, we watched the swallows skimming the air just above the green shoots of the young rice plants. In all that quiet hum of summer, I felt as if I could literally hear the rice stalks straining toward the sun. When we grew thirsty, we walked toward a bluff and drank from the stream that snaked down among the rocks. The water was so deliciously cold. It quenched our thirst and seemed to radiate energy throughout our bodies like an icy sun.

The author’s grandfather, Gisen Yaguchi.

From time to time, Grandfather was asked inside the houses he called at and given home-brewed sake to drink. I did not accompany him then, but waited outside by myself. It always seemed a long time before he came back out again. I used to fill the time of waiting by watching the birds that came into the garden or the chickens that moved about in their constant search for food. If there were a dog in the yard, then I would indulge it with a game of fetch. Over everything was the constant summer song of the cicadas, so loud that sometimes I did not know whether the noise was outside or inside my head.

We stayed out through most of the day when we made these visits, and it would only be when dusk approached that, finally, we turned for home. By the time we were able to see our temple in the distance, I would be so tired I could hardly walk. I dragged my feet as if a magic cobbler