Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

“Look, that’s the castle.”

I turned around.
From behind me walked a young gentleman of barely five years and four months—his round straw boater hat adorned with fluttering gold and black ribbons, his off-white suit fastened with a deep indigo necktie—mouth drawn taut in a perfectly straight line yet ambling along at a leisurely pace.
Jizo-like eyebrows, large eyes, sweat glistening fiercely on both cheeks.

Having abandoned the Meitetsu train, this was what lay behind the vivid modern scenery of Inuyama Bridge—the great pure white iron bridge they were approaching.

Hot, hot.
I, the father of that child—having taken off my Panama hat and black coat and carrying them, one hand gripping a mahogany peasant-art walking stick with a chicken’s head while wearing my white shirt—was making my way onward.

“Yeah, I see.”

When the father and son stopped at the midpoint of that iron bridge, they moved alongside the downstream-facing white railing.
Taketarou strained on tiptoe again and again.
The chin did not reach over the railing.

It was exactly noon on August 4th, with the ceaseless chorus of cicadas pouring down from both banks.

The vast expanse of Kisogawa River’s waters—the Japan Line section swollen and turbid after rain—layers of billowing storm clouds piled upon one another from south to west, even conjuring a strange mountain range glowing faintly beneath its oppressive purple haze—their platinum-edged rim struck the eye most fiercely of all.
On the right bank downstream stood a splendid pyramidal mountain (later learned to be Evening Fuji), its pine-green peak split by a thin vertical fissure, forming a harmonious foreground with the white river shoal’s gentle curve. Beyond this, stretching hazily across the expanse, one could also glimpse plains of young rice fields backed by distant Mount Ibuki—where dark clouds lingered low, likely in the midst of a sudden downpour.

On the left bank stood Inuyama Castle.

Truly, Hakutei Castle rose upon a hill lush with ancient trees, its plaster walls strikingly white.

A small white three-story tower—what an elegant yet perfectly symmetrical, beautiful castle keep it was.
Only with this castle did the grand spectacle of this scenic beauty come alive.
It was a living brain, the focal point of a lens.
Truly, that castle was indeed the white helmet of the Japan Line.

“Who is in the castle?”

“No one lives there now.”
“Long ago, there were soldiers there.”

I lightly tapped the child’s straw boater hat.
How long will the white radiance of that small, beautiful castle continue to illuminate this young child’s memory?
And there was that azure sky, the radiance of the clouds.

The father tapped the child’s straw boater hat twice again.
I smiled secretly to myself.

“Tap it a bit harder.”

My eldest son, Taketarou, is nervous but seems strong-willed.
He insisted on coming along—declaring he’d cling to the locomotive if need be—so reluctantly I had him shoulder a small rucksack and brought him with me; yet even as he sat in the observation car of the descending express train, spreading his picture book across a large swivel chair, this child remained his own distinct entity.
Even during the brief moments we faced each other across the dining table, this child—though clumsy—firmly claimed the knife and fork as his own, peering over freshly baked bread, yellow butter, and salty omelets without ever losing composure.
When ascending Hakone’s steep mountain pass, even as the locomotive pressed tightly against the large glass door at the rear and roared upward into the pitch-black front with a thunderous clamor, this child who witnessed it was indeed overjoyed all by himself.
That evening, when he stood at the entrance of our relatives’ house in Nagoya, he showed no sign of being taken aback.
The aunt who had only seen him on the day he was born said, “Well now, so you’re Taketarou.
“My, how you’ve grown, oh!”
“You look just like my child.”
“Hohoho.”

When someone expressed surprise—“My, you managed to follow your father all this way!”—and smiled at him from the entrance platform, this child simply gave a firm “Mm-hmm” and laughed.
And then, having removed his shoes by himself, he immediately rushed in.
To this child, who was embarking on his first long journey away from his birth mother, the child’s mother had repeatedly instructed.
“Now, dear.
You must do everything for yourself.”

So that evening too, he desperately struggled alone to take off his coat, undo the buttons on his pants and shirt, change into nightclothes, tie his obi, roll into bed, and fall asleep.

It was the morning after. Along the train line from Yanagibashi Station to Inuyama Bridge, mulberry fields grew lush, pears ripened, and across blue rice paddies scattered with hints of crimson lotus blossoms wafted the fragrance of "morning" and "August" through crisp air and sunlight. How greedily this child must have absorbed that refreshing view and fragrance. How vividly black burned the eyes of this child traveling with his father for the first time! And so, as a drinker, he was a somewhat inconvenient companion who might at times prove to be an unignorable little overseer—but then again, I myself had rather wished for this.

I firmly grasped my child’s hands—we had made it this far together. It was truly good that we had come.

Truly, Hakutei Castle was the white helmet of the Japan Line.

Oh, and there—the white waxen daytime crescent moon—oh, it rested precisely upon that white helmet’s Yawata constellation.

Our ascent of Hakutei Castle came after we first experienced with refreshing clarity—accompanied by a toast of cold beer—what Taketarou called “the fragrant fish” at the upstairs dining hall of Saiunkaku Pavilion (operated by Meitetsu) on the foothills above, where we remained somewhat satiated for a time before ascending.

From the back of Hakutei Garden, walking along the embankment of cherry trees in leaf to the right and ascending a gentle, sloping hill a short way, there stood a row of Inuyama-yaki shops all sharing the same architectural style. When we turned around, it became a park square.

As for the summer heat and light—like a vibrantly colored peacock spreading its glittering tail feathers in a circle—they were no small source of delight for the father and son on this journey.
In the wire-mesh cage next to it, several small monkeys played, frantically darting their pink-rimmed eyes about.

Ah, right—that was the place, I thought.
I recalled an event from seven or eight years prior when I had seen a young kite with dark vermilion and gold feathers perched precisely on the wooden post at that opposite corner.
At that time, I thought it was a wood owl; the kite that drew near had a round head and truly bore an innocent, childlike countenance.

Ah, right—this was Haritsuna Shrine, I realized with another smile.

That winter, Nagoya City was gripped by terror and cold, its bustling heartbeat seeming on the verge of stopping.
The malignant flu epidemic sent dozens of its upstanding citizens to the crematorium each day.
I too lay ill in that same shuddering dread, with nothing to do but look upon harsh frosts, a shrunken sun, and frozen moonlight.
How desolate it was to fall sick while traveling.
Moreover, I was as poor as one could be.
It was then that I read in the newspaper of Professor Shimamura Hogetsu’s tragic passing.

Now, my beloved child—this young gentleman—clinging to the railing of a steeply sloped, arc-shaped white stone drum bridge, was desperately trying to scramble up.
The members of our group burst into uproarious laughter, urging him on with heave-hos as they pushed from behind.
Taketarou let out a joyful cry.
Finally having climbed up, he slid his shorts-clad legs forward in a smooth glide.
I, his father, moved around to the front, clapping my hands and cheering him on.

Things certainly did change between past and present, I thought.
That’s right—back then, the name Japan Line hadn’t yet come to be widely known.

“I can’t say I approve of the name ‘Japan Line’—I’d like them to stop this self-deprecation, obsequiousness, and half-baked Westernization.”
“As long as those Westerners don’t call the Rhine River ‘Germany’s Kisogawa’ or ‘Sosengorge,’ that is.”
“Isn’t that just shameful?”

“Exactly! Japan should remain Japan—this place should simply stay Kisogawa River.”

The owner of Suzume no Oyado inn by Kisogawa Bridge, Noda Sobeko, harmonized with us directly.

“Everyone often says that, you know.”

Before we knew it, we were entering the front enclosure of the castle with light steps.

A lean old man in summer kimono and hakama trousers, holding a white fan, solemnly welcomed us. He had been visible from the town hall.

According to old records, this Inuyama Castle was first governed by the Oda clan, retainers of the Shiba clan, at the end of the Eikyō era, and it was Shiba Mitsutsura who initially constructed it. After the Shiba clan fell, the Oda and Tokugawa clans established their military dominance. It was said that Hideyoshi had also entered the castle during the Komaki-Nagakute battles, but when power returned to Ieyasu, Naruse Hayato—chief retainer to the Lord of Bishū—was enfeoffed here, and from then until the Meiji Restoration, it remained continuously as the ancestral seat for nine generations of his family.

The existing castle keep originated in autumn of Keichō 4 [1599], when Ieyasu transferred Mori Tadamasa, lord of Kanayama in Mino Province, to Kawanishima in Shinano Province, granting its keep and watchtowers to Ishikawa Mitsuyoshi—then lord of Inuyama Castle—who had them transported down the Kisogawa River to this Inuyama in May of the following year, where they were rebuilt.
It is said to have been built by Saito Dainagon Masanari.

Hakutei Castle was beautiful.
The comprehensive beauty lay in how its position and the height of its hills combined with the grand vista of the boundless river to create harmonious interplay.
Additionally, an ancient verdant forest landscape rose up from its base.
When one gazed out, there lay an endless plain of silver and green veiled in purple haze.
As a mountain castle, this plan was said to be an exemplary model of castle architecture that epitomized the essence of the Momoyama period—indeed, when mentioned, one readily agreed.

Only a few remnants remained: the proper symmetry of the castle keep still soaring today, its surrounding railings, the irimoya-style tiled roofs adorning each layer—this white plaster castle.

While the exterior was three stories, once inside, it ascended to five.

When ascending the five-story, old wooden staircase, Taketarou nearly stumbled.
And then he was lifted up by his Third High School cousin.

“Why is it so dark here? Why is it so dark here?”

Straining and huffing, they climbed up.

“Ah, I can see Nagoya Castle!” someone shouted.

When we stepped out onto the railing of the castle keep’s topmost floor, we first surveyed the great plains stretching out on both sides.
The green of yesterday’s train-line fields and the pale reds of lotus ponds stretched hazily into the distant cloudy light, while one solitary Komakiyama—low and thick with mountain hues—hunched sullenly in miniature.
To the left stood a hazily visible purple phantom tower; this was said to be the golden-scaled castle.
Hearing this description, it seemed to radiate a kind of dazzling vitality.

The horizon was clouds and haze—yellow, a touch of vermilion, indigo, and black—blended upon a white ground.
The clouds and haze were being scattered by several thick plumes of sooty smoke.
Nagoya City two hours prior was aglow with vivid electric illuminations.

Shifting my gaze along the railing from east to north, beside swells of hills in soft melancholy reds and cheese-white hues emerging under tranquil sunlight’s reflection, two round green hills stood aligned in Yamato-e style palette tones—upon one modest elevation, glimpses of an elegant classical hall appeared.
"That’s Zuisenji Hill," someone said.

Layered from Zuisenji Hill through Tsugikao to Karasugamine, behind them swelled massive strata of white cumulonimbus clouds.
Beyond that splendid white and gold, the peaks of Ena, Komagatake, and Ontake were said to vie in scraping the heavens.
The invisible essence of mountains lingered beyond.
What a brooding, dusky grape-colored gloom.

And then came a rustling shower of cicada song drifting toward the white iron bridge.

A booming sound echoed through the air—they were boring a tunnel through Shiroyama on the left bank. The plan, I heard, was to build a modern hotel atop those bizarrely towering crags, bore vertical tunnels through the rock strata, and steadily transport tourists via elevator. Sightseeing boats came rushing down from upstream along the Japan Line—some with roofed cabins, others spread with white tents—streaking like arrows across the water. Lights flickered—light upon light upon light—laughing their way toward us like some princely skiff from medieval tales, glimmering with ephemeral sparkles.

I felt like calling out, “Hey there!”

The Nakasendō road, its verdant peaks layered with Unuma Station at their base, stretched westward into the Tado Mountain Range.
Suzuka dimly lingered, while Ibuki’s peaks still tossed wildly in the boar-gray tempest of rising winds and clouds.

Beyond dusk-cloaked Mount Fuji across the great river below our eyes, what glittered here and there in the vivid plain was Kakamigahara Airfield.

To the west, beyond the vast Ise Sea fading into haze at the edge of sight, the white sails of stone boats bound for Kuwana swelled with wind, illuminating then shadowing the white sands and waters of the grand delta as they passed; while along both banks—low and widely spaced—stood pines, poplars, and bamboo thickets, there too gleaming the wheels of bicycles speeding by.

Hakutei Castle occupied an absolutely superior location.

I further looked down and saw faintly—gracefully—pale crimson linear silk tree flowers blooming on the second-story irimoya-style roof. This was the first time I had observed tree flowers from above so closely and intimately. It truly felt like summer.

The ancient maple tree atop the cliff spread its branches unevenly as if within reach, leaves intermingling, within a serene and vividly clear dappled light.

The great camphor tree that had stood for hundreds of years was bald of bark, its branches split and weathered into a desolate hue. A crow fluttered through the ultramarine treetop and alighted. Caaaw, caaaw it went.

Old-fashioned Hakutei Castle.

The water intake faced the river at the base of the castle’s cliff.

When we descended from the castle, we once again became tiny figures within the blazing heat and sunlight.
White fans fluttered incessantly, their wings beating ceaselessly.

From the park down the gentle slope toward Nishidani—hurrying while seeking patches of shade—when we turned into the mulberry fields, a cluster of demure red impatiens caught our eye.
It must already be autumn.

There stood a simple Western-style house.
The entrance hung wide open, with a person in a white shirt working at a crude desk.
The old man from the town office approached and greeted us.
He was faintly uttering my name.

We entered the tunnel.
When we emerged outside, the view abruptly opened up, and before us flowed the great Kisogawa River.

The waters of this great river barely crested over the concrete weir of the waterway split through bedrock and the rusted iron gate, flowing onward to merely accumulate turbid white foam and dust in flat stillness beyond.
It was a tranquility devoid of any marvel.

“This water sustained the lives of all Nagoya’s citizens,” explained the young man in the student cap with his collar undone.

We turned back and passed through the tunnel, emerging before two measuring devices.
On the grid paper of a faintly rotating cylinder, blue ink seeped from a needle, steadily imprinting the water volume and speed in a sawtooth pattern that barely seemed to move.
There, the young man lifted the iron plate cover—about five or six shaku across—near the doma.
From the bottom of the dark hole, cold air blew upward.
The water flowed soundlessly through eighteen shaku of underground depth, ceaselessly rushing and pressing toward the distant metropolis.
The relentless surge of its flow.

The true mainstream of poetry exists in these very depths—silently yet powerfully flowing.
One must contemplate the true vitality of this mainstream.
I firmly grasped Taketarou's hand.

When we returned to Saiunkaku Pavilion, the little monk declared he wanted to go straight back to Nagoya.
The aunt in Nagoya had made a long-distance call to this child’s mother the previous night.

“If he were to fall ill, I would feel responsible,” she said. “And since Okiku hasn’t visited home even once yet, this seems the perfect opportunity—shall we call her over? There are plenty of cousins there, train and tram toys too, the city’s splendid—he did seem rather eager to return quickly.”

“Very well then—I’ll leave it to you,” I said, entrusting the boy to my third-year high school nephew.

The sky turned to twilight as lights abruptly flickered on at the Country Hotel within the grounds. White upon white upon white—waiters and tables.

“Let’s go back, go back—how far shall we go back?
We’ll go back—back to where red lanterns glow three blocks ahead!
The kaero cries out—so let’s go baaack!”

Through the avenue of plane trees, alongside circular flower beds bursting with summer butterfly bushes and green lawns, came the faltering song of a young gentleman making his way back.

“Hey there!”

I stepped out to the second-floor railing and raised both hands.

“Heeey!”

On the other side, he looked this way and raised both hands.

The white crescent moon waxed ripe, glowing yellow.
My small counterpart child stood still, gazing up at the faintly white Hakutei Castle.

II

The boat ascended upstream.
At the stern of this traditional riverboat fluttered a flag with a red border boldly dyed in black characters reading "Saiunkaku Pavilion."
At the front poled one crewman; at the back rowed another. The passengers were myself and M from Meitetsu, our guide.
Today I had tried wearing for the first time a bright bluish-purple jacket with gold buttons.
This golfing outfit—with its indigo-gray trousers patterned in large motifs—proved somewhat too gaudy for walking through the city.
Yet amid this vivid river scenery and fierce sunlight, it struck no discordant note.
I ascended the jade-green current like some great waterfowl of southern climes.

It was exhilarating.
And there was foamy beer in glasses, the green of edamame beans, and the reflected light of fluttering white tents.

On the fifth at 1 PM，yesterday’s ferocious muddy torrent had regained some clarity with a bluish tinge，but the once drastically swollen water level showed little sign of subsiding.
But naked children jumped in，jumped in.
There were glittering clusters of rocks，boulder-strewn riverbanks，and wildflowers thriving along both shores.

Swim, swim!

The left bank retained its wild charm with willows, young pines, and dense greenery of miscellaneous trees in verdant blues, while the white road on the amusement park side stretched onward with rows of slender red pines—the cluttered colors of one or two ice shops and Western-style restaurants partitioned by a misshapen triangular inn and the white vista of the great iron bridge on the right.
When we passed under the iron bridge, to the left was Ishigashiyama, commonly known as Shiroyama.
Before the rock wall being hollowed out near the tunnel entrance lay yellow straw mats, barracks, makeshift bridges, workers’ jackets with insignia, one or two small boats—deafening booms, booms, booms.

Then came into view a Western-style mansion—vulgarly extravagant with its artificial birch-toned and white stone buttresses and angular pillars—suddenly rupturing the symmetry of the surroundings.
“Oh, what is that?”

“It’s the Kyoto Mosurin Company’s villa,” said M, plucking edamame.

“Vulgar.”

But this was as far as it went. Beyond that lay Sosengorge—a realm entirely carved by divine axes and demonic chisels. A mere five or six chō from Saiunkaku Pavilion, we had already left human habitation behind—a place untainted by worldly dust—where sheer cliffs stretched endlessly, commanding no small measure of awe. The essence of the so-called Japan Line resided here.

The sun blazed as houseboats with triangular sails and red-and-blue flags passed before us in scattered clusters.

Upstream navigation along Himuro Mountain’s base appeared to follow the standard practice of hugging ever rightward against the red pine forest and the cliff’s meager, perilous path.
“This here’s Inugae, y’know,” came a burnished copper voice from behind.

Eboshi Rock, Kazemodori, Ōhashi—and here at Inugae, this stone gate was called Shaeyōseki, they said.

“There, that roof forms a bird’s-eye view diagram—it’s Mr. Y’s residence.”

A deeply secluded thicket stood before us.
Cicadas—cicadas—cicadas—
The shrill cry of autumn cicadas.

“What about this high mountain?”

“Tsuguroo Mountain. There’s a temple called Eikoin Temple.”
“There’s also what’s called Fuyō Falls—would you like to go up and see it?”
“No—let’s push onward upstream!”
The wind was cool; the pool was clear; the emerald stream swirled.
The deep purple waterfowl ascended upstream.
Ascended.
“That’s Furokaku.”
“It’s peaceful here.”

And then, further upstream in the mid-current, there was a rock called Nakaiwa. When I looked back, rocks on the left rear diagonal were sending up white spray rock after rock with unusual intensity.

Then, the thousand-foot emerald peaks and cliffs became Kangeikei Gorge.

Wave, wave, wave, wave, wave,

Wave, wave, wave, wave, wave,

Wave, wave, wave, wave, wave, wave,

Wave, wave, wave, wave,

Waves rolled on and on—wave after wave after wave.

“Exhilarating! Simply exhilarating!”

“This is Fujigase.”

Splendid spray after spray after spray rushed onward, leapt upward, and churned ceaselessly.

The entire surface rippled with a babbling flow.

“Ah.”

“This is Red Rock,” said M.

Where clusters of reddish-brown bizarre rocks stood starkly reflected against a deep pool of lapis lazuli and ultramarine, the penetrating drone of cicadas seeped into the very air.

There was a young red pine grove and a dense Moso bamboo thicket. Outside the thicket, faintly crimson tree flowers were blooming.

“What tree’s flower is that?”

“Lacquer tree flowers, y’know,” declared the bow boatman, skillfully handling his pole. On his white manju-shaped hat, "Shuzan Reisui" was written in vivid black.

That area was Kurisu Village.

Now, I had omitted to mention—before those lacquer tree flowers caught my eye—the large, jagged rocks along the stone riverbed known as Otomi and Osomatsu Rock.
Love is sorrow—they say in local lore that Otomi too, lamenting her fate of never being united with her beloved, threw herself from the upper Ote Rock in separation.

“This here’s the Lorelei.”

The Lorelei elicited a somewhat wry smile.

Shinsekki was on the left. Before it ran the old Nakasendo highway; with one winding turn lay Iwaya Kannon. A white soiled flag was visible. There, they once again encountered roaring rapids. It was Kannon’s Rapids.

“The water’s still rough,” said the bow boatman with a nod.

When they finally managed to climb up that rapid, the river’s width at last began to narrow.
At last came layer upon layer of bizarre rocks pressing close—rough-hewn cliffs rising in continuous succession alongside them—transforming the waters into ferocious rapids that stunned the eye.
Regrettably, the water was high and rocks half-submerged, making it impossible to fully appreciate the marks of the divine craftsman’s axes and chisels—yet this was undoubtedly Sosengorge at its most magnificent.

In Saitō Setsudō’s *Account of Descending the Kisogawa*, it was written:

"The rocks, all fantastically shaped, line both banks: some tower like pillars; others split asunder like gates; some resemble thirsty steeds drinking between gaps; others lie across the path like reclining oxen. Variegated in five colors intermingling, their fissures form large and small axe-hewn clefts; here and there appear textures of lotus leaves and hemp fibers, washed by waves that surge forth. They come and go in endless succession, leaving no moment unoccupied—truly, amidst their bizarre transformations, they bear an air of serene elegance."

Names like Helmet Rock, Camel Rock, Spectacles Rock, Lion Rock, and Turtle Rock were better left unspoken. Observe their colors, observe their forms—marvel at their strangeness, tremble with divine awe, and find your senses reeling.

Would not the Five-Colored Rocks that Setsudō also saw dazzle with such resplendent hues as to captivate all who beheld them?

From what I observed, if we consider Sosengorge alone, its rock formations' bizarre steepness did not reach Yabakei in Buzen, Shoro Hatcho in Kii, or Tenryukyo in Shinano; the swiftness of its currents could not equal the Kumagawa in Higo; and its rapids were inferior even to certain sections of the Chikugogawa.
As a greater river beyond this, there was the Tone River.
Yet what made this river far surpass them all lay in its comprehensive beauty as a waterway of endless transformations, the scenic grace of Hakutei Castle, and its convenient transportation paired with abundant modern cultural facilities.
In these waters lay scenery both primitive and futuristic.
The boat came to a deep, still emerald pool beneath Suichōzan and stopped its pole.
Tranquil and ethereal.
In the steep, jagged forests, wild monkeys cried out—they would emerge to play at times, it was said.

I disembarked from the boat and climbed up a certain rocky outcrop.

Truly, a celestial maiden once lamented here; a Taoist priest with a yellow headscarf and a pure, crane-like form came to secretly refine elixirs and smelt gold—this profound realm was envisioned here, and it must have been what came to be named Yūsen Hill.

“Regrettably, we absolutely cannot ascend beyond this point today,” declared the boatman as he once again pressed his pole against the rock with all his might.

Instantly, the boat shot down like an arrow.

A thousand li to Jiangling returned in a single day.

Oh, how was Taketarou faring?

The automobile sped along.

The Mayor of Inuyama was a young, fair-complexioned gentleman in a suave business suit.
At Hakutei-en’s Country Club grand dining hall, the three of us—Sobeko, the driver, and I—were having an exceedingly simple lunch on August 6th when he appeared before me through a waiter to offer greetings.
Upon entering, he respectfully handed his business cards one by one even to the driver.
Had he done this knowingly, it would have been a beautiful gesture—this thought seemed to linger in his approving smile.
Moreover, even that black-suited driver appeared to be a gentleman of some standing.
This was the modern Japan Line.

The Country Club was a simple yet tasteful structure with a gently sloping roof of rust-colored siding and a mezzanine. It was bungalow-style, with wide staircases at the front and side. At the front of the bright flowerbed below the main staircase, I bowed once more and took my place in the car.

Noda Sobeko of Suzume no Oyado had been pale since yesterday morning due to severe stomach cramps.
Since today’s guiding remained uncertain as well, I decided to detour to Inuyama Bridge Station and request that a red-armbanded station attendant from the passenger service department—still wearing his official cap—accompany us.

The automobile sped along.
The automobile sped straight northward across the iron bridge. Then, in a fleeting moment, Hakutei Castle and the evening Mount Fuji flashed before our eyes.

I thought yesterday’s sunset had been truly wonderful.
That lingering afterglow ignited crimson upon crimson within towering cumulus clouds along the horizon, set against a western sky of transparent yellow, hazy celadon, and pale green-blue.
Then above the splendidly purpling evening Fuji streamed cloud layers—streamer-shaped canopies, floral mandorlas, brocade sashes—shifting from scarlet to vermilion, fading to blush-pink, becoming silver-gray-tinged birch-bark softness before deepening into grape-purple.
The castle keep’s white plaster faintly retained a lingering yellow glow.
And so too did the great river’s richly hued transitions turn scarlet, then fading crimson, then soft cream-white, then wisteria purple, until finally becoming radiant lapis lazuli blue.
As cumulus clouds shaped like cerebral matter over eastern Mt. Zuisenji and thunder-laden cumulonimbus clouds swiftly intensified their golden radiance—seeming ready to burst into explosive vapor—meanwhile over the southern sky above the embankment of leafed cherry trees, cumulonimbus clouds of identical hue and form swelled massively as they erupted upward.
This sunset too was said to be one beautiful celestial phenomenon much like the Line.
Due to airflow patterns from Mount Ibuki, this had been a seasonal festival of clouds and sunsets bestowed uniquely upon the Japan Line.

Our light boat rode the rapids and came racing down in the blink of an eye through that sunset’s near embrace, as the great orb of the sun still radiated golden light in all directions.
And so we dropped anchor and moored our lines at the riverbank of Saiunkaku Pavilion beneath Hakutei Castle.
Then, a call had come through from Nagoya, and it was said that Taketarou’s mother was expected to arrive imminently.

Today had unfortunately become overcast since early dawn.
The rain, mist, and faint droplets from all directions ceaselessly stirred my traveler’s emotions.
The lingering fatigue from last night’s indulgence grew damp and heavy.

August 6th was supposed to have the annual fireworks festival at the lower riverbank.
We had sent notices asking my nephews in Nagoya and Taketarou to come see it, but that too was growing increasingly uncertain.
As expected, it had been postponed due to rain, and with my travel schedule now thrown off by another day, I resolved that rather than languish in boredom, I might as well seek out whatever poetic charm the rainy Japan Line had to offer.

The automobile sped along.

Then I realized we had unwittingly headed north, so it was now speeding south.
Ah—as I recognized that villa of birch and white—the Nakasendo Road kept charging eastward between riverside pine groves and peach orchards.

Winding around Shinsekihi’s base, it reached Iwaya Kannon.
This was a landscape evoking Chinese ink paintings.
There was a tunnel; there was a bridge.
The road veered slightly from the bank and entered a stretch between mulberry fields and red pine groves.
There were farmhouses.
Impatiens and zinnias bloomed, village children played, chickens clucking away.
It all carried the feel of a plateau.

Autumn, autumn, autumn, autumn.

We entered Ōta no Yado.
If we were to turn right and cross the iron bridge, we could go from Imawatari on the opposite bank to Tsuchida—though that would be the shortest route to Line Amusement Park—yet I kept driving straight ahead at full speed.
I had thought to head upstream as much as possible and make a detour.

“Stop!”
On Furui’s white iron bridge, I leapt out of the automobile in surprise.
The emerald depths of those closely pressing gorges, the abundant azure of the waters—
What lush and deeply serene scenic beauty that small downstream island possessed!
The haze hung thick and blurred, drifting across the bright expanse where rivers merged beyond the island, while a drenched takase boat slid forward, steered by boatmen in straw raincoats and bamboo hats as though from an ink-wash painting.

As we stood on that Aoyagi Bridge, elderly people and children came crowding around us one after another, drawn by whatever novelty had caught their attention. When asked, "What river is this?" someone answered, "The Hida River." "It flows down from the headwaters high in Takayama and joins the Kisogawa River here at Furui for the first time," someone else nearby explained. So that wide one must be the Kisogawa River, I began to realize.

“You can see a hall on that island—what deity is enshrined there?”

“Koyama Kannon.”

“Is there a festival today?”

“The sacred unveiling falls precisely on July ninth—it’s held every year.”

“There’ll be stalls too, won’t there?”

“Indeed, the riverbank gets packed full with stalls then.”

“Oh yes, the riverbank gets completely packed with stalls indeed.”

Reflected in the water—what I imagined to be the flickering of refined lights—the gorge of this tributary, the Hida River, impressed me with an atmosphere distinct from that of the main stream’s Sosengorge. In the upper vista, there were few exposed rock layers; all became hills holding muted glimmers of ridge-colored hues. That profoundly deep emerald pool.

We once again became passengers in the automobile.
An indigo-gray and smoked-silver overcast sky，hills and mulberry fields—with the plateau being high，one could only assume the river lay somewhere to the right—as the automobile bounded onward endlessly，glimpsing intermittently through peaks on the opposite shore and northern-style houses.
The scent of soil filled the air.
The scent of grass filled the air.
Rain and air and a fresh storm—the mountain shade was choked with pine resin’s scent.
Ran and ran—the large insect of a new world.

“I can see it. Shall we go around via that iron bridge?”

“Alright.”

He sharply turned the steering wheel to the right. Clattering loudly, they crossed the suspension bridge and turned right again. It was Kanayama Inn. And the scenery underwent a magnificent transformation. Exhilarating, exhilarating! The plateau above the gorge we had just passed now lay across from us. Pale yellow slopes and green flat planes, planes, planes—layers of spear cedars, bamboo groves, houses—the overlapping mountain peaks intensely then faintly hazed; the rain-soaked Kisogawa River abruptly opened up and receded from among these fields, farms, woodlands, and plank-roofed houses. A rocky outcrop came into view. A boat came into view. Ah—a hinoki cypress, roof tiles, a painted signboard.

In the distance again—chimneys, chimneys, chimneys.
When I asked about that black smoke, they said that was Ōta.
We’ve really made it all the way up here, I thought to myself.
“Well, we’ve been driving for nearly two hours now,” the driver said with a laugh.
In this way we sped from Kaneyama to Fushimi, from Fushimi to Hiromi, and on to Imawatari.

Tsuchida lay near the terminus of the Imawatari Line, which branched off from Meitetsu’s Inuyamaguchi Station.

After catching a fleeting glimpse of that station, we turned right again toward Line Amusement Park and sped onward—sped onward relentlessly.
We drove as far as the road allowed, screeching to a halt just before colliding with an obstacle, where an unusual bridge stood.
It was the Tsuchida Drawbridge.
This narrow gorge was known to be perpetually mist-prone—when the fog rolled in thickly, both sky above and river below would vanish from sight.
The waters swelled over slick layers of stratified rock, flowing crystalline blue to form what locals call the Heron’s Rapids.

At the bridge’s edge, we bought Shikishima and began meandering toward the amusement park.
The rain was letting up, and faint sunlight began to reach the ears of early rice by the roadside.
Tanabata’s red, yellow, and purple colored papers damply soaked through and bleeding clung to those ears of rice and mulberry leaves.
A smell—of dead fireflies or something—rose stiflingly.
There was a small hut left wide open.
There was a smell of silkworm droppings and cocoons.
Straw mats were piled in disarray.
On the front was posted a notice reading, “Bicycles stored free of charge.”
The road stretched seven or eight chō (approximately 800–900 meters).

They arrived before the grand Kitayōkan. When we passed through the road beneath the second-floor connecting corridor to the rear, there before us swirled up the astonishing spectacle of Ōdōgakigō’s massive whirlpool below our eyes. On a hundred-foot cliff—how small the humans appeared—white, black, and navy-blue specks dotted here and there.

Ōdōgakigō was a major perilous stretch within Sosengorge. At the confluence of the main current and Kani River—where waters rushed violently, collided, embraced, and rebounded—the residual force charged at a towering black-brown rock cliff rising like a massive iron fortress. Blocked abruptly, the waters clashed against themselves, force contended with force, waves gnawed at rocks while rocks bit back at waves. There, amid roaring and gurgling sounds, they transformed once more—churning pressure into rotation, swirling upward into turbulence—manifesting a spectacle of unparalleled grandeur. Indigo and green-blue and ultramarine, pale aqua and white and silver and green, whirlpools and sprays and water foam, bubbles and bubbles and bubbles.

This must be what they mean by gooseflesh rising.
Startled, I descended several steps.

There, I turned on my heel and descended the narrow path between rocky outcrops and weeds toward Kouboku Gorge's embarkation point.

Moreover, under the bright wide-open sky upstream—mountain ranges and emerald peaks, the hazy yellow-green of farmlands, houses, smoke.
Fog. Fog. Fog.

"Why don't we have some tea somewhere?" When I suggested there must be at least a tea stall around, he answered "There is, there is!" while nevertheless steering his official cap with its red armband right past a reed-screen tea house. We stopped before the door of a white-painted Western-style building displaying a red sign that read "Tengu Something...", but all its windowpanes were tightly shut with a "Temporarily Closed" notice. Even in summer, there didn’t seem to be many sightseers coming this far. Line Amusement Park remained unfinished, still closer to a natural mixed forest. Given that there was even a skating rink in the hollow, the winter cold here must have been severe. When we reached the edge of the cliff, we finally spotted one of the rest areas. Since there was no sign of people, I peered inside to find a single old man—resembling a river fish spirit with scaly luminescence—slumped dejectedly before a shelf of blue-tinted soda bottles in the corner. What hovered dimly was moisture.

In this area called Suishōzan, where several high-speed riverboats swayed in the water and drifted among waves between lonesome rock formations and white sands—their gunwales rubbing against one another—someone had bestowed upon it the name Kōboku Gorge, though who remained unknown.
To the left towered Hekigan Peak in azure starkness.

There I beckoned to one of the roofed boats; the mist in the ash-gray and vermilion-tinged sky above grew ever thinner, and at that moment, from a break in the clouds, uncanny yellow rays began radiating outward.
After this momentary lull, the mugginess grew muggier and muggier still.

“Well then, we’ll part ways here. I’ll head out to Tsuchida and circle around the back of this mountain to return—let’s see which of us arrives faster. How about a little competition?”

The driver laughed.

“Very well,” we boarded the boat.
There were two boatmen as expected; no sooner had one jabbed the pole with a thrust than the one at the rear checked the rudder socket, worked the oar with a clatter-clatter, and called out, “And we’re off!”
It was said to be two and a half ri (approximately 9.8 kilometers) remaining to Hakutei Castle.
The boat sped ahead; a five-colored bird’s-eye view map of the Japan Line rested in my hand.

“Hmm, so that’s the Maiden’s Waterfall?”
The waterfall cascaded down from the green shade to the left as nothing but exquisitely delicate lines of water—line after line after line.

To the right crouched Lion Rock, solemnly imposing in its ochre-black hue.
And then, the boat soon approached the emerald pool of Yusen Hill.

When we left that fairyland behind, the current grew increasingly swift. Because the water level had decreased considerably compared to yesterday, every single rock in the river rose higher and higher, exposing layers of horizontal and slanting axe-split formations that towered before our eyes in countless strange and wondrous forms; moreover, the raindrops from the recent shower sparkled brilliantly as they struck each rocky outcrop and cave entrance, echoing repeatedly until it seemed as though a fresh downpour might begin at any moment.

The gorge narrowed further, the current grew swifter, and the boat raced down, nearly scraping against the layered rock cliffs.

“Oh, look at that!”

I widened my eyes.

Perched atop a massive cliff that one had to crane their neck to see was a yellow-brown fierce bird—vigorous and spirited—staring fixedly at the northern heavens.
A hooked beak; gleaming eyes; talons unyielding by even a hair’s breadth dug firmly into the rocky crag—and then came the faint rustle of untrimmed tail feathers’ extended filaments.

“It’s a hawk, isn’t it?”

“Huh?” I exclaimed in surprise as the Tourism Section staff confirmed, “Yes.”
“It’s a hawk.”

A gust of cold air struck us, and Sosengorge truly manifested the visage of primeval mountains and hidden valleys.

"It doesn't move at all, even when the boat passes underneath."

I was astonished.

Though my heart still raced from the earlier sighting, another hawk stood imposingly atop the primary protrusion of Camel Rock to our right. The hawks facing each other above were likely a mated pair.

I thought I had seen something splendid. Though I couldn't hear the wild monkeys' voices, all the more so, I couldn't help but feel a serendipitous stroke of time's grace.

I looked back time and time again.

As the boat struck Kannon's Rapids with its fierce currents and surging white spray, it rocked back and forth and tilted dangerously.

The hawks were black against the distant cliff, indeed remaining as two stern points.
They grew smaller and smaller.
Even when one vanished, the majestic figure of a single bird stayed visible endlessly.
The dampened dark-vermilion chaotic clouds in the distant sky would soon turn brown, then yellow, finally staining crimson and vermilion -
this being the sunset of the Japan Line.

Ah, Hakutei Castle came into view.

Forty minutes from Kobokukyo Gorge, upon arriving at Saiunkaku Pavilion’s riverside and climbing up, a large black-and-indigo car resembling a giant insect came racing from the free rest area toward Hakutei Park’s Country Club at astonishing speed.
With both hands on the steering wheel, his Panama hat tilted back and hair swaying, he wore that characteristic cheerful laugh.

“Hooray! No contest!”

III

“There, boy, it’s goodbye. Wave your hat!”
“Goodbyeee——”
“One more time.”
“Goodbyeee——”

The three of us sitting aboard the downriver high-speed riverboat were my child and I, along with the master of Suzume no Oyado.

From the second floor of Saiunkaku Pavilion, white handkerchiefs swayed vigorously and glittered.
They were the maids.

We too adopted a touch of theatrical spirit and waved our Panama hats and Suzume headscarves.
Thanks to the little prince from the children's story, we too could wave our hats brightly, brightly—such was its magic.

We descended.
The two-tiered pavilion adorned with five or six red female pines gradually became hidden behind Hakutei Castle’s emerald peaks.
Just as I caught another fleeting glimpse of something white fluttering through a gap, it was once again obscured by the dense thicket of gnarled oak and maple branches from ancient trees.
And with that, August 8th became a quiet cicada chorus at eleven in the morning.
This was our farewell to the Japan Line.

We passed the water intake and then went by the front of Geihōrō in Nishidani.
The crowd that had gathered there yesterday kicked up more dust than the yellow smoke chrysanthemums of daytime fireworks.
Old men in topknot wigs, crimson military surcoats, and hakama trousers clamored with wooden clappers, bells, and drums, bellowing out advertisements for “Line Liquor” and such.
From under those banners’ shade—after someone reached for a tall glass on a tray and sampled a free cup of that red liquor they kept shouting was complimentary—when they asked “Is this shochu?” he rapped his fan and replied, “No—it’s a special brew indeed! The base water is—heh heh—from Line water.”
“When asked ‘What about the red?’ he rapped his fan again and replied, ‘That’s dyed with color, you see.’”
The color resembled that of Karafuto’s Fureppu liquor, while the base flavor retained shochu’s distinctive bite.
The local specialty Nintōshu appeared to possess a distinctive aroma strongly reminiscent of mirin.

Be that as it may, the boat now approached beneath Sankou Inari.
The summer festival of Sankou Inari Shrine, emulating the Tsushima Festival’s sakabune boat—a hayashi boat that epitomized splendor and coolness by decorating its hull with 365 lanterns symbolizing the twelve months of the year—would similarly become a water festival in vivid colors, according to the mayor’s account.
I had also heard of their intention to vigorously promote it henceforth.
The more vibrant the people's festivals became, the more the local spirit was invigorated.
Worshiping water was the pride of water-rich regions.
It was the quintessence.
In my hometown of Yanagawa in Chikugo, during Suiten Shrine’s Water Festival at Okihata, a grand boat stage—decorated with cedar leaves and artificial cherry blossoms, fitted with a makeup room of rolled blinds and reed matting—would traverse the town’s waterways for three days and three nights to lively flute, drum, and shamisen music during curtain calls.
And with each town they passed through, they changed the stage curtains; with each new day, they switched out the Kabuki performance themes.
Such small canals would again swarm with small boats from nearby areas.
There had been no such joyousness in May here.
Truly, water was worthy of worship.
Summer, wind, fish, rocks, sand—all should be celebrated ever more resplendently in this Japan Line.
It was said that Sankou Inari’s water festival had only just passed a short while before.

“Boy, last night’s fireworks were beautiful, weren’t they?”

“Yeah, they were pretty.”

The boat was now passing alongside a white delta in the middle of the river.
On that delta, red flags had fluttered, and hundreds of fireworks tubes had stood in a forest—it had been the day before.

Taketarou had come from Nagoya that morning with his cousins.
His mother ultimately did not appear.
How immense must have been the young child’s disappointment, having had all his expectations utterly betrayed.
Even so, he endured and endured.
The painful sight of him desperately pursing his lips to hold back tears lapped against his father’s chest with relentless intensity.
In this heat, taking this young child on a ten-day journey was dangerous and somewhat overly decisive.
If she could have come, I thought of entrusting him to his mother and traveling alone and carefree.
It seemed that due to his bowel movements being far too infrequent, everyone in Nagoya had been deeply concerned.
“Well, maybe we should’ve taken him out to the garden among the impatiens or to the cornfield out back,” I said with a laugh to the Third High student, but “We did give him laxatives though, so he finally went,” his nephew burst out laughing.
And then, blushing, he added, “He cried a little.”
It would be a problem if he were to fall ill, but be that as it may, it was decided to take him along.
Very well—Spartan training it is.
This journey was Taketarou’s first meaningful excursion since his birth.
That which grows and refines upon an infant’s wisdom, emotions, senses, and will is undoubtedly something beyond mere danger.
And so, I proceeded with it.

“Ah, firework casings, huh.”

The black split halves of casings left after explosions floated here and there on the water.
They resembled mandarin ducks.

Truly, after the long twilight finally faded into the short summer night, the fireworks’ spectacle was magnificent.
Chrysanthemum gardens, chrysanthemum-fronted scatterbursts, two-shaku shells, three-shaku shells, grand chrysanthemum gardens, rapid-fire salvos of two hundred to three hundred shots, lightning-and-thunder flashes, silver-brocade metamorphosis flowers, chrysanthemum-fronted brocade swarms of butterflies, blue-glowing crescent moons—and so on.
The brilliant peacock jewel’s purple and lapis lazuli, jade, and blue-green.
Crimson and emerald light-shells; domed bursts; rockets—ah, that silver-light fishing net unfurling, cascading, exploding, torrenting, branching, colliding, scattering, layering, cascading, cascading, cascading—blazing in all directions for an instant before plunging back into darkness: elegant yet vibrant, resplendent yet sublime, extravagant beyond words.
Adding to this were flaming naval mines upon the waves—their scaled fire patterns, chain-shell illuminations, cormorant boats’ torches, sightseeing vessels’ myriad lanterns, paper lanterns, hand-tossed platinum sparks, five-colored ever-shifting flecks of light, flowing willow arrows—truly these fireworks represented the pinnacle of San and Shin’s pyrotechnic artistry, where exhaustive craftsmanship met divine concentration.

In the sky, the moon shone clear through thin clouds, casting its vivid light upon Hakutei Castle’s roof tiles and white plaster walls.

But once more, such a night of revelry had passed.
The listlessness after the festival—its poignancy—was all the more profound in these waters.

The boat now ran and glided along the delta’s gentle curve, dusk-cloaked Fuji to its right, following the leftward branch of the distributary.

At a place called Sakashita, on the slope of a cobblestone embankment, the boatman briefly stopped the boat.
A girl of about twelve or thirteen was bent forward rinsing some vegetable leaves with fine veins; when I asked if it was water celery, she blushed faintly and said they were carrot leaves.
Beside them, men in half-coats with hairy legs briskly soaked round straw mats for sericulture in the water and scrubbed them vigorously.
Two or three empty flat-bottomed riverboats.

The boat once again departed from the shore.

When I turned to look back—oh, how exquisitely beautiful Hakutei Castle appeared!
Lush and familiar—those always comforting hills—and upon them, how graceful the roof tiles, how sublime the white pavilion! This view from below must surely be the supreme vista.
I was deeply glad I had come down.

“Boy, look—the castle’s in view.”

“Really! It’s the castle!”

But with Hakutei Castle too, we must soon part.

The distributary would at times narrow into swift rapids, skirt reed beds, then run along the endlessly long row of trees lining Kizu Embankment.
On the embankment, weeping willows swaying in the wind could also be seen.
There were also simple, old-fashioned station pavilions of quintessentially Japanese style.
And old-fashioned farmhouses.

We looked back again.
“Goodbye, castle.”
Far, far Hakutei Castle.

The boat emerged again into the heart of the great river.
The sails of stone boats gleamed white, at times bearing thin layers of purple shadows, shining and glowing as they came and went below and nearby, gathering and scattering.

More than that, what truly astonished me was the brilliance of the grand delta’s white sand.
Truly white—whiter than snow, stronger than white itself, a radiant white—this "white" reflected back with its entire surface the direct and flooding sunlight. What else could this "white’s" beauty be if not sublimity itself, divine radiance itself?
For me, who had always loved the aura, fragrance, and enchantment of "white," such resplendent allure rather led me to yearn for a state of perfect stillness.
I had never before witnessed the true whiteness of stones and sand to such a profound degree.

And then—the boundless main stream; your shining white distributaries; across the bank and downstream’s misty haze—

“Sea! Sea!” Taketarou cried.

Now, the child tossed an empty beer bottle from the gunwale into the water with a plop.
The bottle was at first tea-brown, then blackened, floating downstream with only its neck bobbing up and down.
A blue-and-purple duck’s neck grew farther and farther behind.
That was how fast the boat moved.

“It’s still not opening! It’s still not opening!”

“Boy, can you really drink that much? Wait a moment.”

Even so, driven by his desire for the empty beer bottle, he kept standing up and with both hands forcibly shoved it into the cup.

“This is a problem, this is a problem! Look—you can see the airfield.”

On the shore lay an African-esque tableau of naked boys and girls. Pine trees and thickets and sunlit ground by the water’s edge—even the weave of reed mats glistened. Pale red mimosa blossoms—blooms upon blooms upon blooms—marked Kitajima, with Kusaai’s Crossing looming far beyond.

To our right rose Maenami Fudō’s elegant hillock; to our left whispered Matsukura Village where shuttles quietly wove painted silk.

The main current pressed another delta leftward now, widening obliquely as the river’s breadth yawned open rightward—rightward—
Ah—again stretched the boundless haze of downstream reaches.

We passed a place called Kasajima Crossing.
Inside a small hut with a faded gray sail-like awning on the right slope, a shipwright wearing only a loincloth rhythmically hammered nails into the boat’s interior, facing toward the river’s heart—tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.
It was truly captivating.
The hammer’s swing, as if at play.

Our boat once again glided playfully over the waves, its oar strokes slow and leisurely—the current no longer swift now, transformed into the grand undulations of the great river.

At a place called Hoppō Village Hongō, we saw three waterwheel boats.
Downstream again, we saw two similar boats.
Each boat had a structure on it, with two light wooden waterwheels turning on both sides.
Inside came the sound of pestles pounding, the smell of rice bran filled the air, and voices of men and women could be heard.
They were boats shaped like Chinese tanks.
These would go downstream one day and ascend upstream the next as the rapids shifted.
They possessed a simple yet pleasing charm.

“This would make a fine children’s song,” I mused, watching them pass each other by one after another.

The long iron bridge spanning the Kisogawa River on the Tokaido Line came into view.

“Ah, that right bank is Kasamatsu’s Shiki no Sato, and over there lies Suzume no Oyado.”

Noda Sobeko stood at the bow, waving high the white, red, and black flag of Saiunkaku Pavilion, making it flutter vigorously.
We had just passed beneath the iron bridge.
When I looked, a boisterous crowd was clamoring outside the pine grove on the left bank slightly downstream.
They were naked children.
Dongahara was the name I had once been asked to give to that inn’s sand dune, but this marked my first time seeing it up close.

“They’re calling for us!”

“Those must be your summer camp children.”
“About how many attend?”

“Last year we had around 160, but this summer perhaps 60? Then children from Gifu Kano Takegahana Kasamatsu come four or five times weekly with their teachers.”
“Yes.”
“Fifty or seventy each from Ichinomiya and Okumachi visit too, you see.”

“How vigorous,” I remarked, glimpsing across the water where a figure somersaulted from the diving platform in a blaze of light.
Only the warning flag’s tip stitched a crimson dot upon the river’s heart below.
The swollen post-rain currents must have dragged it from its proper place.

“Where exactly is this Oki Swimming Area?”

“It’s much further downstream, you know,” said the front boatman who had been crouching, now beginning to rise.

“Oki ain’t no good,” said the rear oarsman as he slightly pulled his sweep to starboard and began short, quick strokes there—whereupon some birds passed by, gleaming white against the sky.

And so, our small boat, following the shallows of a wide reddish-brown sandbar, came to rest lying nearly grazing through withered reeds and pampas grass.

This was Shiki no Sato.

And there, at that very moment on the opposite shore, were the village’s elderly master and the Mayor of Kasamatsu, already waiting to greet us.

“There we are—I’ve finally brought them,” said Sparrow Hood Sobeko, her glasses gleaming.

“I won’t accept it unless you first dock at Kasamatsu on the Mino side.”
“Putting Suzume no Oyado on the Owari side off again and again,” he laughed, “Why, when they spoke of Kisogawa rafting, it always used to reach this Kasamatsu in the old days.”
“It’s outrageous to monopolize everything with your Japan Line!”—so went yesterday’s account of how that house’s master had raged.
Hearing this and taking in today’s vista, I felt certain it was true.
However one regarded the estuary, only by positioning the majestic sweep from Inuyama to Kasamatsu as the lower reaches did the Japan Line midstream and Nezame and Ena gorges upstream truly come alive as a river should.
Here flowed transformations unmatched by any other watercourse—and through them all, a synthesis of beauty.

Climbing up to the wide upper floor facing the water, I gazed upon the distant iron bridge we had descended from. Sosengorge’s wondrous scenery, eagles on rocky cliffs, Hakutei Castle, rain and crimson sunsets and fireworks—now all that met my eye were clouds and Jiangling. The white-glowing delta I’d seen just an hour or two before, the rapids of branching currents, the shipwright’s rhythmic tapping, the rustic charm of waterwheel boats—somehow they all felt separated by the haze of distant days.

I once again surveyed you beneath the great river on this clear day.
The long embankment stretched out; the ends of the hazy curved lines along both banks darkened slightly deeper than the sky—and now, in the foreground of this garden stood crape myrtles in full bloom, their red and white blossoms vivid.
An elegant thicket and a tea house, the glare of late summer sun and the drone of cicadas.

A rattan table and wicker chairs, glasses of chilled barley tea, green yōkan in bowls, and sweet rice cakes shaped like ayu.

Railings encircled the east and south, while under the eaves, a wisteria trellis—from the blue light of its leaves—dangled cluster upon cluster of still-green seed pods; yet despite the daytime Gifu lanterns, not a whisper of wind stirred.

It was hot, quite intense.
The waxed white fans began fluttering chaotically.

1:00 PM.

The entire breadth of the river below glowed, and within that light something even more dazzling shone—alongside these glimmers, small boats floated silently by the gunwales. In the small boats, one or two figures dappled on the water's surface kept probing the river's heart with their poles. It was a bright, serene picturesque charm. They were searching for "kibashi" buried in the riverbed’s sand, I had heard. This "kibashi" was said to be the pith of driftwood—the core remnants of trees that had been swept away by floods, polished and washed clean through endless tumbling. As firewood, nothing could surpass it. They said it burned so fiercely that not a single speck of ash remained. Even for the poor riverside dwellers, such heaven-sent blessings existed.

As we amused ourselves, the local confection called "Shikoran" was served.
It was said that Toyotomi Hideyoshi had praised it and given this name.
They claimed its shape resembled a helmet's neck guard and its fragrance an orchid's.
Abbreviated as "Shikoran."
I wondered if it might be Dutch.
A variety of baked rice cake, sliced thin and crisp against the teeth, with an elegant flavor of almond water.

This Kasamatsu was once a delta of reeds and rushes celebrated as the "Reed Islet," submerged with each major flood.
It is said that the drifters of Mitsuya were the first to leave this fox-and-badger den and develop the area.
After Hideyoshi built embankments here, it’s said he transferred what originally belonged to Owari Province into Mino’s domain with deliberate intent. “During the Edo period,” the Mayor rose from his chair, “this became direct shogunate land with a district magistrate appointed, and just below this embankment lie the remains of an execution grounds.”

Since the railway’s opening, solely because the local people were stubborn and refused to allow the establishment of a long-planned station, even this Kasamatsu Highway—once thriving as a ferry landing along the lower Kisogawa—had utterly fallen into decline, or so it was said.

This Shiki no Sato was said to have been first established by Bako—an eccentric horse-loving talent spotter who took the haiku name "Bako" and always found joy in horses.
That Bako had also passed away some fifty years prior, and now the current head—a prefectural assembly member—purchased it for his retirement enjoyment and continues its legacy as an equally elegant traditional restaurant.

The screeching cicadas once again swarmed forth among the grove of trees there.
The screeching cicadas’ voices at times brought tranquility to the clouds and treetops.

As urged, I entered the white bathroom downstairs with Taketarou.
Through a window overgrown with some kind of vine, peering out revealed reeds and the river surface.
Inside the white bathtub, there I pretended to be a kappa.
Takabō squealed and scampered away.

“Was yesterday fun for you? There must’ve been lots of rocks.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“There were no monkeys.”

“They weren’t there.”
“I did a beautiful silver pee!”
“Hmm,” the father began washing his disheveled hair with soap.

In truth, wanting to have the child observe everything up until the evening fireworks display, I had my nephews take him along.
So they took the train to Tsuchida and, just as I had done, boarded a boat from Kōboku Gorge to descend along the Japan Line.

“Be sure to take a good look at everything.”
“I’m glad we came this time, wasn’t it?”

“That was nice, wasn’t it?”

As we made to go upstairs, the friendly maid approached, a large peach-colored towel billowing softly in both hands.

“Come now, sweet little master, let’s get you dried off, shall we?”

As the naked boy shouted “No!”, the maid tried to gather him up in a tight embrace.
He began to flee.
At this, the maid became more insistent.
“There’s a good boy now, such a good boy”—now, wouldn’t the little one get angry? “You idiot! Damn you!”
He lashed out, scratching with his nails. To him—his own distinct being—he must have felt his self-respect wounded unless treated as an independent person.
If a madman is treated as mad, he will surely rage.
By the same token, even a child resents being coddled too much like a baby.
In composing children’s songs too, this demands particular care.
“Just leave him be—I’ll dry him myself,” I called out.
“My, what a strong-willed little one we’ve got here,” she remarked.

They ascended to the second floor, but Taketarou—his lingering resentment evidently unappeased—began tearing at the shoji paper with sharp, rapid rips. Yet I could not bring myself to similarly rend through the thick stack of art albums, colored papers, and poem cards that had been brought out for us.

After a short rest, we stood up.
We were going to visit Suzume no Oyado on the opposite bank.

“Young master, come back quick! Tonight I’ll be holdin’ ya, ain’t I?”

“No! I’m sleepin’ with Kitahara Hakushu!”

“Well now, this little one’s quite the character, ain’t he?”

The car started moving.

Sobeko of Suzume no Oyado called himself a mendicant child.
He had once been a bookstore owner, but after his beloved wife's death from illness, in the depths of his grief he made a vow and strove earnestly to attain true poverty with nothing to his name.
He had joined Ittōen as well; the hardships he endured in establishing the current academy by the Kisogawa bridge appeared to have been no ordinary matter.
Yet such undertakings are prone to becoming burdensome.
If pursued excessively, worldly concerns bring calamity.
To what degree had Dōgaoka truly become Dōgaoka?
I resolved to observe it closely during this opportunity.

Suzume no Oyado was situated on Kasamatsu's opposite bank.

The pine grove on the low sand dune was unexpectedly quiet and desolate.
Clusters of bush clover at Matsugane, the yellow rough walls of thatched houses cast with shadows of Mōsō bamboo, the sound of looms—it was indeed the midday hour of a rustic village straight out of an old tale.
Straw mats lay scattered about, and even the postal deliveryman was napping on his back.
Beside it stood a tasteful gate roofed with cedar bark.
On the plaque, in blue characters, was inscribed "Kyokusuien."
On the engawa verandas and in the narrow, enclosed gardens, village children of both sexes were gathered playing.
To the left of the entrance hung a plaque for Jin'ai Dōjō Kyokusuien; looking up, the large-character plaque of Suzume no Oyado even had the Enmei Jukku Kannon Sutra carved in scattered script; to the right hung a bamboo-suspended bell labeled "For Official Use"; below was inscribed "Shōko Kyakka" (Look Beneath Your Feet).
It must be that this is a temple, a school, and a layperson’s home.
However, the refinement pursued as a pastime had become overly formalized.
I remarked that perhaps it would be better left unadorned.
The Buddhist altar room served as a classroom enshrining Priest Ryōkan, with a small library at the front and the Rōkansō Annex in the rear.
At Rōkansō Annex, twenty to thirty male and female elementary school teachers had gathered and were waiting for me.
I talked about folk songs and children’s songs, then immediately rose from my seat.

In the pine grove too, mischievous children were raising a commotion. On the grounds of Ryōkan Hall, five or six stately red pines stood positioned diagonally before its front eaves, where sunlight and shadows mingled with white sand and fallen pine needles, maintaining a serene and beautiful landscape.

"I never imagined such a splendid place existed on the opposite bank," marveled the master of Shiki no Sato.
"Well, you've truly seen it through to this point—remarkable," I replied with a smile.
Yet what lay ahead would prove crucial.
When form overcomes spirit, it becomes a mansion of fame and profit.
"Sobeko, I'll be giving you an earful from now on," I said with a laugh.

We emerged between the mulberry fields and pine grove onto the left bank of the Kisogawa River.
There was another pine grove.
A tent and a diving platform.

To the west lay the Yoro mountain range; beyond them in the distance rose Mount Ibuki. To the north, beyond the iron bridge, stood Gifu’s Mount Kinka and the faint silhouette of Ontake. Just across the water waited Shiki no Sato’s crape myrtle.

“Well then, let’s head back and I’ll treat you all to a drink,” declared the elderly protagonist as he briskly turned on his heel.

To the night banquet at Shiki no Sato with its many wisteria trellises came additions of the local police chief, agricultural association head, and the poet Mokumokushi, an old acquaintance.
We shifted seats repeatedly, moving between garden tea pavilions.
When night grew deep, I crawled into the mosquito net where Taketarou lay alone on his back, chest and stomach thrust out in disheveled sleep.
Lifting that oversized chestnut-burr head back onto its wayward pillow and fastening deep the front of his borrowed nightclothes, I fell soundly asleep there—and soon arrived the white-white dawn of river mist.

The next day, we set out for Yoro.
There we stayed two nights; returned to Nagoya for one night; then went to Ena.

IV

August 12th, 5:00 PM.

The entrance to Ena Gorge presented an iron bridge scene near the pleasure boat company.
On the opposite bank stood a simple two-story Western-style building; across the clear stream stretched this embankment’s mixed trees and thickets—along the shore sat sky-blue and white motorboats alongside roofed pleasure boats fluttering red-striped E-patterned flags.
The group that boarded consisted of myself, Taketarou, our companion Sobeko, her brother-in-law T-boy, and seven or eight local “Sankyo” poets.
Flesh-colored, green, and peach parasols folded against their shoulders, two or three figures who appeared to be schoolgirls in yukata crouched by the water’s edge—these did not belong to our party.
They merely appeared like clouds or waterfowl, briefly brightening and adorning this scenery with their delicate presence.

By the lunar calendar, it was the fifteenth day of Obon—exactly tonight’s full moon.
The sky was clear; the breeze refreshing; the sunlight still intense.
The heart of our hurried journey seethed ceaselessly through those two or three hours before that splendid night.
When station-to-station telephone calls finally tracked us down here in Nakatsugawa—we whose whereabouts had been unknown—they delivered an urgent matter requiring our immediate return.
And so, having had to cancel our planned sightseeing upstream at Fukushima and Nezame no Toko, we now had no choice but to depart this place by dawn on the thirteenth.
And so, with the remaining scant hours until sunset, we had the pleasure boat towed by a motorboat putt-putt-putt-putting along, aiming to hastily tour all around Ena Gorge.

Once we had settled into our seats, I exclaimed with a laugh, “Oh my, where has that printer fellow gone?”
The Ena Gorge enthusiast Y—that gaunt, fervent man with a pale, prominent nose who had rushed to greet us in Tajimi and never ceased his promotional chatter throughout the train ride to Nakatsugawa—had now vanished as if wiped away.

“Ahaha, he’s out greeting someone again—said something about a film crew coming, you see.”
“He’s completely engrossed—”

And he flicked a finger against the smoothly bald forehead of that folk poet cousin.

“My, busy as ever. When love for one’s hometown reaches such extremes, it becomes a matter of life and death.”

The uproar over Ena Gorge during the Eight Views Voting had apparently been ferocious.
Carelessly uttering even a disparaging word would get you killed.

And then, the surrounding scenery of clouds, mountains, and water surged into motion.

“As for this so-called Fly Kannon—”

“It lies further upstream.”
“What a shame—I can’t even give you a proper tour.”

Shine, shine, shine, shine.
Silver, silver, silver, silver water surface, surface—surface.

“That is Guardhouse Forest.”

In the deep and tranquil forest of the left bank were anglers.
One, two, three, four.
Straw hats and half-sleeved shirts bent over slender rods, lines drawn taut into the water.
Tree shadows pooled in aged green clarity, something glimmering here and there.
They fished for carp and dace, so we heard.
Someone said cranes had once nested in those woods too.
This must have been the guardhouse site that watched rafts drift down from Kisodani.

In contrast, Nae Castle Ruins have a desolate sparse forest atop their high rock strata.
It is said to be the site of Japan’s only red-walled castle.
There is a legend that the coiled dragon, lord of this pool, despised white plaster.
I kept comparing and comparing [the sights] with the Ena Gorge Boat Tour Guide—busy, busy.

Wind, wind, wind, wind.

Shone, shone, magnificently shone—the undersides of the magnolia leaves.

Verdant peaks, verdant peaks.

In the lower reaches of the sky, high-voltage power line towers stood visible.
The river dammed by Daito Electric Power’s dam had apparently increased its water depth to a height of 180 shaku.

Wind, wind, wind, wind.

The water—the waves—would at times surge backward.
More than a river, it was the calmly pooled surface of a lake.
On both banks, the treetops and unexpected halfway-up branches of trees were exposed to the water, presenting a scene like a forest submerged by floodwaters.
Thus, I heard that the rapids had transformed into deep pools and a mountain lake, while the rocks, their bases submerged, had lost no small measure of their layered, precipitous beauty.
Yet because of this, the water gained an ultramarine depth, and its abundant volume manifested a profoundly still realm of mountain solitude.

This Ena Gorge lay along a three-ri stretch of waterway from Nakatsugawa Station in the middle reaches of the Kisogawa River to Ōi Town, and was said to be the most spectacular wonder in the Kiso Gorge.
The strange rocks of Japan Line stood crowded together and towering in the river, but the rocky beauty of Ena Gorge resided rather in its mountaintops and thousand-ren cliffs.

“That is the Blue Cliff.”

Blocking the view was a deep blue, veined rock wall. Beneath it stood Kurakake Rock. To its left was Kasagiyama beneath the spread-out downstream sky. Clouds, clouds, clouds.

To the right stood Takemitsu-iwa, Oni-iwa, Hiki-iwa, Bōshi-iwa—a vertiginous procession of rocky aspects: towering forms and chaotic jumbles, leaping shapes and coiled presences, bizarre figures and meditative postures—aspect layered upon aspect upon aspect. Scattered here and there were red pines; black pines; dwarf trees; sparse woods.

Shone, shone, shone, shone—the undersides of the magnolia leaves.

Chug, chug, chug, chug—smoke, smoke, smoke.

“Ah, that is Tsukimachigaoka.”

“The full moon tonight must be truly splendid,” I murmured, tilting my head back to gaze at the hill’s skyline.
Even so, the boat’s speed felt excessively frantic.

“Why doesn’t someone dance?” a man said, gulping his beer.

“Ah, that is Murasame Falls.”

Within the gorge, Bikyō Bridge and Biekibashi Bridge came into view.
One of them was also known as Fundoshi Bridge.
They had built the bridge using funds accumulated from savings on fundoshi loincloths and the collection of horse manure, but it was washed away in the Taisho 3 flood.

“Fundoshi Bridge has fallen—”
“—and sang that verse,” whereupon everyone burst out laughing.
“That one’s the iron bridge.”

“The gorge!”
The group’s pointing and calling grew increasingly frantic.
“That’s Tengu Rock.”
“Look! That’s Makuraishi! Nochi-Amida Rock! Hodai Rock, rock rock rock rock!”

There, the rock formation known as Shin-no-Ji Rock came towering into view. Literally angular huge rocks faced each other, piled up at the cliff’s summit. But for me, such curious charms held no interest—they made for rather insipid paintings and poems.

Turning right at the confluence of the main stream and the Tsukechi River, on the side of the boat navigating upstream along the tributary also known as the Midori River, what had already begun to glimmer was indeed the indigo-blue of that deep pool. The intensity of that aquamarine hue, unseen even in Japan Line until now, was nothing less than a profoundly penetrating coldness. In these mountains, perhaps no lake surface could possess such ferocity of water depth as this. Dammed by Daitō Dam, at this shoreline—now risen more than a third beyond its original cliff height, two hundred ren aloft—fish now ascended to what were once treetops while jagged rocks sank into the riverbed’s murk, rendering the boundary between light and dark nearly indistinguishable. Moreover, it was a corner of deep blue, deep blue sky directly above, nestled between steeply towering rock walls that pressed in on one another. Clouds—white and billowing—drifted across the sky; the mountain air grew all the clearer under the ceaseless chorus of cicadas; and in that gorge, three to five children in white shirts rowed a white boat. This bizarre contrast itself evoked a kind of shudder—that of witnessing what should not be witnessed.

We now came face-to-face with the grandeur of Korean Geumgang. This valley’s purity and tranquility, along with these layered cliffs’ indestructible force and weight, created a scene of utmost antiquity reminiscent of an ink-wash painting. Meotoiwa, Hōraiiwa, Iwato Fudō Falls, Suichōtan Pool, Takarabune, Kasanegaiwa, Hōtō Pagoda—all these names felt superfluous, for the true spirit emanated solely from the celestial cliffs pressing inexorably downward.

There was Ankōana Cave. There had been a legend from the Tenshō era of a white dog and a white horse. Later, a woman named O-An, having fallen into ruin, raised a jewel-like child there. Places that once could perhaps have been climbed along the shoreline had now transformed into cliffs rising from the lake surface.

We turned back from Ashige Pond, where boats moor, and returned to the main stream.

Gensai Rock stood to the left, while facing it rose the towering Tenchū Rock.
From this point onward, the hills spread out with gentler slopes between them, their edges lined with rows of red pines whose slender trunks tower upward, blending a delicate refinement into the eerie charm of the rock strata.
Taishō Cliff contrasted with this.

Next, our houseboat lapped softly against Byōbu Rock's cliff face—a vista grander than Korean Geumgang's majesty. Jagged pine branches climbed from roots, sprawled sideways, undulated skyward, forming a divine realm where what might be called pine-wind wisdom resounded. Mountain air, water's glimmer, and shape-shifting clouds—clouds upon clouds—filled the scene. To the right flowed a hushed waterfall. Ah—a waterwheel stood there. An angler shouldered his pole in silence, ascending a slender path.

A simple cottage stands.
There is also a modern ryotei.

Shōko Fuchi Pool, Nusubito Tani Valley—the heavenly grandeur of Shōgun-dai Towering Imposingly, and the solemnly level Kanatoko-dai.

Golden sunlight.

Then, as the view brightened there, a boat landing came into view on the left.
Vermilion-lined E flags, roofed boats, motorboats, sparkling waves, children on the pier, wind, wind, wind.

A man climbed up to the tea house hidden among the trees and unfastened his trousers' button.

That very front was Daitō Electric Power's white, white dam embankment.
The classical profundity and ruggedness transformed there, manifesting a grand concrete landscape of modern white and silvery gray.
The water swelled full, dammed up and contained; the bridge's string of lights still shone white with glass bulbs alone; Western-style architecture, vivid in its reflection upon the hills and waterside—this dam was deemed the grandest spectacle in the Orient.
The dam embankment stood 180 shaku in height and 1,000 shaku in length of concrete; its reservoir capacity measured 1 billion cubic shaku; upstream spanned 3 ri and 12 chō; surface area covered 171 chō; watershed extended over 123 square ri; equipped with four generators, two exciters, and producing 42,900 kilowatts of electricity.
Regrettably, we did not have the opportunity to stand downstream and look up at it.

We circled the expansive lake surface before that magnificent dam, and then finally set off on our return journey.
We did so at high speed.

At the gorge entrance before the pleasure boat company, standing on tall, tall white stone bridge piers, a figure with an astonishingly long fishing rod could be seen casting a line. Under the bridge as well, figures casting lines and waiting for fish in several groups could be seen.

Evening glow arrived.
A man could be seen, tentatively arcing his long pole over his shoulder—its tip touching the railway line—as he gingerly stepped across the iron bridge’s sleepers.

We climbed up, took our photos, then filed into the already lit temporary train—it ran on and on and on.

I thought.
The profound tranquility of Ena Gorge at times surpassed the bold grandeur of Japan Line.
Unless one comes this far, the comprehensive beauty of Kisogawa River cannot be grasped.
Splendid, splendid.

Now, Nakatsu Town, which we had strolled through, had vivid electric decorations but was simple and shadowy in a way befitting a small northern city.

That evening, a banquet was held at Baishin-tei.
The town’s young performers formed a circle and there, adorned with red hoods, flowered hats, and matching hakama trousers, danced the authentic Kiso Odori.
But their movements were too polished, too supple.
“That’s not how folk songs go! Hey, I’ll show you a real example!”
I was drunk too.
When someone burst into the adjacent room, cries of “What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?” erupted in commotion.

Wearing a red hood with a flowered hat on my back and hakama trousers, I swayed out to the rhythm of “Alright now!”—whereupon the young mayor and everyone broke into raucous applause.
At that, I scratched my head a little under the red hood and burst out laughing.
It was less boldness than recklessness.

“Hey there, little one! Let’s dance together. It’s yo-yo-yo! Yo-yo-yo!”

This very night was indeed the lunar calendar’s Obon Festival.
A bright, bright full moon.