ELEVATION 1,350 FEET
There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a summer shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.
—Hagakure
THE LATE-SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY Kiso kaido yadotsuke describes Midono as “a poor-looking post town”; a hundred years later, Ota Nanbo called it “a wretched place”; and as late as the 1970s, the Konjaku nakasendo hitori annai notes that it is nothing more than “a quiet line of shops separated from the national highway.” Okada Zenkuro, however, saw the town in a different light.
This post town has many rice and vegetable fields, and is situated on both sides of the Kiso River. It is better established than the post town of Tsumago. . . . Among the leaders of the town are men of considerable high character, and when bad years come, they provide aid to those of the lower classes. This is, indeed, commendable. About forty-six or forty-seven men go out for lumber work on a daily basis.
Near the entrance to the town is a stone marker memorializing the emperor Meiji’s having passed through, but on the site of the honjin, which was destroyed in a large fire in 1881, is now a two-story building connected to the publishing business. An ancient weeping cherry tree, once part of the honjin’s garden, remains on the spot. With a trunk of five feet in circumference and twenty-four feet high, it must be a magnificent sight when it blooms in the spring. Not one inn remains in the town, so the traveler must take note of what is there and move on.
In Midono, however, is one of the most interesting displays on the Kiso Road. A short walk back north and up the hill from the train station is the Tokakuji, a temple now operated as a Soto Zen temple but that was originally established in 729, long before either Zen or esoteric Buddhism had been brought to Japan. Years ago, when my friends Robbie and Gary and I dropped through, the priest had invited us in for tea and showed us a three-and-a-half-foot-long gong he used as the temple “bell.” This had been made by an American friend out of a laughing-gas canister cut off at the bottom, suspended by a chain from the side of the temple, and was to be struck—the priest demonstrated this enthusiastically—with a baseball stuffed inside a sock. He then showed us the temple’s true treasure—one that attracts a number of visitors to this out-of-the-way place—a large collection of statues carved by the eccentric seventeenth-century Shingon Buddhist priest, Enku (1632–95).
Enku carved his statues of Buddhist deities and Shinto gods with a small hatchet, from almost any piece of wood he could find, from rotten driftwood to tree trunks. Contrary to almost all other Buddhist statuary, his pieces are full of a strange energy and could be called “primitive,” although that does not do justice to them. When I showed photos of them to a sculptor friend of mine in Miami, he could not believe that they were from the seventeenth century and said that they looked more like something influenced by Picasso. Here is a description of Enku from the late-eighteenth-century Kinsei kijin den zoku kinsei kijin den (Eccentrics of Recent Times).
The monk Enku was from a place called Takegahana in the province of Mino. He left home to become a monk when young, and stayed at one temple or another, but when he was twenty-three, left, and ensconced himself on Mt. Fuji and again on Mt. Haku in Kaga. One night, the avatar of Mt. Haku appeared to him and instructed him to repair the Miroku Temple at Ikejiri in the province of Mino. He accomplished this quickly, but did not stop there, and went on to the Zenkoji Temple at Mt. Kesa in Hida. . . .
Enku carried only a single hatchet, and with this went about carving Buddhist statues. At Mt. Kesa he carved statues of the Two Guardian Kings on withered trees that were still standing. When you look at these even now, you may wonder if they are not like the works of the Buddha.
Enku knew if a person was coming. Also, he could look at a person or a house and tell if they would last for a long time or soon decline. He was never mistaken.
One time, he passed by the residential castle of Lord Kanamori in Takayama of this province, and remarked that the castle had no ch’i, or energy. Sure enough, in one or two years the lord was transferred to Dewa, and, except for the exterior citadel, the castle fell into ruins.
Again, the guardian spirit of Onyu Pond was seizing people, so that no one would walk by the pond alone or even when accompanied by someone else. Enku took a look, and stirred up the water. Finding that there was something suspicious about the matter, he declared that there was going to be some disaster in the province. Since the people knew that there had been something strange about the place from the very beginning, they were quite alarmed, and begged him to help them from this misfortune. In short order, Enku took up his hatchet, carved a thousand Buddhist statues in just a few days, and sank them to the bottom of the pond. After that, no one was ever seized again by the guardian of the pond, even while walking there alone.
Enku then traveled east of Hida and into the country of Ezo [Hokkaido]. No one there knew about the Buddhist Way, so he explained the Dharma and converted many people. Even today, he is referred to as a present-day Buddha, and his light lingers there in deep respect.
Later, Enku returned to Ikejiri in Mino Province, and finished his days there. In the provinces of Mino and Hida, he became known as the Saint of the Cavern because he lived in a cave.
Enku seems to have been a practitioner of Shugendo and joined small groups of yamabushi at Mount Ibuki, a bleak mountain visible from the bullet train when traveling between Nagoya and Kyoto. He also climbed two unexplored mountains in the northern island of Hokkaido to set up Shugendo practice there. At some point he vowed to carve 120,000 statues, and by all accounts he was able to accomplish this promise. He left many of these carvings throughout the Kiso Valley, and some are still owned by private individuals whose ancestors had received them in return for some kindness shown to the old priest.
Enku passed away on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the day of the Bon Festival, a festival of the dead. According to tradition, he requested that a hole be dug in the ground near the bank of the Nagara River, and when this was completed, he sat down in the hole and had himself covered up. Breathing through a bamboo tube, he chanted sutras and rang a small bell until he finally passed away. His grave marker may be found at the Mirokuji, a temple in the Ikejiri section of Seki City.
On the way to the Tokakuji, I encountered three middle-aged Japanese women hikers from Tokyo who had just passed by the temple as they walked this section of the Nakasendo. They had not known that the Enku statues are enshrined there and decided to join me to take a look. The temple today is a large wooden structure with a roof of stone tiles and a gravel foreyard, and it appears to have undergone a good bit of repair since I visited it last. Alas, the laughing-gas “bell” is no longer there or has been moved to a less visible spot.
We rang the bell at the priest’s residence, but there was no answer—both the priest and his wife were away—so I guided the ladies to the small shrine where some of Enku’s finger- and hand-sized statues of the “Seven Happy Gods” are kept in a glass-encased safe. Such secure measures were not always taken here, but as I was adjusting my backpack straps at the train station earlier in the morning, the station master informed me that a number of these priceless treasures had been stolen from the shrine some years ago.
Even with their small size and position behind a heavily locked glass case, these tiny statues radiate energy and life, and we stood gazing silently at them for some time. Carefully inserting some coins in the offering box, we then bowed low to the shrine and walked away. The ladies had decided that they would stay and look around the temple, but the sky was beginning to darken with purple clouds, so I bid good-bye and hastened on my way.
The Kiso Road now follows a winding path through rice and vegetable fields and behind some residential backyards. I crossed a bridge over a small river—a stream, really—with the interesting name of Januke 
. This is literally “pulling out the snakes,” and as often, when I asked people on the way what this meant, I got a number of different answers. The two I liked best were (1) that the river winds back and forth like a snake, and (2) there was an earthquake here once, and with the trembling of the earth, all the snakes came out along this stream. I was left to take my pick.
Not long after crossing the Januke River, I found myself climbing up the slope of the little neighborhood of Wago. In the Kisoji meisho zue, the text notes,
The famous local product here is Wago sake. Many years ago, there was no sake in the Kiso Valley, so the villagers of Wago set out to produce some. It is made from the water of the valley and has a light taste. You will like it.
And, in the Jinjutsu kiko, Nanpo describes it this way.
Seeing the placard that advertised “Wago Quality Sake,” suspended from a man’s house in a village called Wago, I stopped my palanquin momentarily and, taking a breather, thought I would have a taste of this so-named “quality sake.” It was in no way inferior to the Ch’u mi-ch’ung of Yunnan [a southern region of China]. When I asked the proprietor of the place about this, he said that they brewed it from the pure waters of this valley. Combine this sake with the mochi I had tasted previously, and you have a double uniqueness. This is not in the category of finding something to be delicious when you’re starving, or thinking something to be satisfying when you’re dying of thirst.
Unfortunately, sake is no longer brewed in Wago, so, unlike Nanpo, I had to walk on. And it had started to rain. Though it was mostly uphill, the mists and clouds were moving between the mountains like something you would see in a Chinese painting. I was soaked, regardless of the small umbrella I had been thoughtful enough to buy in Nagiso, and suspected that I did not present a very dashing figure.
Seen from behind
as I go:
soaked to the skin?
—Santoka
For a while the path went downhill, but then up once again and I ascended the Godozaka, or “Godo Slope.” Godo is another small village on the Nakasendo, now mostly new houses, and probably a bed town for people working in Tsumago or elsewhere.
There is a stopping place called Godo, consisting of just two or three human habitations. A placard there announces that the local famous products are bean-jam buns and bean-jam rice cakes. I tried out the rice cakes, and they were just as good as anything in the capital. I thought that even on the Tokaido, rice cakes like this are probably rare.
At the top of the slope, surrounded by a small woods, is a shrine dedicated to Kabuto Kannon, or the “Helmet Kannon.” It was here that Yoshinaka had had a small temple built sometime between 1177 and 1181 when he was constructing a castle to the south just outside of Tsumago. The temple was to protect the castle from the northeast direction, considered to be unlucky and an entranceway for demons. At some point, Yoshinaka took off his helmet and had the small statue of the Horse-Headed Kannon removed from its crown and installed inside a Buddhist statue carved by the monk Gyogi (670–749). I later learned that this statue, too, had recently been stolen but replaced through donations made by the good people of Godo. At a later date, the ceiling of the shrine had been painted with illustrations of fanciful plants and animals in colorful ten-inch squares by the famous Kano Eitoku (1543–90). In the very center, directly over the current statue, is a circle surrounding a single Sanskrit syllable, indicating that this is perhaps a temple connected to the Shingon or Tendai sect. But this is a quiet, mostly unvisited place, and there was no one here to inform me.
Back on my way, the rain had let up, in a few yards the road split, and the old Kiso Road veered off to the right through some low, but well-defined mountains. In a little over a quarter mile, the path went up the mountain on the right, to the old Tsumago Castle. Tired and wet, I decided that it was worth the climb.
Years ago, my wife and I had heard monkeys crying deep in these mountains, but on this day there was nothing but the sound of the light rain. The climb up is a stiff one but well marked. Here and there are ditches—the signs say “moats”—which must have been meant to slow down the enemy, even if just a little. Huge cedar and cypress trees are all about, which, with the steep climb, would also have impeded attackers, but given them some cover at the same time. At the top of the mountain, nothing remains but a grassy area where the castle might have been. During pre-Edo periods, however, the mountains themselves were considered “castles,” so perhaps there should be no surprise about the lack of ruins. Otherwise, there are only a few large stone monuments, some inscribed with archaic characters I could not read, others illegible with age and covered with lichens.
Summer grasses:
all that remain
of the warriors’ dreams.
—Basho
At the southern edge of this tiny plateau is a good view of the post town of Tsumago. On the northern edge, an unwalled, open rest house where trekkers can sleep offers a good place to rest. The rain had momentarily stopped, and the clouds and mists still moved across the mountains across the valley. There are many battles associated with Tsumago Castle, and here is one as related in the guidebook Kiso: Rekishi to minzoku wo tazunete.
In the spring of 1584, Hideyoshi was worried that Ieyasu would attack him as he moved down toward the capital, and so ordered Kiso Yoshimasa to block the Kiso Road and to rebuild the castle at Tsumago. Yoshimasa then entrusted Yamamura Yoshikatsu with a force of three hundred mounted samurai. The castle was surrounded on four sides by high mountains, the area was thick with oaks and pines, and below it flowed the Kiso River. Thus, it was a position of strategic importance.
Ieyasu ordered his general Suganuma Sadatoshi to lead more than seven thousand horsemen to make an attack on the castle. When the attacking force raised a triumphal song, those within the castle also put their voices together, but discharged only a few firearms. Witnessing such a weak resistance, Suganuma’s men thought there could only be a small force inside the castle, and so climbed the mountain to make their attack. At this point, huge logs and boulders were thrown down on them, and this was accompanied by a thick rain of bullets. Unable to continue the attack, the army retreated, surrounded the castle, and spent some days in waiting.
At this point, some soldiers from Oshima arrived, formed an alliance with the attackers, and further blocked the surrounding roads. Thus, inside the castle, the situation became critical: munitions and other supplies decreased day by day. Moreover, the villagers of nearby Yamaguchi colluded with the enemy, dammed up the water supply, and were about to lead the attackers into the castle. Mori Tadamasa, the general in charge of Kaneyama Castle in the neighboring province of Mino, was alarmed when he was informed of these developments and, as an ally of the Kiso, offered to come to the castle’s aid. Yoshikatsu, however, simply tightened his defenses and refused any help.
Nevertheless, their supply of gunpowder eventually ran out, and there was nothing they could do. At this point, however, Ko’ichizaemon stole out of the castle in the middle of the night, and ran down to the Kiso River behind the enemy lines. There, at a place called Uchigafuchi, the river’s current was as swift as an arrow, and with the green color of the water, you could not guess its depth. Ko’ichizaemon took off all of his clothes, swam to the opposite side, and then hurried along the bank to Midono, where an allied force was encamped. Once there, he explained the castle’s dire situation in detail. Thereupon, thirty men who were experts in the way of the river tied up bags of gunpowder into their hair, crossed the river, and entered the castle. Yoshikatsu was overjoyed, and at dawn fired off a volley of two or three hundred rounds, immediately felling twenty or thirty horsemen. The attackers, of course, were alarmed, thinking that reinforcements had somehow arrived.
Now, in cooperation with the villagers of Yogawa, the monks that resided at the Koten-an climbed up to the peak of Mount Shiba with a great number of paper flags, planting them here and there, and as night fell, lit watch fires throughout the mountain. The flames lit up the night sky, and the enemy thought that surely Hideyoshi’s reinforcements had come from Fukushima, and that they were surrounded on two sides. Seeing this, Yoshikatsu had his soldiers steal the march on the enemy by having them lie in wait at the Araragi mountain road, and then dispatched yet other troops, sending the enemy into a chaotic retreat. Needless to say, Hideyoshi was extremely grateful, commending both Yoshimasa and Yoshikatsu the following year.
Descending the mountain, I picked my way over the huge roots and tiny bridges that crossed the “moats,” and once again continued on down the wooded slope of the old Nakasendo. In a short while, I passed an old dilapidated teahouse, in use until a decade or so ago—the Yamamura Chaya—and a number of unoccupied old wooden houses. Coming up to a bend in the road, I could hear the sound of voices and, turning the corner, arrived at the Koi Iwa (
), or “Carp Boulder,” so known because of its former appearance. This huge boulder, perhaps thirty feet high, once resembled a carp swimming upstream, but during the great Nobi earthquake of 1892, it turned on its side and its former resemblance was all but lost. A local story has it as follows.
During the Kamakura period, there was a general who was ordered to go off to war. Although he was resigned to his duty as a warrior, there was one thing that weighed on his mind: he would have to leave his lover [
, koibito]. The two of them went and stood before Koi Iwa and made this pledge: “No matter how long we are separated, our love will be as unmovable as this boulder.” The general then promised, “If I return alive, we will meet right here.” Saying this, he went off to the battle.
When his lover heard that the battle was over, she waited at the boulder every day. Finally, the general returned, the two of them met again, and were happily married. Years later, they visited the boulder once again, remembering their pledge deep in their hearts.
The boulder is now covered with vegetation and moss, and Japanese tourists were taking commemorative photos of it before walking the few yards back to Tsumago, the next post town.
COURSE TIME
Midono-shuku to Tsumago-shuku: 6 kilometers (4.2 miles). 2 hours.