Pathway to Japanese Literature

In Japan, the place where I would like to stay leisurely once more and wander through those villages and towns was first and foremost Hida.
The ideal time would have been around May when the weather was pleasant, but the festival season might also have been good.
In Kyoto—except for the Gion Summer Festival—many major festivals were held over about two months in spring, so there was what you might call a festival season, but in Hida this did not seem to be the case; one apparently couldn’t expect to see multiple festivals grouped together.

You may wonder why I brought up something as retiree-like as festivals. It was because festivals have what’s called a Special Exhibition of Sacred Objects, where they show things not normally displayed. In Hida, there were many things they did not normally show. And this was because I had a hunch that among them lay works on a completely different level from the secret Buddhist statues found elsewhere.

Since ancient times, Hida’s carpenters have been called Hida’s craftsmen. They were carpenters; they were Buddhist sculptors—creators of Buddhist statues—and they were skilled artisans crafting transoms and other intricate works. Even Tamamushi-style shrines seemed to have largely been crafted by their hands. The headwaters of Japan’s wooden culture and wooden art were seen to have originated with them, been perfected by them, and to have been passed down by them even today.

Hida’s craftsmen refer to Hida’s carpenters; it is not the name of a single person.
From ancient times, even the capitals of Yamato Asuka, Nara, and Kyoto could not have been built without them.
In later ages, there emerged the figure of Hidari Jingorō, but this name is likely a dialectal corruption of “Hida no Jingorō.”
When we consider how his period of production spans an implausibly long era according to legend, this too appears not to be the name of any specific individual, but rather something that refers—much like the general term “Hida’s craftsmen”—to its master artisans in a broad sense.
Master craftsmen seem to have existed in every era, yet all were simply Hida’s craftsmen—not a single one left behind a specific name.
Only Kuratsukuri no Tori, who is regarded as the legendary oldest Buddhist sculptor, has left his personal name; there exists not a single other individual who sought to inscribe their own name upon Buddhist statues or architecture.
In Hida, being a craftsman was such a commonplace profession that, much like farmers in other regions never thought to record the names of master rice, eggplant, or daikon cultivators, they likely never considered the notion of an author’s name.

The fact that no creator’s name comes to mind must have been art’s purest womb of creation.
They created and discarded their works while savoring either dissatisfaction or satisfaction with their labor.
Finding fulfillment in their craftsmanship’s quality became their life’s purpose.
When master craftsmen emerged from such an ethos, their works became things that “retain not even a speck of dust.”
Such pieces indeed exist throughout Hida.
Yet just as their makers remain nameless, these works themselves linger in obscurity.
Hida fostered no climate where one might imagine these creations gaining worldly renown or national treasure status—as needless as names for their creators.
The master craftsmen built temples and carved Buddhist statues and ornaments solely to meet their villages’ needs.
Objects made for necessity still serve those original purposes today; neither artisans nor locals ever sought society’s validation beyond what necessity demanded.

That is why even antique art specialists remain unaware that masterpieces by master craftsmen from every era still exist in Hida to this day. Of course, I didn’t know either. So when I set out on my journey to Hida, though my purposes included matters related to Hida’s craftsmen, not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine I might encounter their hidden masterpieces.

★

The formal conscription of Hida’s craftsmen as slaves first appeared in imperial records from the Nara period.
However, they had labored on the construction of imperial capitals since a far older time.
Yet that did not appear in the records.
But their true flourishing was thought to have occurred prior to the era of extant records—though in that age, they likely were not conscripted laborers.
For it was Hida’s king who advanced into Yamato Asuka, expelled its ruler, and established the central plains.
This corresponds to Ōkuninushi, corresponds to Emperor Jimmu, corresponds to Emperor Sujin—and might it not also correspond to Emperor Kinmei?
The figure corresponding to Amaterasu Ōmikami likely belonged to this clan as well, but that female chieftain also corresponded to Empress Jingū; it seemed a composite myth distributing the actions of past figures across Empress Suiko and Empress Jitō—in other words, that chieftain or empress destroyed her own clan’s legitimate lineage to establish dominion over the land.
That appeared to be the first ancestor of today’s imperial family.
That era was approximately 1,300 years ago.
I believe this corresponds either to the reign of Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jitō as the imperial couple or to that of Emperor Tenji before them.

And the legitimate prince, driven out from Yamato, fled to his homeland of Hida and perished in battle.
He corresponds to Emperor Ōtomo, to Prince Shōtoku or his legitimate son Yamashiro no Ōe, and to Yamato Takeru; while his avatars appear abundantly among mythological figures—such as Ame no Wakamiko no Mikoto, who was commanded by Amaterasu Ōmikami to descend from Takamagahara to pacify Japan’s Nakatsukuni but, having found a lover in the earthly realm and neglecting his ordained mission, was struck through the chest by an arrow thrown by Amaterasu and perished.
This figure too corresponds to him.
The imperial chronicles and myths predating Emperor Tenji were crafted by the cadet branch—which had expelled the legitimate lineage to Hida and established Yamato’s central plains—to conceal or justify this fact. They fabricated a lengthy imperial narrative spanning some thirty generations from mythology, creating various avatars of the same figures and events dispersed across eras, then enshrined this as national history.
Therefore, deciphering ancient history is equivalent to detective work.
Since the oldest national histories were formed through fabrication projects akin to how murderers employ various disguises, the task of deciphering ancient history lies in detecting these fabrications and alibis within historical texts—and just as with the principles of detective work, one must present clear physical evidence rather than relying on circumstantial approximations.
Past historians uncritically accepted this obvious fabrication and regarded it as truth.
And when historical materials contradicting this appeared, they were arbitrarily dismissed as forged documents that opposed national history and contained errors.

For example, a poem from the Manyoshu describes crossing Kiso’s mountains and Mino’s mountains to reach Kukuri Palace near the Mino-Owari border from the capital—a lover’s journey sung in verse.
What absurd routing was this?
To reach Kukuri Palace from Yamato Asuka’s capital, one might traverse Nara, Kyoto, Iga, or Ōmi—but weren’t Mino’s peaks and Kiso’s ranges on the opposite flank?
A preposterous composition through and through.
Their geographical ignorance was staggering.
With such derision did I dismiss it—branding the verse foolish before casting it aside.
This exemplified historical practice of old.
Yet capitals undoubtedly existed in Hida and Shinano even slightly before Emperor Tenji’s reign.
The truth became plain when examining these inverted geographies and erroneous era names proliferating through idiotic verses, nonsensical texts, and epigraphic records.

Therefore, since Hida’s king advanced into Yamato Asuka and pacified the central plains, it stood to reason that Hida’s craftsmen had built that capital prior to the Nara period—that is, before extant national histories were written—and moreover, in Hida’s old capital, which had been their seat of governance before advancing into Yamato Asuka, there must have been palaces and Buddhist temples crafted by Hida’s craftsmen (indeed, Buddhist temples must have already existed there as well), and consequently, Japan’s oldest Buddhist statues undoubtedly existed there.

Before Hida’s king advanced into Yamato, the ruler who had occupied Yamato Asuka was likely the Mononobe clan. These were forces that had advanced from Shikoku; after being expelled, they fled back to Shikoku as well as to Izu and the eastern provinces. When the cadet branch of the Hida court—the ones who had driven them out—pursued the legitimate lineage all the way to Hida and destroyed it, they placated the Mononobe clan to gain their allegiance, crafting a historical narrative that recast them as a faction of their own clan and meritorious vassals. Ultimately, it appears only Hida maintained hostility toward the Yamato court for a considerable period afterward, causing them difficulties and stoking their animosity. This secret can be exposed through investigative analysis of the accounts in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. I outlined these investigative findings in more concrete terms in the "New Japan Map" feature of Bungeishunju’s September issue, but I plan to compile a formal investigative record—not just cherry-picked physical evidence but a clear assembly of numerous pieces—to logically demonstrate the truth hidden beneath these fabrications and present it to you all. However, I believe this will require considerable time to accomplish.

There is no doubt that both Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jitō were of imperial lineage from the Hida dynasty. However, having destroyed the legitimate lineage and turned their homeland of Hida into an enemy, it seems there were complications for a time in summoning Hida’s craftsmen to assist with constructing the capital. After trying various means to win over the goodwill of Hida’s common people, by the end of the Nara capital period they somehow managed to establish provincial governors in Hida and collect taxes.

When constructing Heian-kyo, the tax levied from Hida consisted solely of Hida’s craftsmen.
Perhaps due to the scarcity of goods in mountainous Hida, the demand for these craftsmen proved so immense that authorities conscripted one hundred annually from the region, collecting nothing beyond the rice needed to sustain them.

These conscripted craftsmen frequently fled.
This exodus stemmed not only from historical grievances—tax-substitute slaves and servants drafted from other provinces likewise often escaped, while even farmers rooted to their land abandoned public domains for private estates to evade crushing levies.
The craftsmen too regularly absconded from capital construction sites, but knowing return to their homeland meant capture, they sought refuge in private estates.
Provincial clans and temples coveting their skills would shelter these fugitives, offering generous treatment in exchange for their labor.

During the Nara and early Heian periods, official orders for investigating and arresting escaped Hida craftsmen were issued repeatedly, but the Jōwa-era orders in particular recorded an unusual matter. Namely:

"Hida's craftsmen are so distinct in both appearance and speech at first glance that no matter how much they changed their names or falsified their birthplaces, they should be recognizable at a glance."

This is accompanied by this noteworthy annotation in the style of a physiognomic report.

Considering this, it appeared that the royal lineage of the Hida dynasty and the lineage of the craftsmen were of different ethnicities.
The Hida dynasty lineage was that of the people who had left Lelang culture in Korea—Mongol-derived Bohemians.
They always established their dwellings on plateaus, rode horses along the ridges of the Northern Alps, and swept like the wind through passes such as Awa between Norikura and Hotaka, and Nomugi between Norikura and Ontake.
The chieftain rode a white horse, a practice that seemed to have left a precedent in the imperial family even today.
Therefore, they possessed a highly advanced culture—as evidenced by discoveries from their ancient tombs—yet in terms of habitation, they utilized rock caverns or relied on mobile tent-like dwellings, suggesting their architectural culture alone had not developed to match their other achievements.
Moreover, this clan searched for salt in the mountains.
It seemed they did not know how to obtain salt from the sea.

Those who taught them wooden architecture were people of a different lineage. Whether there happened to be a Takumi clan possessing wooden architectural culture among Hida’s indigenous people by chance, or whether they had brought craftsmen from China or Korea to settle together, this remains unclear—but their ethnic lineages were likely distinct.

What kind of face did Hida’s craftsmen have?
It states that since both their appearance and speech differed from other provinces at first glance, they could be recognized no matter how much they disguised themselves.
It was the words of an official order from about a thousand years ago, but could such distinctive faces still exist today?
Many Hida people had become enemies of the court and been driven to disperse across the provinces, while many others had migrated into Hida from foreign lands and settled there. Over a thousand years, various natural averaging effects may have already erased that special quality known as the Face of Hida.

However, during the war, I became acquainted with an old man from Hida named Ogasawara at a go parlor in Tokyo.
His face had lump-like protrusions of flesh above each eye, below the temples, under the eyes, and beside and below the mouth—seven or eight such lumps clustered together to form his countenance.
Amidst these were eyes, a nose, and a mouth, with numerous valleys between the lumps, each lump bearing a tarnished luster—thus forming a single face.

However, when looking at photographs of Shirakawa-go in Hida—famous for its large-family system—the faces of the old men there were formed by similar clusters of knobby protrusions and valleys.
So this must be what they mean by the face of Hida, ah, I thought.

The region called Hida seems to have originally been referred to collectively as Mino, combining both Mino and Hida into one entity.
Therefore, ancient Mino included Hida, and Hida constituted the entirety of Mino—the Hida I speak of as the ancient Hida Kingdom encompasses the whole, including Mino.
It may also be considered that Shinano was included as part of this clan’s ancestral stronghold.
Echizen’s Ōno District also appears to have been incorporated.
The old capitals were likely situated between present-day Takayama and Furukawa in Hida, though one also seems to have existed around Matsumoto in Shinano. Further south, capitals or temporary palaces were scattered across nearly every district of Mino—centered on what is now Mugi District—and into Ina, with multiple sites established along a single king’s southward route or serving as castles for rulers of different eras—the arrangements appeared varied.

At that time, an inland sea extended to what is now Kagamiga Field. To advance into Yamato Asuka, there were likely troops moving overland, but the main force appears to have set out by boat from this area, landed in Ise and Kumano, and launched their attack from there.
It seems there were factions that crossed Suzuka Pass from Ise and others that descended from Kumano to Yoshino to strike Yamato.
The route of Emperor Jimmu’s eastern expedition appears to unify both the earlier path taken by the Mononobe clan—the pacifiers of Yamato—and the Hida royal family’s subsequent advance into Yamato.
For historical figures preceding Emperor Tenji, the true facts have been dispersed among or amalgamated into figures and events across eras, meaning no specific individuals or achievements belonged to any particular period.
When one aggregates and divides these myriad figures and events, they condense into merely a handful of individuals and incidents.
The actual history amounts only to a brief century-long struggle for control of Yamato Asuka: first the Nigihayahi-lineage Mononobe clan attacking from Kyushu, Shikoku, and Chūgoku to subjugate Yamato; next the Hida royal family driving them back to Shikoku; finally the imperial family—Hida’s cadet branch—pursuing the legitimate lineage to Hida and destroying them.
This scant secret history of conflicts was likely rewritten into myths and the extended national chronicles of thirty imperial generations, artfully obscuring those buried truths.

Many of the Hida people who became enemies of the court fled from Shinano to Kanto and the eastern provinces, but it appears a greater number escaped from Matsumoto in Shinano along the Sai River to the main stream of the Shinano River and onward to the Dewa region. The so-called Heike's defeated warriors—while later mixing undoubtedly occurred within that group, as seen in Shirakawa—were primarily none other than these Hida fugitives from that time, I believe. It is said that the legitimate Hida princes or emperors were killed and transformed into white birds that flew away to parts unknown. The kings of Hida—whether by divine will or imperial decree—appear to have been called *Kō*, as evidenced by surviving names like *Kōno Hill* and *Kō Forest* in Hida's ancient capital. The provincial areas still preserving legends of the *Kō bird* likely mark where these defeated warriors' settlements once stood. Shrines such as Hakusan Shrine and Suwa Shrine also belong to these deities, with Hachiman-sama seemingly counted among them too. Though this clan possesses various other gods, these three appear to have been the Hida people's primary tutelary deities. Hida's foremost shrine remains Mizunashi Shrine, which seems to enshrine a man who became a swan and vanished bodily from this world—or more accurately, one who was cornered in Hida, defeated in death, his head taken to Miyako: the last heir of Hida's legitimate royal lineage. I interpret "Mizunashi Shrine" as meaning "Shrine of the Bodiless."

The national histories from the era when the cadet branch supplanted the Hida dynasty’s legitimate lineage were cloaked in layer upon layer of fabrication. It appeared they had likely dismantled the very essence of that legitimate lineage into multiple entities, imposing their own misdeeds onto one such fragment. Take, for instance, the Soga clan—cast as villains—or their ancestor Takeshi no Sukune. These were not real individuals but rather avatars born from dismembering the legitimate lineage. Takeshi no Sukune became an avatar of Empress Jingū’s consort-emperor, just as Soga no Umako became an avatar of Empress Suiko’s consort-emperor.

As with their descendants—the Emishi and Iruka—in particular, Iruka killed Prince Yamashiro no Ōe, Emperor Shōtoku’s son and thus the Hida royal family’s true legitimate heir, to ascend the throne himself. But in reality, he was a fictional character—I interpret that he corresponded to none other than Yamashiro no Ōe himself, the very man he supposedly killed.

Thus, the last legitimate lineage—embodied in Iruka, Yamashiro no Ōe, Yamato Takeru, and Ōtomo no Ōji—was destroyed by a faction with the empress of the cadet branch as their strategist.—This speculation diverged from the accounts in *Jōgū Shōtoku Hōō Teisetsu*, a temple text created by the legitimate lineage.

In this text, the name Soga no Iruka explicitly appeared as having killed Prince Yamashiro and ascended to the throne.

This book presented materials that partially refuted the historical facts of the *Kojiki* and *Nihon Shoki*, yet simultaneously demonstrated Emperor Soga no Iruka’s existence as a contrary fact.

Then, wasn’t it clear that the Soga clan’s existence was not fictional but real?

But was that truly the case?

I do not believe this book is entirely historical fact either.
The author of this book or its annotator (not Aikōshi of the late Heian period, but an annotator from immediately after the book’s creation) also knew the true historical facts.
However, this book conformed to the trends of the time by adhering to the accounts of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki—the national histories established by the current imperial family—and accordingly recorded Hōryūji Temple’s origins along with a concise history of Prince Shōtoku and his clan.
And since they were not permitted the freedom to overturn the national history established by the current rulers, they corrected the errors in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki only insofar as they adhered to that falsified national history.

However, the annotator proved even bolder than the author—(they may in fact have been the same person—or perhaps they hypothetically established an annotator). For instance, after transcribing the characters on the embroidered canopy resting on a tortoise shell preserved at Hōryūji Temple, the annotator added a profoundly suggestive note stating that *the author of these characters knew nothing of the actual circumstances*. Prince Shōtoku had died on February 21, the day after his consort passed away. This was as indicated by the characters on the halo of the Shakyamuni statue in the Kondō. Yet the tortoise shell inscription stated that Prince Shōtoku died on February 22 of the 31st year of Suiko—the day following the imperial consort’s death. (Both the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki record this prince’s year of death identically.)

However, as the annotator stated: while the inscription on the halo of the Shakyamuni statue wrote that the Prince died on the day after the imperial consort’s death, it only specified “the day after her death”—it never stated this meant the day after in *the same year*.
In other words, Prince Shōtoku did indeed die on February 22.
However, they were making a truly noteworthy and deeply suggestive implication: that it was not February 22 of the year the imperial consort died.

The most crucial part in this book called *Hōō Teisetsu* was this annotation passage.
Kōgi, note: “It is Soga,” it stated.
This, too, seemed to be a deeply suggestive hint.
In this section, while adhering to the historical facts of the *Kojiki* and *Nihon Shoki*, they were striving to make some significant implication, and I believed that the crucial key to this must lie hidden within this annotation passage.
My doubts about Japanese history had begun from there, but I still could not derive a direct answer from this implication.

Buddhism was introduced during the reign of Emperor Kinmei.
The legitimate lineage of the Hida royal family spanning five generations from Emperor Kinmei onward established their imperial residence in Yamato while also maintaining a castle or temporary palace in Hida (present-day Mino?).
As for Asuka Temple—it wasn’t in Yamato Asuka but must have been located around present-day Mugi District in Mino.
Of Prince Shōtoku’s seven great temples, Jōgakuji (bestowed upon the Katsuragi clan) was likely in Mino or Ina.
The Horie canal of Naniwa, where Mononobe no Moriya was said to have discarded statues, would have been near the sea between Mino’s Mugi District and Inaba District from when the inland sea reached Kagamiga Field—this was what I had come to believe.
For now, I simply noted that there existed a place there called Nanba.
The detailed findings of my investigation would be reserved for a later date, when I might gather not mere conjecture but physical evidence to compose a proper, deductive history of Japan.

Empress Suiko’s Oharida Palace was likely pronounced as Owari Da no Miya.
While there was likely an imperial residence in Yamato as well, I believe their castle stood in Mino near Owari’s border, as suggested by Owari Da.
The imperial tomb of this emperor was later moved from Ōnooka Hill to Kashō’s Ōtsuka.
Ōno likely refers to Ōno District—the strategic nexus of the Hida Kingdom spanning from Hida and Mino to Echizen.
After the cadet branch had firmly established power in Yamato Asuka, this relocation stands as evidence that they moved or constructed imperial tombs and shrines in Yamato to suit their historical narrative.
Therefore, I believe temples must have existed in Hida and Mino earlier than in Yamato.
The presence of Zenkōji Temple in Nagano likewise ceases to be mysterious.

When Hida’s legitimate lineage was defeated and perished, the major imperial tombs in Hida were desecrated and plundered, while shrine deities and Buddhist statues from temples were either burned or carried away—or so it is thought. However, at that time, some things were hidden and survived, albeit few. The temple remains unrebuilt for certain reasons, but I sense a plausible reality: that within nameless, chapel-like structures, only secret Buddhist statues might still endure and be passed down to this day. Such possibilities can indeed be dimly conceived.

However, since such matters could not be openly stated in the past, it was impossible to ascertain through historical records exactly which temples or halls held ancient artifacts. The Hida people, who had once been combative in refusing to recognize the cadet branch’s imperial court, had also—over a thousand years—completely forgotten their ancestral history.

――If even the faces of the Hida people had remained to some extent... that alone would be something to dig up.

When I set out on my journey to Hida, I had dimly conceived of this possibility and held some expectation in that alone.

★

I arrived in Gero amid the pitch-dark deluge.
After a long rainy season, compounded by yesterday’s torrential downpour, the valley overflowed, and whether due to disrupted power generation or not, there was a blackout.

I had not intended to spend my first night in Hida in Gero.
I had intended to seek out lodgings in more nameless towns or villages—places where only travelers from their own region would stay—and settle in, hoping that on my first night, when my intuition was freshest, I might catch the scent of the land as it once was, to see whether traces of old Hida’s visage and language could still linger somewhere.

However, it was a downpour.

According to the railway information office at Gifu Station, aside from Gero, there were likely no inns at Hida's small stations.
Had it not been for the torrential rain, he might have chanced disembarking randomly somewhere and contrived a way to slip into a local dwelling—not entirely impossible under different circumstances.
With no alternative in the downpour, I got off at Gero.
It being Saturday meant most inns were full, but one reserved room remained available—its occupant presumably delayed by the rain—allowing him to slip into Suimeikan.

I had set out on this journey carrying only a slim popular guidebook titled *Speaking of Hida*. However， this book was apparently written by Suimeikan’s deceased former proprietor． The widow approached，

“That book isn’t available around here—I've been searching everywhere for a copy—but my goodness， you have it!”

“I've wanted to reprint it and have searched high and low． Once you're done with it， please lend it to me．”
“Very well，” I agreed， “but since I lost my notebook during my travels and have been jotting notes in this book， I haven't finished using it yet．”
“You'll probably be done soon，” she replied．

The previous proprietor of Suimeikan was apparently not originally from Hida.
Perhaps precisely because of this, he came to feel compelled to introduce Hida to other regions.
Those born and raised in Hida seem to possess scarcely any interest in speaking to others about their own land.

I was thinking.
I wondered if there existed among Hida’s local historians anyone who considered regional history through a Hida-style methodology.
By “Hida-style methodology,” I meant this: that the Hida dynasty constitutes a taboo in Japanese national history—perfectly concealed—but was there no one who had constructed a Hida-style national history based on legends surviving in Hida?
Yet it appeared no such distinctive historians existed.
The previous proprietor of Suimeikan was naturally not such a historian, nor had he originally been one.
It amounted to nothing more than a meandering popular guidebook of sorts.

The attendants assigned to my room were two maids born in Hida. One of these senior maids bore precisely the face of Hida. Such a face was not one commonly seen in other regions. It was a face formed by several clustered bumps. During my subsequent travels, I encountered three or four men with such faces, but among women, hers was the only one I saw.

“There was a time when a guest remarked it was the face of Hida.”

The maid affirmed my words. It seems there are people who have noticed what is called the face of Hida.

The next day, when I departed for Takayama, the maid saw me off to the station.

This day too was rainy.
She was completely silent but stood in the rain until the train departed.
I felt a carefree travel melancholy as though Hida itself were seeing me off.

When I arrived in Takayama, a car from Nagase Ryokan had come to meet me.
Immediately, I had them take me around the city in the rain.

The places I needed to visit to verify the history of the Hida Dynasty were mostly located deep in the mountains. I had to depart early in the morning, and rainy days were inconvenient for such places. For the time being, I toured the former provincial capital site and shrines within Takayama city. It was not to seek the ostensible enshrined deities listed on shrine placards but to uncover the shadow deities tucked away inconspicuously on the side—and likely to sniff out the true enshrined deities. The rear of most shrines was a large mountain, resembling an ancient tomb.

It is said there are seven taxis and seven taxi drivers in Takayama, but I ended up imposing on four of them. Since they all abandoned their cars to plunge into the mountains, sharing hardships and toils undeterred by the rain, I truly became a burden—there was no other way to describe it. Among them were those who ventured with me into pathless mountains, clinging to tree roots along slopes and scrambling over rocks—I felt pushed to the very brink of death—and there was even a driver who required medical attention afterward. The drivers’ devoted actions seemed in part attributable to Nagase Ryokan’s arrangements.

The driver who guided me around Takayama city was unusual in some way. He would occasionally stop at locations other than the ruins and shrines I had specified, remarking things like “There’s a Buddhist statue here” or “Nio guardians stand here.” It was through this driver that I came upon masterpieces by Hida’s craftsmen beyond anything I could have anticipated. Moreover, had I sought guidance from other authorities—even those versed in local history—I doubt they would have led me to these works. For when I later pressed into the mountains, laboring along rock-climbing routes of terrible difficulty, I lost the essential notebook containing all my prior notes. In attempting to reconstruct these lost records through inquiries with local scholars about Daioji Temple—where supposedly resided Nio guardians crafted by master artisans—I found them unhelpful. This stemmed not from ignorance but rather from their historical indifference toward Hida’s craftsmen. Instead they extol the carving skills of Enkū, a monk from foreign lands during the Tokugawa period—one clearly not of Hida origin. This priest settled at Senkōji Temple after abandoning his wanderings, churning out carvings with nothing but a hatchet. These now occupy various temples throughout Hida, touted as masterpieces surpassing even those of our craftsmen.

Their traditional indifference toward the local craftsmen was all well and good, but their praise of Enkū’s works amounted to a grave misunderstanding.

As for me, due to time constraints, I had been unable to view many of Hida’s craftsmen’s masterpieces.
In that town and this village of Hida, countless masterpieces must still remain unknown to people.
And among these unrecognized secret Buddhist statues, there might lie masterpieces predating even Yamato’s Asuka court.
I had wanted to search for them, but this being a journey with other purposes and my time being severely limited, I could only manage to have Buddhist statues shown to me at places I happened to visit incidentally; yet those sites were mostly places ravaged by wartime fires or housed secret statues not displayed except during special unveilings—which left me with no fruitful discoveries.

Among those I saw, the principal image of Kokubunji Temple—the seated Yakushi and standing Kannon statues attributed to Gyōki—were magnificent. Perhaps owing to their attribution to Gyōki, these alone were designated National Treasures—but unlike the non-artistic objects commonly ascribed to Gyōki found throughout the provinces, this must surely be one of Hida’s craftsmen’s masterpieces.

Hida’s Kokubunji Temple burned down shortly after its founding.
The Buddhist statues attributed to Gyōki that were there must have burned down together as well.
After the current small Kokubunji Temple was built, they acquired these two Buddhist statues from other temples in Takayama City to serve as its principal images, according to accounts.

This very masterpiece could only have been born from a tradition that has lost the individual names of its creators—a tradition known solely as Hida’s craftsmen.

“How beautiful.”

I involuntarily let out a cry and gazed in admiration.
Truly, it was a Buddha statue that could only be cried out at and gazed upon.
There was nothing else.
This Buddha statue did not speak, nor was there any crude murkiness attempting to supplement it with words beyond the work itself.
The master craftsman’s crystal-clear state of mind required nothing more than creating Buddhist statues to attain personal satisfaction, and his technique, much like his mindset, was flawlessly perfected without a trace of murkiness.
And what emerged was this Buddha statue—not a trace of murkiness nor a speck of dust to be found—leaving one with no recourse but to lose oneself in its beauty.

The works of that monk Enkū—no, no—they don’t even come close to this.
They are worlds apart.
I saw many of his works at Senkōji Temple.
He too was a monk who appeared to have renounced the world and fame, but the stench of his deliberate affectation lay unmistakably within his works.
Precisely because those works strained to project the austere, desireless dignity of one who had renounced the world, they seethed with a murkiness born of vulgar ambition and affectation.
The multitude of words attempting to supplement his works with vulgar verbosity stung the eyes with their repulsiveness.

The Kannon and Yakushi statues at Kokubunji Temple bore not a single word to explain the works.
This Buddha statue stood utterly silent, without a syllable to elaborate on itself.
There lingered not one superfluous or crude notion.
One could only lose oneself in its beauty—nothing more remained.
To refreshing clarity it aspired: no words, no murkiness, not a speck retained.

Also, in this temple there were two self-portraits of the craftsmen. One wore an eboshi court cap and was clearly preserved as a craftsman’s self-portrait, while the other—in monk’s form, draped in a kesa robe—had been repurposed for granting benefits such as curing illnesses when touched, serving in effect as a Buddhist statue. Though clad in a kesa robe, this too appeared to be a self-portrait of the craftsmen; if not that, then perhaps it depicted one of the temple’s former abbots from generations past.

They are said to be works of the Ashikaga period, but as one is labeled a self-portrait of the craftsmen, it goes without saying that this face is the face of the craftsmen—the face of Hida. After all, it was formed by clusters of knobby protrusions.

The Nio Guardians of Daiōji Temple's mountain gate were, within the scope of what I had seen, Japan's finest Nio Guardians.

Their height measured about three shaku and five sun.
The mountain gate itself was generally puny.
As for the temple proper, it stood as an even shabbier, more unremarkable structure.
Yet having built this gate, someone must have insisted: "Hey you—why not make Nio guardians too? Just match the gate's puny scale—they'll be plenty good enough." And so these laid-back guardians came into being.

One of them was a Nio guardian resembling a botched yokozuna swaggering through his ring-entering ceremony.
The sagging flesh of his loose belly hung in utter disarray, yet he thrust out his chest mightily, yanked both hands back, and strained to puff himself up with pride.

The other Nio guardian had managed to put on a slightly intimidating face, but perhaps due to age, he was completely out of breath.
But look—like this, see? Glaring like this.
Even if I’ve aged, you don’t see the fierceness left in this old me.
What? You say my mouth’s hanging open too sloppily?
That’s what I’ve been telling you!
I’ve just got no breath left in me.

"But hey, I did manage to put on quite an intimidating display there."
Such were the Nio guardians.
This masterpiece remains entirely unknown beyond these lands yet appears cherished by a small number of Hida’s people.

The area in front of this mountain gate was a children’s playground.

As I looked upon these Nio guardians, I was profoundly struck by a realization.

“Ah, I see.”
“Ah, so that’s it.”
“I had certainly thought that the face of Hida was a face I’d seen somewhere, but the faces of the Nio Guardians—aren’t they too the face of Hida?”

Indeed, it was so.
The Nio guardians are the face of Hida.
It was not that some Buddhist sculptor had fabricated such a fearsome face—one that does not even exist in this world—but rather that when Hida’s craftsmen added a touch of ferocity to the familiar faces of their peers, this visage emerged instantaneously.
That must have become, over time, Japan’s archetypal countenance for all Nio guardians.

In Hida’s Takayama and its vicinity, I occasionally glimpsed Nio guardians walking about.
Perhaps sharing the same breathlessness as those at Daiōji Temple, I once saw elderly Nio guardians resting on wooden benches—mouths agape and bulbous eyes rolling restlessly.
This was along Honmachi-dōri.
I had also witnessed Nio guardians wearing conical sedge hats, clutching hatchets and stubby pipes as they returned from fields.

Now that I mention it—the countenance of Kannon manifests even among Hida’s women; maids at Suimeikan Inn bore those same knobby protrusions characteristic of men.
Yet when women’s flesh fills the valleys between those protrusions into smooth plains, it transforms into the rounded, polished visage of a Buddha statue.

At Nagase Inn in Takayama, there was a maid born in Kawai Village of Hida.
In the Tsukigase area of this village, there is a legend that the Buddhist sculptor Tori was born here.
She was born in the adjacent area of Akezase.
Her face was perfectly round and plump, like that of the Yakushi-sama at Kokubunji Temple.

“Buddha statues are everywhere!”

This plump face seemed less like the face of Hida and more like a typical face from snowbound northern farming villages.
It might have originally been Hida’s.
Now it had become one of Japan’s faces—particularly one of those typical among rural daughters.

The owner of Tachikisha Bookstore, who had gone to considerable trouble regarding Hida’s local historical materials, suggested I meet a certain craftsman—urging me to encounter Hida’s present-day *takumi*. Having encountered these masterpieces by Hida’s craftsmen—works I had not anticipated—I was profoundly impressed and thus greatly desired to meet them; however, as Tachikisha himself had stated that this was an era when the craftsmen’s skills were in decline, their technical prowess fluctuated across periods—it was not as though master artisans were always present, nor could one assume such masters existed in abundance.

In short, just as the craftsmen of every era have remained nameless, to appreciate only their masterpieces without seeking to meet them in the flesh must accord with the very essence of Hida's craftsmen.
Having reached this conclusion, I abandoned my plan to meet the craftsmen.
However, rather than about their techniques, I wanted to ask about the face of Hida—whether such faces still existed today, where they might remain, if there were any traces to follow.
Even the Daruma faces carved in ichii wood (Hida's woodwork) were not what one would call typical Daruma visages—they were the face of Hida.
Objects from slightly older periods all shared this trait.
Regarding these Hida faces—were they crafting them unconsciously through tradition, or was there some model they followed?
I considered how intriguing it would be if a settlement comprised entirely of such faces existed, but since this notion seemed too much like an idle retiree's fanciful speculation, I ultimately abandoned the idea.

The daughter of the shop where I bought a Daruma with the face of Hida would speak ill of other stores to an excruciating extent. If I were to pretend to listen to her unbearable slander—claims that the other stores where I had shopped were a disgrace to Hida, or that they would tarnish the entire reputation of Hida’s lacquerware—she would likely rant on for half a day. Despite this, she herself tried to push shoddy crafts and carvings that would disgrace Hida. Even among novelty shops, there were those that never tired of loudly badmouthing other stores. It’s precisely those shops that are so eager to push their worthless imitations.

The masterpieces' complete wordlessness stood in stark contrast, yet I considered this too must be an essential aspect of the craftsmen's temperament. Among their ranks existed numerous unskilled practitioners, their numbers naturally surpassing those of true masters by simple arithmetic. That these lesser artisans should harbor a disposition to carp incessantly at others' works struck me as no mystery—indeed, it formed one predictable strand of their character. To imagine Hida's craftsmen solely as paragons of skill constituted profound error; as for whether Takayama's famed handicrafts inheriting this tradition retained artistic merit today, such notions dissolved under scrutiny. The enduring presence of anonymous masterpieces in forgotten corners bore no kinship whatsoever to the aesthetic pretensions of modern souvenir trinkets.

However, Hida alone has preserved a history that remains uniquely unyielding.
Since refusing to accept the Yamato court’s cadet branch for ages—stubbornly resisting as Hida alone—they have repeatedly sparked peculiarly tenacious resistance movements at every turn, from that time until the Meiji-era Umemura Incident.
This temperament strikes one as both slightly aberrant and distinctive; it seems to embody the single-minded disposition of Hida’s craftsmen and may well be tied to that very face of Hida.
It evokes a southern-style obstinacy—a stiff-necked pride distinct from the lineage of the Hida dynasty.
Could this be an overreach of my imagination?

In any case, this is a strange land.
Even now, if one were to walk through the mountain towns and villages of that small land of Hida (including Mino), carefully observing them, masterpieces by craftsmen entirely unknown to central art connoisseurs and historians—even Buddhist statues contemporaneous with or predating Yamato’s Asuka and Fujiwara-kyō capitals—might lie hidden and forgotten in some nameless temple.
And the secrets of history that have maintained their disguise for thirteen hundred years may gradually begin to speak the truth from those very places.

In some of Hida’s festivals, there were rituals where people mumbled ancestral traditions before the gods under their breath—villages where disclosing them to outsiders was strictly forbidden.
I wanted their ancestral traditions disclosed too.
This was the sole secret land where searching might unearth hidden things—the only country untouched by historians’ hands.
For me, it remained a land more nostalgic than any other.
Because here lay Japan’s true artistic homeland—and through some strange twist—that country had stayed sealed from historians’ gaze like relics at ancient tombs’ depths.
Even the living were historically akin to those tomb-dwellers.
For from these tombs might emerge not mummies but living history.