Hokkaido Highway Blues

he taught me some of the city’s vernacular, which is often described as “Japan’s answer to Cockney.” I didn’t quite understand what Ryuo did. He was a technician of some sort, but it must have been fairly specialized because he had driven all the way from Osaka, across Shikoku, just to do one hour’s work. He was now on his way home and wouldn’t be back until well after dark. It was a hell of a way to spend the day.
    To our left was the Inland Sea, a place that has come to symbolize a loss of innocence to the Japanese. The name conjures up images of hidden islands and lake calm waters, but in fact much of it has been despoiled by industrialization and shipping lanes. The metal intestines of factories clogged the valleys and a gray pall hung in the air. For the record: I have no patience with people who complain about the sight of factories, as though factories were some kind of sin against humanity. (Where do these people think all of their stuff comes from? Do they think we pluck their toasters and Walkmans fresh from the vine?) But it does seem sad when a landscape as beautiful as that of the Inland Sea is choked with death-gray concrete and oily industries. It was like putting a civic dump in a national park.
    The expressway twisted and writhed to offer us various angles of the Inland Sea, but all I saw was urban desolation. We plunged into one tunnel after another, and when we emerged we faced the same intestinal tubings of factories and refineries. Mired in the urban swamp, the mountains in the distance looked like islands sinking into quicksand. The cities themselves were a jumble of faded wood, pale concrete, and countless coats of paint. Japanese cities are layered, like damp leaves on a forest floor, decaying into themselves, and yet—somehow—always self-renewing.
    Here and there, a small village would appear, an idyll, terraced and interwoven with the land, quiet and doomed. Even the fleeting glimpses of sakura seemed ashen gray when set against this landscape.
     
    * * *
     
    At Zentsūji City the mountains sweep up from the plains. The expressway cuts through them with an Xacto-knife disregard for topography And then Takamatsu appears.
    We had traveled across the spine of Shikoku on nothing but small talk and silence. In sheer distance, it was the longest ride of my trip and also the most uneventful. I arrived at the ferry port in Takamatsu thoroughly relaxed.
    “Have you seen the castle?” asked Ryuo.
    I hadn’t. I didn’t realize Takamatsu City even had a castle. Ryuo walked me over; it was beside the train station, facing the sea. All that remained was the moat and some lumpy earthworks, now turned into a municipal park, but Ryuo was not discouraged by any of this.
    “The castle stood right here,” he said, pointing toward open sky. “Here is the main tower,”—he gestured to more thin air. “Here is the central gate. Here are the sentry posts.“ It was like looking at Wonder Woman’s glass airplane. ‘And here”—a sweep of his hand—“the guard towers. It was a busy place, lots of activity, lots of excitement.” His hands moved quickly now, drawing shapes and conjuring up crowds of people. “Very hectic. It was an important castle.”
    I looked at the air. “It’s very impressive,” I said.
    “Thank you,” and he smiled for the first time.
    One moves through ghosts in Japan, and the past is always there—it is just a matter of learning to see the invisible.
    “Here was the courtyard. Here the promenade. Beautiful women, samurai, nobles, merchants.” He stepped back and admired the scene. He then shook my hand and said, simply, “Osaka.” He had to get going.
    The sun was slipping into the sea like an ingot into water, and I halfexpected to see steam rise up. Ryuo turned to me and said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with me to Osaka instead? I’m going right past the Naruto Whirlpools. You’d like them. They’re the biggest whirlpools in the world.”
    It was tempting, but I had other circles to explore. He thanked me for the company and I thanked him for the ride, and he left me there, beside an imaginary castle, with the commotion of generations turning around me.
    They were a long time dissolving.
     

16
     
    THERE ARE MORE than seven hundred fifty inhabited islands scattered in clusters across the Inland Sea. Shōdo is the second largest. The ferry moved through the falling dusk and arrived at the island as if by stealth, sliding in along