Hokkaido Highway Blues

They’re the biggest trees in Japan.“ I had been to Yakushima. The trees were magnificent, disappearing in graduated silhouettes into the mists that seem to permanently shroud the island. They are the largest, and certainly the most impressive, trees in all of Japan.
    “The world,” he said, correcting me.
    “Japan,” I said.
    “The world.”
    “Japan.”
    He drained his cup of tea. “Time to go.”
    South of the Uchiko was the village of Ikazaki, where the art of kite fighting has been revived. Sharp blades, called gagari , are attached to the kites which slash and dive in swirling aerial duels. Kites with severed strings, although free, will float aimlessly for awhile and then—like parables in a Con-fucian analect—fall to earth. Kites that are merely wounded, however, will scream downward, spiraling to the ground in dramatic crashes.
    “Hokkaido has good mountains,” said Saburō. “You’ll like it there. Lots of horses. Open ranches. My daughters and my wife and I”—he was surrounded by women; perhaps that was why he was so manly—“we went horseback riding in Hokkaido. The horses were fast and strong.”
    “How about the people? I’ve heard they’re very friendly in Hokkaido.”
    He shook his head. “No. Not friendly at all. You know what they say: cold weather, cold hearts.”
    The highway grew wider and the traffic grew steadier. Soon we came out onto the plains, and a tableland of green spread out before us. And at that moment I realized what it was that made the Japanese landscape so jarring: there were no foothills. Having lived in a mountainous landscape for a hundred generations, where farmland is always at a premium, the Japanese have reclaimed land from the sea and have honed and tilled and flattened every available space until there are almost no transitional areas left. The flat patchwork of rice fields stretches out to sudden walls of the mountains, and the two meet at near ninety-degree angles. In Japan, you go from cultivated horizontal to forested vertical without a sense of melding: a land of foreground and background, with little in the middle distance.
    Matsuyama City sprawls out in just such a vast plain. The largest city on Shikoku, the main port and industrial center, Matsuyama is a gravity well that sucks in trade and traffic in every direction. Saburō dropped me off on the outskirts. He had to get to the airport in time for his mountain-climbing, jet-setting daughter to arrive. I would have liked to have met her, to get another angle on this odd, flower-intoxicated, god-discerning family, but it was not to be.
    I asked Saburō for his address, but he waved my notebook aside. He was the first and only person I met during my travels who refused.
    “If you come through Uwajima again, you know where to find me: at the Nakamura flower shop. Nakamura. Remember that. It means ‘middle village,’ and that’s where you can find us. If you come, we’ll talk. If you don’t come, there is no point keeping contact. I only gave you a ride. You don’t need to write or anything.” He swung the door shut, and a sickly sweet aroma of flowers swirled around him.
    And so, Saburō the pilgrim drove away, leaving me standing beside the road, grateful but slightly baffled.
    That night, I dreamt I was hitching rides with Buddha. We were standing on a highway flooded with flowers. When we held out our hands, pebbles fell from our palms.
     

10
     
    MATSUYAMA Coy BEGAN as a castle town and a castle town it remains. The original structure was built in 1603, but it kept getting hit by lightning and it burned down several times over the years. (Once again, the fact that they had built a large wooden structure with a metallic roof atop the highest outcrop of land never seemed to bother anyone.) The turrets and outer walls are authentic, but the main keep was last restored in 1854, making Matsuyama the youngest of Japan’s twelve extant castles. It is also the most attractive. Other castles are grander, others are older and others are more important, but none are as beautiful or aloof as Matsuyama Castle, dubbed “the Black Crane Fortress.” It manages to be both elegant and ominous, like a suit of samurai armor laid out for a waiting lord.
    In the early twilight, I slid into the city’s nocturnal prowl. A bevy of office girls swept by. “No! She didn’t! Did she? I can’t believe it!” Touts and arm-grabbers outside the sex shops ignored me (being a Westerner, I was no doubt