Preface

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of map: the grid and the story. The grid map places an abstract geometric meshwork upon a space, within which any item or individual can be coordinated. . . . The power of grid maps is that they make it possible for any individual or object to be located within an abstract totality of space. But their virtue is also their danger: that they reduce the world only to data, that they record space independent of being. Story maps, by contrast, represent a place as it is perceived by an individual or by a culture. They are records of specific journeys, rather than describing place within which innumerable journeys might take place. They are organized around the passage of the traveler, and their perimeters are the perimeters of the sight or experience of the traveler. Event and place are not fully distinguished, for they are often of the same substance.

—Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places

A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, I found myself seated comfortably on an early-morning local train heading out of the city of Nagoya. The train made a number of stops inside the city and then eventually moved on to the outskirts, passed the huge Oji Paper Company surrounded by its medieval-type walls, continued on with a stop now and then through farming communities with their rice and vegetable fields, and finally entered the low mountains bordering the broad, flat Nobi Plain. We paused briefly once or twice more to let people on or off at little unmanned stations and then moved on. It was early autumn, and the mountains were still predominantly green, but with some patches of fall colors and a persimmon tree covered with bright orange fruit here and there. Mists still hung in the folds of the low hills.

Finally, the train pulled into my stop, the village of Nagiso, tucked in almost like a narrow, quiet stream running through the valley, where I was informed that the minibus to my destination, Tsumago, would be leaving in two minutes. Grabbing my pack, I hurried out of the station and into a small parking lot where I purchased my ticket and got on board. Seconds later, we pulled out of the tiny village, moved out onto National Highway 17 (two lanes) and, following the Kiso River, drove through a hamlet or two and passed a large statuary company displaying granite grave markers and statues in various sizes of Buddhist saints, mysterious foxes, and some very large toads. Then, in less than fifteen minutes, we pulled into another small, open parking lot, where most of us got off.

There was nothing in particular to suggest that we had arrived at a very interesting place, but walking up through a narrow cobblestoned alleyway, I suddenly entered a village that had not changed much for two or three hundred years. Passed by the new (early twentieth century) railroad, it had “missed” the modernization that had brought other locales in the Kiso Valley almost up to date. The only street in town, the old Kiso Road, was extremely narrow and lined by shops, inns, and tiny restaurants where one could get not much more than a bowl of buckwheat noodles to eat—all made of weathered but well-kept wood and clearly of some age. I had stepped, with my nice nylon rucksack and Gortex raincoat, back in time.

A friendly shopkeeper pointed out the inn, the Matsushiro-ya, where I had booked two nights’ lodging—again, an entirely wooden two-story structure with large wood-slatted sliding paper doors and floor-to-ceiling open sliding windows that took up the entire front of the edifice. As I signed the register, the proprietor—a short, fiftyish man with short cropped hair—informed me that the inn was some three hundred fifty years old and that he was the eighteenth generation of innkeeper there. Everything in the Matsushiro-ya was as it had been, he said, except the toilets, some of which he had changed to the modern style to accommodate visitors from places like Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. In the rooms, there were no televisions, no telephones, or anything electronic except for the lights, which had been installed, reluctantly, by his grandfather.

That night I was called down to dinner in a small room, my only companion a newspaper writer from Tokyo. Amid servings of river fish, mountain vegetables, grilled mushrooms, rice, and beer, we talked over our surroundings and made plans to walk over the pass to the post town of Magome the next morning. He would write a story about Tsumago and this short section of the Kiso Road upon his return.

The following morning, my new friend and I ate an early breakfast of fish, miso soup, vegetables, and rice, and then headed out for our hike. The innkeeper had kindly supplied us with the small bells travelers wear to scare off the black bears that inhabit the mountains; the weather was cool and the sky perfectly clear, and we chatted all along the path—again, the old Kiso Road—up over the low but steep mountains, ringing our little bells in full faith and stopping to rest every thirty minutes or so. Much of the old road wound through dark cedar forests, the road itself often made of the original large, rough stones called ishitatami laid down in the early 1600s, and marked here and there with ancient stone statues of guardian gods.

Finally we breached the top of the pass and walked down into the village of Magome, another hamlet that had been preserved, then burned down, then rebuilt mostly as it had been for over a hundred years. Here my writer friend took a bus to start his way back to Tokyo, and I took another minibus back to Tsumago. That night, after a lengthy bath in a traditional wooden tub overflowing with near-boiling water, and then dinner, I took a short walk through the village to see overhead more stars than I could remember had ever existed. With no street lamps and only a few lights shining from the occasional inn, the darkness—and quiet—were nearly complete. Back tucked in under my futon, I thought for a little while about the many different travelers who had rested here in this room since the inn was established so long ago—pilgrims, samurai accompanying their lords, traveling priests, poets and townspeople just out for a lark. With such company in mind, I fell into a deep and undisturbed sleep.

THE FOLLOWING PAGES are an account of a hike I took along the Kiso Road during the autumn months of 2013. The Kiso Road—kisoji in Japanese1—runs about sixty miles through central Nagano Prefecture and mostly follows first the Narai and then the Kiso River (traveling from north to south) through the granite forest-covered mountains of that same name.² It is the heart of the longer 340-mile road, the Nakasendo (also called the Kisokaido), which stretches from Tokyo to Kyoto. It is called a “road,”³ and it often runs parallel to or on Highway 19 but just as often wanders into the mountains as a smaller paved road or just a narrow path of dirt or ancient paving stones. The Kisoji has been in use for perhaps over two thousand years, although it was most popular as a thoroughfare during the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries when travelers walked, rode on horseback, or were carried in palanquins through the mountains, along scary suspension bridges built on cliffs overlooking the swift river and over the steep passes.

It is not too easy to get lost on this road, although it can be done, as I have sometimes proved; markers are posted along the way in Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese because the authorities do not want to go looking for you. There are also eleven villages, established in 1601 as post towns, about six to seven miles apart, where the modern hiker can stop for the night in traditional inns, just as his counterparts did far back into the past. And, although there are sometimes quick gains and drops in elevation as the road meanders through the mountains, even people in moderate shape can walk the entire sixty miles in less than a week. My preference, however, is to take it at a much more moderate pace. The beauty of the mountains and rivers, and the experience of the traditional baths, cuisine, and bedding in the inns are not to be rushed through. For this particular hike—I’ve walked the road a number of times over the past decade and a half—I took three weeks. Had time permitted, I would have taken more.

This account is also somewhat of a story map, much as is described in the opening quote. Over the years that I’ve traveled the Kisoji, I’ve been lucky enough to meet with a number of people—innkeepers, coffee shop owners, farmers, Buddhist priests, and hikers like myself—who have generously shared their knowledge of the rich history, traditions, and folklore of the area. Because of the antiquity of the road—it is first mentioned in a Japanese chronicle dated 701—there are also a number of books that describe not only the geography and topography of the road, but also local spots inhabited by ghosts and animals like foxes and badgers that bewitch the unwary traveler, or places famous for some romantic or tragic event. These guidebooks, many of which were written in the early 1800s when the Kiso Road was at its greatest popularity, were intended for the inquisitive traveler of those times and are still wonderfully informative. Poets and journalists, such as Basho and Shiki, also loved traveling the Kiso Road, and, along with excerpts from the early guidebooks, I have included a number of their poetic impressions—many by Santoka, the shabby Zen priest/haiku poet/sake drinker, whose presence I felt constantly.

In this way, the territory covered here is not just geographical, the time line not limited to late October/early November of 2013, and the hike not mine alone.

I HAVE ALSO been fortunate to have many times walked the Kiso Road with friends—artists and writers for the most part—whose energies and perceptions have greatly added to my understanding and enjoyment of this, my favorite place on earth. Thus, I owe an extreme debt of gratitude to Emily and Henry Wilson, Gary Haskins, Robertson Adams, Kate Barnes, Shinji Kobayashi, Mayumi Tison, Chris and Kathy Knight, Daniel Medvedov, and Ginny and Tadashi Takemori. There are also those whom I met along the way whose extraordinary knowledge, generosity, and kindness made my travels all the more interesting, comfortable, and informed. Their name is legion, but a few of them are Hida Isao, Ando Mineko and Ryuji of Nakatsugawa, Ted Taylor, Fujiwara Yohei, Shirota Hirosuke, Mr. and Mrs. Tsuchikawa of Narai, Hotta Fumiko, Dr. Okuhara Tasuku, Jinmura Haruo, Imai Yasuko, Murakami Atsushi and his gracious wife, Imai Akinori, Ichikawa Yutaka and Mihoko of the Yakiyama no Yu, Matsuse Yasuko, Uegaki Ryoko, the o-kami-san of the Isami Ryokan in Yabuhara, and Fujiwara Yoshinori.

There are no words that could ever express my gratitude to my friend and mentor, Ichikawa Takashi, whose erudition in Japanese literature and culture, expertise in mountaineering, and companionship have nearly defined my experiences in Japan over the last forty-five years. His generosity beggars the word itself. I would like to note that I still have the superb climbing boots he had made for me in 1968, although, to my chagrin, I did not take them along on this trip.

I would also like to thank the fine people at Shambhala Publications—especially Beth Frankl, John Golebiewski, and Jonathan Green—for suggesting this project and supporting me throughout. Their patience seems to be without limits.

Finally are my deep bows of thanks to my professors of Japanese language and literature, the late Dr. Richard McKinnon and Prof. Hiraga Noburu, both of whom have traveled roads far deeper into the world described in these pages than I will ever go.