Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [104]
“Oh, we’ll see each other again one of these days. Your home seems to be the road, and I do a bit of traveling myself.”
Jōtarō didn’t seem to want to move. “Just who are you looking for?” he asked. “What sort of person?”
Without answering, Otsū waved farewell.
Jōtarō ran along the bank and jumped into the very middle of the small ferryboat. When the boat, red in the evening sun, was halfway across the river, he looked back. He could just make out Otsū’s horse and Kizaemon on the Kasagi Temple road. They were in the valley, beyond the point where the river suddenly grows narrower, slowly being swallowed up by the early shadows of the mountain.
The Hōzōin
Students of the martial arts invariably knew of the Hōzōin. For a man who claimed to be a serious student to refer to it as just another temple was sufficient reason for him to be regarded as an impostor. It was well known among the local populace too, though, oddly enough, few were familiar with the much more important Shōsōin Repository and its priceless collection of ancient art objects.
The temple was located on Abura Hill in a large, dense forest of cryptomeria trees. It was just the kind of place goblins might inhabit. Here, too, were reminders of the glories of the Nara period—the ruins of a temple, the Ganrin’in, and of the huge public bathhouse built by the Empress Kōmyō for the poor—but today all that was left was a scattering of foundation stones peeking out through the moss and weeds.
Musashi had no difficulty getting directions to Abura Hill, but once there he stood looking all around in bewilderment, for there were quite a few other temples nestled in the forest. The cryptomerias had weathered the winter and been bathed in the early spring rains, and their leaves were now at their darkest. Above them one could make out in the approaching twilight the soft feminine curves of Mount Kasuga. The distant mountains still lay in bright sunlight.
Although none of the temples looked like the right one, Musashi went from gate to gate inspecting the plaques on which their names were inscribed. His mind was so preoccupied with the Hōzōin that when he saw the plaque of the Ōzōin, he at first misread it, since only the first character, that for Ō, was different. Although he immediately realized his mistake, he took a look inside anyway. The Ōzōin appeared to belong to the Nichiren sect; as far as he knew, the Hōzōin was a Zen temple having no connection with Nichiren.
As he stood there, a young monk returning to the Ōzōin passed by him, staring suspiciously.
Musashi removed his hat and said, “Could I trouble you for some information?”
“What would you like to know?”
“This temple is called the Ōzōin?”
“Yes. That’s what it says on the plaque.”
“I was told that the Hōzōin is on Abura Hill. Isn’t it?”
“It’s just in back of this temple. Are you going there for a fencing bout?” “Yes.”
“Then let me give you some advice. Forget it.”
“Why?”
“It’s dangerous. I can understand someone born crippled going there to get his legs straightened out, but I see no reason why anyone with good straight limbs should go there and be maimed.”
The monk was well built and somehow different from the ordinary Nichiren monk. According to him, the number of would-be warriors had reached the point where even the Hōzōin had come to regard them as a nuisance. The temple was, after all, a holy sanctuary for the light of the Buddha’s Law, as its name indicated. Its real concern was religion. The martial arts were only a sideline, so to speak.
Kakuzenbō In’ei, the former abbot, had often called on Yagyū Muneyoshi. Through his association with Muneyoshi and with Lord Kōizumi of Ise, Muneyoshi’s friend, he had developed an interest in the martial arts and eventually taken up swordsmanship as a pastime. From that he had gone on to devise new ways of using the lance, and this, as Musashi already knew, was the origin of the highly regarded Hōzōin Style.
In’ei was