One Day the Shadow Passed Read online

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  © Jonathan Reggio 2012

  This is a work of fiction. The use of actual events or locales, and persons living or deceased, is strictly for artistic/literary reasons only.

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other than for ‘fair use’ as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual wellbeing. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-84850-847-7 in print

  ISBN 978-1-84850-883-5 in ePub format

  ISBN 978-1-84850-882-8 in Mobipocket format

  For Will and Ali

  Table of Contents

  The Sun

  The Moon

  The Stars Above

  Epilogue

  Join the Hay House Family

  Many years ago I went on a long walk down a path unknown to travellers in that very old region of Japan called Shikoku Island.

  It is hard to imagine it today, but at the time when I undertook my journey the countryside was made up of thousands upon thousands of smallholdings that were still being farmed in exactly the same manner as they had been farmed in the days of the samurai. The great Japanese automobile and electronics firms had yet to dominate the world; most people still lived and worked on the land pursuing lives little different from those of their ancestors, and on Shikoku Island itself many of the farmers still went out into the paddy fields dressed in the traditional clothes of the Japanese peasant.

  The island is divided down the middle by a chain of mountains. To the east lie rich alluvial plains where rice and barley and other winter grains are grown. To the west the mountains descend into gentle hills and eventually peter out into the quiet waters of the Inland Sea. Orchards of citrus and persimmons and chestnuts and pomegranates cover these wooded slopes and below, down on the plains, vast networks of paddy fields and irrigation channels stretch away towards the horizon. The entire island has been cultivated for millennia with an intensity that is seen nowhere else in Japan.

  The path I had chosen to follow all those years ago was an ancient pilgrims’ route that has been trodden for centuries by the men and women of Japan. The pilgrimage begins at Mount Koya in Wakayama Prefecture and ends at the village of Karamachi, nestled on the shores of the Inland Sea. The journey takes forty days and forty nights, which is long enough to ensure that the solitary wayfarer has plenty of time to think – long enough indeed to ensure that he or she stops thinking altogether and begins simply to exist. For only once the mind is stopped, say the Zen monks, can it be truly repaired.

  The path passes through some of the most sublime countryside in Japan. Along the way it is dotted with roadside temples, built long centuries ago to offer food and shelter to the weary pilgrims. In the evening, among the silent stone walls of these ancient temples, the pilgrims share the spartan but healthy hospitality of the Buddhist monks. These holy men sleep on stone pillows, they rise at dawn, they eat gruel or boiled rice garnished with a handful of fresh herbs, then they put on their sedge hats and take up their staffs, and their voyage into the interior begins again.

  Ever since I was a boy I had longed to make the journey to Japan and walk the pilgrims’ route, but life has a way of continuously throwing up obstacles – good and bad – which prevent us from achieving even our most modest ambitions.

  I was seven years old when I first discovered a small book on Japan in my local library; from that day on, my fascination with the country and its people began to grow. Its art and poetry and history spoke to me like nothing else, and by the time I left school I knew hundreds of haikus by heart. I knew the name of every river and every town in the Archipelago, and the epic tales of the great samurai were as familiar to me as the stories of the Kings and Queens of England.

  But the years passed and there was always some reason why I was obliged to remain at home: a lack of money, the need to work, my commitments to my family. Such ordinary things prevented me from pursuing my dreams but finally, one day, I found myself at the end of a long summer. I was without a job and had no immediate prospect of getting one. I had time to spare and for once I even had enough money in my pocket to afford the ticket to Japan. I longed to breathe fresh mountain air and feel foreign soil under my feet. In any case, I couldn’t think what else to do with my life. All I knew was that I wasn’t ready to throw in my lot with one particular career.

  This sense of indecision was partly just a factor of my youth, but there was something deeper, too: my vague awareness that the world was heading in the wrong direction. Everywhere I looked the news was bad. Forests were being chopped down, coral reefs were being destroyed, indigenous cultures were collapsing under the pressures of Westernization – and yet there was no evidence that the world was becoming a safer or happier place.

  I feared indeed that the opposite might be true. The environment was being degraded, the rich of the world were becoming richer whilst the poor, who in the past had at least lived sustainable lives and had pride in their own cultures, were now being dragged into dependency on this global machine. Nature was misunderstood on a fundamental level, for even the most well-intentioned programmes of development seemed always to produce unforeseen side-effects, and every benefit delivered by progress carried within itself the seed of some future disaster.

  And the myriad processes that were driving this change were so complicated that they seemed to be utterly beyond the grasp of a normal person’s comprehension. I felt confused and I did not know how to understand this changing world, nor indeed what my role in it was supposed to be.

  With these anxieties weighing heavily on my mind, I set off for Japan. I had no real preconceptions about what I might discover there. I packed a guidebook
, a well-thumbed copy of Matsuo Basho’s haikus and a couple of changes of clothes. I hoped to live off rice and vegetables and to keep out of the big cities, where my meagre funds would soon be exhausted. I had done little planning other than choosing the route. I was giving myself up to destiny and I was launching myself into the timeless dreamland of rural Japan and tempting fate to show me a new path.

  As I was soon to find out, fate needs little encouragement, and my life was about to be changed for ever.

  On the seventh day of the pilgrimage I found myself wading through a vast expanse of waist-high grass that marked the boundary between the rice-growing plains of the east and the wooded slopes at the south-western end of the island.

  I was still in the state of euphoria that had overcome me as soon as I had stepped off the aeroplane. After all these years my dreams had finally come true: I was in Japan, walking the pilgrims’ route. It was a heart-achingly beautiful September day and there was not a cloud in the sky. So bright and strong was the sunshine in fact that, even though the brim of my traditional white-sedge pilgrim’s hat shaded my eyes, I was forced to squint at the view.

  On the horizon to the north I could see the majestic mountains of the central highlands and before me, tantalizingly close now, were the shady wooded slopes of the first foothills. Only the noise of my legs swishing through the tall grass seemed to mark my progress. At one point I turned to look back over my tracks; a long thin shadowy line disappeared off towards the horizon and was lost in the golden haze of grass and the last, now distant, rice farms. With every step that I took I was heading further and further into the most remote and unpopulated countryside of Japan, and as I did so a profound sense of elation – a sense of elation that I hadn’t felt in years – began to rise within me.

  Before I had left home I had dug out an old history of Shikoku Island from my local library. It said that this had once been one of the richest areas of Japan before agriculture was overtaken by technology and industry. Great dynasties had sprung up and perished here among the lush rice paddies of the alluvial plains, and even today the fields of Ehime Prefecture over which I was now treading still produced the highest rice yields in all the land.

  I watched as a gentle breeze caused a shiver to cross the measureless sea of grass, and I was reminded of a haiku by Basho whose poetry was never far from my mind throughout the duration of my walk.

  The waving of the summer grass

  Is all that remains

  Of the dreams and ambitions

  Of long-buried warriors.

  Full of wonder, I pushed on up the rolling grasslands half expecting to kick an ancient leather helmet or tread upon a rusty sword.

  By sunset I had reached my home for the night, a derelict Buddhist temple that was to be my last refuge down on the plains. The guardian of the place, an ancient monk, cooked brown rice that he scooped from a sack slumped against the stone altar. I drew water for the meal, crystal clear and sweet as wine, from the still-functioning well that stood in the centre of the temple yard, surrounded on all sides by crumbling walls. We ate the gruel in silence and then we curled up to sleep side by side on the temple floor.

  It had been a good day. The walking had been hard, but the countryside was so beautiful, so tranquil, that it was impossible not to feel uplifted, not to feel, even, a sense of tentative optimism.

  As the night drew on and I lay there unable to sleep the wind got up and began to howl. It was a dry, parched summer storm and as I tossed and turned on the hard, cold floor listening to the moan and screech of the trees, I found myself thinking about the people I had passed today working in the fields, about how very different our lives were nowadays in the great cities of the world, how complicated things were today and how the world seemed to be hurtling in the wrong direction.

  Eventually, I managed to drop off and grab a few hours of fitful sleep. When dawn came I wasted no time in gathering up my things. I was keen to get back on the narrow road and to experience again the growing inner calm that comes from long summer days spent in nature. I filled my water bottle with this water worthy of Babylon, and set off for the foothills without even having the chance to thank my sleeping host.

  After an hour I stopped briefly at the ruins of an old smithy that stood by the side of a trickling stream. The stream was unbelievably pure; it bobbled and jogged over pebbles and stones, delighting the birds that landed to wash and drink in its cool waters. I opened my guidebook and read the legend that this was where Gassan, the great swordsmith, had made his swords, tempering them with a hiss in the frozen water of the stream that rose only a few feet from his house. His skill had been so great that his swords had been prized all over the world.

  I sat on a rock and ate a millet cake and reflected that the mythical Gassan must have known the stream possessed some special energy, which was why he had located his smithy there.

  I opened the book of Japanese poetry that I had brought from home, but the beauty of the scene quite eclipsed any poetry and I laid the book to one side. I finished my meal, marvelling at the tranquillity of the place, and then moved on into the sunshine of the dying plains.

  After a long morning of sweaty toil wading through the tall grass under the heartless, indifferent gaze of the sun I finally broke through into the wild orchard groves of the foothills. There were cherry trees and orange trees, and I stopped to pick some choice fruits. Their taste was exquisite. Their juices overflowed from my mouth and ran down my sunburnt neck.

  It wasn’t obvious where the path went next, but perhaps because my spirits were so high from crossing the grass, instead of pausing to look at the map I recklessly pressed straight on into the wood, assuming that I would pick up the path again and that it would deliver me safely to the next temple.

  Half an hour later, with the euphoria of the shining bronze fields a forgotten memory, I found myself skirting the perimeter of a huge commercial orchard. Dizzied by the insistent uphill climb and the constant waterfall of dappled sunlight that poured down on me from all sides through the forest canopy, I paused for a moment to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my forehead. Lines upon lines of carefully pruned citrus trees were arranged in neat terraces over the curve of the hill off into the distance as far as the eye could see. Every tree appeared to be identical, clipped low to resemble an upturned sake cup, small and stout for easy picking.

  The ground beneath the trees was bare, scorched of all organic matter. Not a blade of grass could be seen on the dark earth, not a mole nor a mouse, nor even a worm, could have made its home there, and not a single bird hopped on the ground or flew in the air.

  The effect was to make the measureless orchard look like an endless Tokyo car park, or a production line for strange lampshades that had been magically lowered into the midst of this remote wood.

  I dabbed my forehead and looked at my watch. It was mid-afternoon. By now I should have been turning north, but somewhere on the dreamy ocean of grass I had lost my way and, as I laboured up the hillside hugging the fence of the parade-ground-like orchard, my pace slowed to a crawl. Finally, after much resistance, I had to admit the truth to myself: I was completely and utterly lost.

  Standing in the relative cool of the woods with the sound of my own breathing the only thing to disturb the near perfect silence, I began to take stock of my situation. I realized that I had used the last of my water from the temple well and I urgently needed to find more. Perhaps I hadn’t got as far as I had planned or perhaps this was just a particularly long stretch of the march – either way there was no sign of the next temple. I would have to find alternative accommodation. I was on the brow of a gentle undulation in the landscape and I could see across the wooded valley below to what looked like a small collection of dwellings. There weren’t supposed to be any hamlets or smallholdings on my route, but the sun was now way past its zenith and before too long it would be getting dark.

  I decided that the most sensible thing would be to head straight for the houses and throw m
yself on the comfort of strangers. It had been a beautiful September day and there had been absolutely no sign of rain, but I didn’t relish the idea of sleeping out in the woods, in the dark, and in any case, I had to find a source of water.

  Despite my best attempt to follow a straight line down into the valley and up the other side, after two hours of walking through the trees I still hadn’t managed to reach the village and I still hadn’t found water. No doubt, if I had been brought up in the countryside, all sorts of tell-tale signs would have led me to a spring practically at my feet, but I might as well have been standing in the middle of a desert instead of in a luscious wood. Everywhere I turned there were trees – trees and undergrowth. I cursed myself for having lost my head in the reverie of sunshine earlier in the day.

  Suddenly I thought I saw in the distance a small figure moving between the trees. Without hesitating, I headed towards the apparition. A few minutes later, I stumbled out of the wood and onto the narrow plateau of an orchard terrace.

  It was an unusual orchard, like none that I had seen before on my journey through Shikoku, and at first sight I assumed that it must have fallen into disuse several years before. The trees were in a state of joyful abandon; the branches were ragged and tangled and they had long ago outgrown the order that must have once been imposed upon them by a farmer’s secateurs, and succulent fruits hung half hidden within the folds of the leaves.

  And it wasn’t just the state of the trees that was puzzling: the orchard floor, instead of being clear earth devoid of all organic matter, as was the normal practice in the commercial orchards, was a riot of vegetation. A thick blanket of clover carpeted the ground and I could make out the leaves and flowers of many different kinds of plants all jostling for space amongst the confusion.

  The last rays of sunshine were breaking through the wood behind me and the whole scene was one of breathtaking natural profusion. Perhaps because I had just spent a week seeing nothing but the neatly manicured orchards of Shikoku the wild scene had a profound effect on me. It was a vision from a fairy tale. No one farmed like this today.