Hokkaido Highway Blues

yesterday you told me that you always feel sleepy.”
    “Sleepy, yes. But tired , never.”
    I liked Hot Sushi. I liked the fact that you could never pin him down on anything. He reminded me, in his slightly ironic outlook and breezy goodwill, of the French Acadians of my home country. And his understanding of English nuance was remarkable as well. There is a difference between being tired and being sleepy.
    The air was clean and alpine crisp. Sloping away on either side were heady vistas that were so absolutely spectacular we almost considered waking up Say Ya. Abo finally did, as we snaked our way down toward the eastern shore of the island.
    “Yeah,” he said groggily, peering out the window with one eye. “It’s Sado all right.”
     
    * * *
     
    Some towns seemed to have blown onto the shore like flotsam. Such was the case with Ryōtsu, with its shaganappy patched-up, tumble-down, falling-in-on-themselves houses with their rusting corrugated metal roofs and sea-bleached walls. The color of Ryōtsu was the same silvery gray of old temples and driftwood.
    It was the end of the line for me. Hot Sushi dropped me off near the ferry port and gave me a pamphlet for the Pacific Island Club in Guam. “I’m in the picture,“ he said, pointing to a faintly recognizable dot. Diminished to a few pixels on a compugraphic imprint, Hot Sushi’s smile was still visible, like the Cheshire Cat’s grin, the last of his features to fade. I wished Abo the best, I shook Say Ya’s sleepy hand, and I gave Michelle one of those awkward halfhug/half-handshake type farewells that are so popular among North Americans. The four of them then piled back into the car and set off in the pursuit of experience and a never-ending present. God, how I envied them.
     

5
     
    THE TOWN OF Ryōtsu, indeed the entire island of Sado, was gearing up for its spring festival of drums and horseback archery, performed at full gallop in medieval garb. The art of the Noh mask was turned into burlesque above Ryōtsu Port, where a four-meter mask was hoisted up atop a tower as a tourist attraction. “It celebrates the life of Zeami,” said the man at the information desk. “And the fact that we have more than forty Noh theaters on this island, making Sado the. center of Noh in Japan.”
    “Do you go to the theater?” I asked.
    “Noh is very popular on Sado.”
    “Yes,” I said, “but do you yourself attend?”
    His voice dropped to the hushed tone of a dissident criticizing a military regime. “Noh is a little slow,” he said, and then with a wide smile. “I prefer pro wrestling. Do you know Giant Baba? I met him once. He was very nice. I was surprised.”
    “But pro wrestling is fake.”
    “So is Noh,” he said. It was one of the most reasonable things I have ever heard regarding public entertainment.
    Sado Island is also home to the internationally renowned Kodō Drummers. You may know them. These are the drummers you see stripped to loin cloths, muscles sheened in sweat, torsos like washboards, headbands twisted around foreheads and a wild grimace of battle in their faces as they hammer out a war cry, the drumbeats raw and primal, until your head swims and your chest tightens as though a tourniquet were tied around your rib cage and you have to step back, head reeling from the fire. That is Kodō.
    The Kodō Drummers of Sado Island have taken drumming to an intense, almost cultlike level. The drummers perform high-speed, overlaid rhythms, and to affect this union of spirit and sound they eat together, cook together, clean together, and live together. (Most members of the troupe share communal living quarters.) If it sounds vaguely counterculture and hippyish, it’s because it is. The roots of the Kodō movement go back to the late 1960s, when the Japanese youth movement opted out of mainstream consumer society and sought to reconnect with the past. Being Japanese, their approach was anything but lackadaisical. Joining the Kodō Drummers is like joining the marines. It is a tough regime: up before dawn and a ten-kilometer run, near-naked even in the howling depths of winter. (Long-distance running teaches you the rhythm of the human body. It also builds stamina.)
    Kodō Drummers play to the point of exhaustion, and stamina is crucial. They often perform leaning back, like a man in mid-situp, and it made me ache just to watch. They can make the drums tremble as softly as rain falling on a leaf, or come crashing to a head like sudden