Takamori – talks with Oshida shimpsan

1.

Oshida shimpsan

Four times no: 1. no selection, 2. no possessions, 3. no rule, 4. no plan. “No selection” means that anybody can come here and join us, take part in our life, we don't reject anybody. “No possession” is the vow of poverty, not just individual poverty but also of the whole community, we decided that the community cannot have more capital than is necessary for hospitalisation of one member for one month. “No rule” means that any activity, prayers and so on, are to be a result of the inner need, not an external command, nothing is obligatory for everybody. It also means that the forms we have now may also change in the future. “No plan” means we don't have any plan for development. We live here in simplicity from one day to another and rely on Providence. I don't mean a year or two ahead, we are an agricultural community and we have to plan today what we will eat next year, but we have no plans of any development of the community or any attachment of what we have here. If the community ceased to exist in three years time – we are ready to accept it.

Father Oshida (shimpsan is the title used for Catholic priests in Japan) is answering my questions about the life of the community. We are sitting in a room of his hut whose walls are not exactly straight and whose roof is just corrugated iron. All around us – on the floor and the low Japanese table – piles of letters.

“All this is correspondence I have to answer”

Father Oshida looks like a sixty something years old person who is not tired of life. He has grey hair combed back, a dark-brown kimono, blue trousers loose at the waist and tight at ankles, comfortable for work. He is sitting in the half-lotus position on the floor.

“It all started with a vision of a few people 25 years ago. At first I came here alone, I worked with the peasants in the fields. They thought I was a bit strange but they didn't mind, on the contrary, they liked someone who didn't want any money and worked just for food. At that time I learned how to cultivate rice. I lived here in a hut. We built the chapel with our own hands. There were no carpenters, just a few people, one of them blind, he held the posts. We built the chapel and the hut we are sitting in. At the time the field terraces around here were overgrown by bushes and seemed useless but one year their owner told us that if we want we can try to clear and cultivate them, we could give him a part of our harvest as payment. We cleared them and now you can see what they look like. These are the fields behind the main building. Later other people saw the effects and wanted to let us use other fields but we didn't want too much, only what is needed for our needs.”

The window behind father Oshida's back fills the whole wall from top to bottom. It is a glass pane fitted in a movable wooden frame like the traditional Japanese shoji. The view from the window is obstructed by a fence made from rice straw. The fence is always constructed around houses for winter to protect from frosty winds. It is also a good way to preserve the straw. Winters are snowy here, Takamori lies 1000 metres above the sea level.

“Our life here is concentrated around work and prayer. Work in the rice field is very important for spreading the Gospel. Rice cultivation is the basis of life of the whole of Asia and work in the rice fields is the every day experience for most of its people. There, in the rice fields, knee-deep in mud, we share the life of majority of inhabitants of this part of the world. And the prayer: every morning one hour and every evening also one hour, most of it in complete silence, as you have seen. Sunday morning we have a mass here. Once a month we have also a few days of complete silence and fasting. We used to do it for a week each time but nowadays we just do three days because of my health.”

The sound of a bell calls everybody to the main building. The bell is actually not a bell, it is an old gas bottle struck with a log, but it sounds like a bell and regulates the life of the community. First it sounds at 5:30, a wake up call, then at 6:00 for the morning prayer, then at 7:30 for breakfast, then in the afternoon for lunch, then at 5:30, the end of the day's work, at six for prayer and 7:30 for supper. Normally there is no bell to start work but today there is something special: miso will be made in the traditional village way and everybody is to come and see how it is done. Miso, the staple food of all Japanese people, is a paste made of fermented soy beans. It is only done once a year and father Oshida is the one who knows the old ways.

“I have to go there”, he says. “They need me.”

He gets up. In the doorway he turns back and adds:

“We live here in simplicity and try to feel the undercurrent of the Church.”

Miso production

2.

The common room: tatami mats cover all the floor, one wall is made up of glass panels, a long and very low Japanese table where everybody sits during meal times. Meals are simple: rice (home grown), miso (home made), some vegetables. Conversation at the table is in two languages. Father Oshida speaks to me in English. With a mischievous smile he asks:

“Are you a good Catholic respecting all the rules?”

“To be honest I never thought about it.”

“Here you can see things that sometimes shock good Catholics. For example a cloistered nun who came here for holidays. I mean the sister who is sitting next to me. She is a cloistered nun who was given a permission from her Mother Superior to go to a dentist. The dentist is 200 metres from her convent but she came here for two weeks. Another example is our communion bread. Catholics are often taught to swallow the Communion wafer without touching it with their teeth but here we bake not a wafer but quite a big bread and break it into pieces. There was once a woman who wanted to swallow one of those pieces whole and later – hrrr hrrr – she was choking. Ha ha ha ha ha!”

3.

The chapel in Takamori is a tiny hut with a thatched roof without any ceiling. There is one sliding door and one window. The tabernacle is made of a wooden log built into the wall. The middle part of the floor covered with a cloth serves as the altar. There is a candle on one side of it and an iron tripod full of wood saplings on the other.

Six o'clock, prayer time announced by the gas bottle. Father Oshida doesn't come, he gets up later. Sister Kawasumi always comes, always sits at the same place by the window, she lights up a candle. She sits in the Japanese way or in half lotus, always with her head slightly inclined to one side. All who come sit around on the floor, all in silence, motionless.

Very very long silence. When you pray, don't use a lot of words as the pagans do. After one hour sister Kawasumi gives the sign by lifting her hands folded in prayer. Somebody distributes books from a pile next to the altar. Psalms are recited, one verse by sister Kawasumi and one verse in unison by everybody else. Then a fragment of a Gospel is read and all ends with “Our Father” spoken in unison, with long pauses between each plea of the prayer.

4.

Many people come to Takamori for a short visit.

An old man bent in two, who has a well tended garden in the village and usually comes with a bunch of vegetables or a pot of soup he cooked for us. Or a young man named Takashi-kun, who comes because Sueyoshi-san, a member of the community, started work as an apprentice with a local thatcher, Takashi-kun works in the same place and waits for Sueyoshi-san to finish his breakfast. Or Kagami-san, a farmer always in rubber boots, one of the leaders of the fight for clean water (quality of springs from which the village takes its water is in danger, a big company bought land above the village and wants to build a golf course, the villagers fear that pesticides may pollute the springs).

Christians sometimes come for the Sunday mass from as far as Tokyo, like Ishikawa-san, a young lady who was baptised by father Oshida in Takamori in the spring that gushes from the rock like a fountain. Or a group of Filipino girls who work in a bar in a nearby town. They come for mass but not on Sunday, then they are too busy. They come in an afternoon on a working day. After the mass they come for a cup of tea. The girls are flirtatious. Asian faces but they have something Hispanic in their behaviour, in their flirting with a touch of cheekiness. “You are handsome” says one of them to me with a wink. The conversation is about their life, their “work”. At one point one of them suddenly changes the subject.

“Are you open for confessions, father?”

They agree to meet another day, there is no time today, they have to go back.

“I have a lot to say, I will tell you all the details” says the cheeky one.

They have to go. We walk with them to their car. After they are gone, father says:

“The place they work in is no good, but they are good Catholics, we have to help them.”

5.

A mass in Takamori – absolute simplicity. Everybody sits as usual on the floor, Kawasumi-san in her place near the window. Father Oshida in half-lotus sits before the cloth that serves as the altar. Absolute simplicity. Long silence to start with, very long silence, half an hour or more. The vestments woven by Kawasumi-san: stole from thick yarn, a grey blanket serves as a chasuble. Only the most important words of the mass are spoken aloud. All fall to their faces for Kyrie. For Sanctus Suzuki-san, who sits next to the iron tripod, lights up the brushwood and the flame rises quickly almost to the roof. The host is quite big unleavened bread, broken into as many pieces as participants during the Communion. The paten goes around, everybody takes a piece, later the chalice with wine goes around as well and everybody takes a sip. The readings and the sermon are in Japanese but if there are any foreigners – father Oshida adds a few words in English.

“We don't have faith because we understand. We have faith because we hear the echo from the Depths...”

Takamori Soan

6.

Work in the rice fields.

Kusatori, hand weeding and squashing insects. Everybody knee-deep in mud, bent down. Father Oshida in a straw hat. Sister Sato with a scarf on her head, on her side a basket into which she puts the weeds she pulls. Claudia wears long rubber trousers to protect her from insects. She doesn't have a basket. Imai-san doesn't have a basket either, both push a big ball of weeds before them.

“A basket like this is a good idea” says Claudia.

“I made it myself from plastic tape used to bind parcels at the post office. I learned it from one sister who lives far in the mountains in Nagano-ken.”

“Is this the sister who was here last year? I think I met her.”

“It is possible. She comes to Takamori at least once a year. She is a very powerful sister”

Claudia is not Japanese. She lives in Buenos Aires where until recently she taught theology at the university. She is sixty, her hair completely white. She visited Takamori last year and this year she came for six months. She decided that sitting in silence and working in mud is better than university lectures.

7.

Showing me a lawn that doesn't seem to have ever been mown shimpsan says to me:

“Can you cut down this grass a little? It begins to look a bit messy. This place should look like a temple. Shouldn't smell of consciousness too much but it shouldn't smell of laziness either.”

This comparison with Japanese temple surprises me. Japanese temples (at least the ones most visited by Western visitors) are extremely neat, with their raked gravel gardens without a single weed, with stone paths meticulously swept. Slightly curved roofs give the temple buildings a special dignity. It wouldn't ever occur to me to compare them to this place where a muddy road leads to the main building, straw and goat droppings are spread around the goat shed, paths that could be meticulously swept don't exist. The roof of the main building is a patchwork of tiles and corrugated iron, obviously the building has been extended a few times.

“To me this place doesn't look like a temple at all” I said. “Certainly not like the garden of Ryôanji.”

Father Oshida answers almost in anger:

“I don't want this place to look like some temple in Tokyo! Most temples smell of consciousness too much. Everything has a function, they are not open to the depths. This place is to be open! MU split in two, open to the depths!”

“Do you think the garden of Ryôanji smells of consciousness?”

8.

Kumitori means emptying cesspools by hand using a bucket and a big ladle. Every toilet has a separate cesspool, all are nearly full and in the morning Kawasumi-san asked me to dig a big hole behind the buildings, near the rice fields.

“We will empty the pools in the afternoon” she said.

I dug the hole and after lunch I put rubber boots on and went to ask where the tools were.

“Ladles and buckets are there, behind the shed. But you want to do this? No no, I will do this, I only asked you to dig the hole.”

All afternoon she walks there and back, there and back, until the evening.

9.

“I am coming to Yamada Roshi for a dokusan (as you called it) and he says: 'What koan are you on?', I say 'How to stop the sound of Mount Fuji', he says 'And what is your answer?' I say 'I cut it with a sword of my wisdom'. He says “No good, this is rational thinking, bring your answer tomorrow' Jingle jingle (his little bell).”

Douglas is fixing a door and I am helping him when he puts hinges on. He volunteered to do this because he built his own house in California and knows how to do it. Douglas is on his journey around the world, mostly visiting places like this. He has been to San'un Zendo in Kamakura, now he is in Takamori, later he plans to visit monasteries in Thailand and ashrams in India. He only came to Takamori for a few days. We are talking most of the time while he is here.

“Another time he asked me: 'How does Mount Fuji do three steps forward?' I got up and made three steps. 'Good' he says. 'You and the mountain are one'. All this is about what they call kensho. Some people have been for years in his zendo and still don't get it.”

“Do you mean he told you you've got it?”

“Yeah, he says I've got the MU.”

“And how do you feel?”

“It's OK, my ego feels alright. But all this is too formal for me. He says I should go to him just before my flight to give him my answer to the last koan he gave me. Maybe I'll go, maybe not, I am not sure.

But this is where I learned about Takamori. Yamada Roshi stresses approach with Christianity, he even threw out from his zendo some people who were against it. He himself is in close contact with Jesuits from Sophie University. A few people from his zendo spent some time here and told me to come if I want to taste the real Japan.”

10.

Silence dominates the mass in Takamori. Words of father Oshida when he reads the Gospel and when he says his sermons come from Silence.

“We are leading our spiritual life in simplicity, listening to the Voice. There was no other sign given but the sign of Jonah...”

Sister Kawasumi suddenly bows to the ground and starts sobbing uncontrollably.

Kawasumi san

11.

In the evenings, after supper, there is Bible study. Atmosphere very different from that in the chapel, where there is silence and everything is said with dignity and seriousness. The Bible study is in the dining room, father Oshida with the face of a visionary scratches his head or his foot, reads St. John's Gospel in Greek, translates it ad hoc into Japanese and English, compares it with translations he has in front of him and cries out:

“It is not like this! They don't understand anything! They are prisoners of consciousness, want to explain everything logically! It is impossible! This is a vision and when we read St. John we have to sense that vision!”

Sometimes he looks into his huge Greek-Japanese dictionary. Sister Kawasumi sits leaning against the wall with a calm smile of someone who knows. Sister Sato looks at shimpsan as if hypnotised. Claudia pens down words of Father Oshida in her notebook. Sueyoshi-san, the thatcher's apprentice, every so often asks simple questions to which shimpsan answers:

“Stupid! You don't understand anything!”

He ends the session with a gesture of folding palms and gets up, intones a Japanese folk song and jumps up in dancing steps. Claudia looks at him with astonishment. Shimpsan shouts in her direction:

“Prisoner of consciousness!”

12.

Sister Kawasumi lives in something they call “a hermitage”, really just a shed made with planks. Sister Komoda lives in something similar but slightly bigger and with a thatched roof. Sister Sato lives in a dugout, half of which is a store room and half is for her to sleep. They don't have electricity, they use candles, only father Oshida has light in his cottage. Sister Kawasumi eats only two meals a day, lunch and dinner. Sister Komoda also eats only two meals: breakfast and lunch.

During a tea break (usually around three in the afternoon there is a break in work for a cup of tea) father Oshida talks with sister Kawasumi in Japanese. After a while he turns to Claudia and myself and says in English.

“She says that although she lives in her cottage, unconsciously she seeks stability. We have lived here for so many years and we begin to think that it will always be like this...”

13.

I tell father Oshida that most Zen temples charge money for meditation. If one wants to meditate in them one has to pay quite a lot. I came to Japan because I wanted to experience the life of a Zen monastery but I have no money at all so I could only stay in those monasteries that don't charge. He says:

“They charge money? I can't judge that. If they have to buy food, it may be expensive. If they have their own rice field then maybe, but if not... You said they charge 2500 yen per day? Well, I suppose it could be a little less than that..,.”

“Bukkokuji, where I spent a month, lives only from gifts and takuhatsu (begging in the street – old Buddhist tradition).”

“If they go for takuhatsu, then OK.”

“Actually most gifts are brought by the people to the temple and left before the altar. A great box of rice, for example.”

“If they are appreciated then they get gifts, but if not... They have to charge for funerals, for example. Here in the village the bonza takes 300 000 yen for a funeral. Once a lonely lady died, she had nothing in the bank, the village council asked him to lower the price and he refused. This is a fact. He thinks that for this money he'll rebuild the temple, rebuilding a temple is a good deed so he is convinced that he's done good. The Catholic Church gets money from abroad so they don't need money from the people here. Some very strange people come and the priests say only 'Please come in, please come in'. In this country the highest percent of Christians is in prisons and lunatic asylums. They don't change their lives at all. Priests only count baptisms. This is a sick situation!”

“I myself often think that Christian missionaries should go to prisons most of all.”

“But they don't change their lives and the priests are only interested in statistics!”

“This is what I mean. The missionaries themselves should go to prisons. As has been said – 'it is not those who are well who need a doctor but those who are sick'.”

“I am not talking about that. We started here without a penny from the Church and the Church doesn't understand us even today. But the simple people, the Buddhist villagers, they do understand...”

14.

During the evening Bible study Father Oshida reads the Gospel from his English Jerusalem Bible:

“Sir, answered the official, come down before my child dies. Go home, said Jesus, your son will live.”

Father Oshida lifts his head up'

“Ha ha ha ha!”

Then he bends over the text again:

“The man believed what Jesus said and started on his way.”

“Why does John write about a miracle in this place? Why does he say in this place that without signs and miracles they won't believe him? What is this all about? The son was cured at one o'clock. What happened at one o'clock?

At the crucifixion there was no sign, no miracle, the apostles were in darkness. They didn't believe.

But John doesn't put his pen away here. He puts it away only at the end of Chapter 5. But here, in Jerusalem Bible, they added a title: 'feast at Jerusalem'. They all think like that. This way they'll never understand John. Poor people.”

Father Oshida knocks his head saying:

“They all have it here but understanding John is not here. All translations are distorted, there are even changes introduced to editions of the Greek original! It is so because they are prisoners of consciousness.

You won't meet God studying theology. You'll have a better chance weedeing a rice field.”

Goat shed in Takamori

15.

Imai-san came to Takamori for three weeks only. In the beginning she was quiet, shy in a typically Japanese way, later she started to be more talkative. She spoke English quite well, a rare thing in Japan. Here is a sample of my converstation with her while washing up after dinner. She asked:

“What have you learned all this time in Takamori?”

“Nothing,” I say, but after a while I add, “Speaking Japanese'”

“Did you come to Takamori to learn Japanese?' she asks in disbelief.

“No, I came because I feel at home here.”

This answer seems closer to her understanding. She says:

“Oshida shimpsan is like a real father, isn't he?”

“Well, I didn't think about that. My own father left the family when I was a little boy.” I say and add after a while “I feel at home because this place feels like a hippy commune.”

“Hippy commune? What do you mean?” Imai-san is terrified. This is a typical reaction in Japan. Apparently in Japanese media a hippy is an incarnation of evil, an absolute outcast from the society.

The same subject was continued later that evening when dough was kneaded for the morning bread. It was Saturday and in Takamori on Saturdays bread is baked so they have it fresh for Sunday breakfast. Being a European I have an attitude to bread similar to that the Japanese have to rice, it is a kind of sacred gift from God, 'give us this day our daily bread' kind of thing. So I asked for the privilege of kneading it and while at it I said to father Oshida:

“Shimpsan, I told Imai-san that this place reminds me of a hippy commune and she was very much surprised.”

Father Oshida just laughed aloud.

“Is it the first time you hear it?”

“Yes”

“At least one more person had this impression, it was Douglas. This is exactly what he said, this place reminded him of a hippy commune of the sixties.”

Again everybody except shimpsan is terrified. I like to tease the Japanese saying that I am a hippy, after all I have long hair. Those who like me usually say something like “Don't worry, you are not a hippy”. I explain:

“There are many similarities. This place is open to anyone, anyone can come any time. Self-built houses, organic agriculture, dislike of all institutions, government, offices... I think that the main difference is that Takamori-sôan is on a list of Dominican monasteries.”

Father Oshida's reaction:

“Ha ha ha ha ha!”

16.

Father Oshida:

“In China when the word spreads that a Catholic priest is in town streets are blocked because of the crowd of people who want to go to see him. Underground is not possible there.”

I had just been talkingg about the underground church in the Soviet Union, about father Bukowinski, who travelled around Siberia and Kazakhstan and celebrated masses in secret. This is how the subject of the underground church in China came about.

“I don't know the scale of repression in China but in Soviet Russia if this was not secret the police would enter, the whole place would be cordoned off, people would be arrested.”

“In China all homes are open so this would be impossible. Although sometimes they pretend to play cards. The cards are there on the table, if somebody unknown enters they start playing, when that person leaves they carry on celebrating mass. It all looks like the old Japanese church of the martyrs. They pretended that the mass was a family celebration. They used dried fish as host and sake instead of wine. They used fish, like in John's Gospel. They still do it on islands around Kyushu. They sit on the ground like us, they use dried fish as host and two people stand as sentries to keep the tradition.”

“Still today? That is interesting!”

Yes, but they don't invite tourists. You would have to be a very good friend to be invited to their mass. These people have a living tradition given to them by God. But the new Church, from the Meiji era, is different, doesn't have this natural spirit. They just want to ape Europeans. A bishop comes to those people on Kyushu and asks: 'Where do you have a church?'. They show him but he says 'What? You call this a church? You must be joking!' They have a beautiful Japanese church but he wants to build a new one in Gothic style.

This is why these people feel well when they come here. They say 'What is this? A real Japanese church!'

I was once banned from coming here but later they allowed me to come back. Once we even had a visit of a cardinal, a papal nuncio. At first he was very formal, 'Yes father, no father', but we don't treat anybody in a special way. After a meal I announced: 'Now we are going to wash the dishes' and he was shocked. The next day he said to me 'You know what, father? Now I feel free' Later Vatican wanted to give us some subsidy.”

“Vatican?”

“Yes, this nuncio asked me if i wanted a subsidy. I didn't want any.”

17.

Kimoto-san:

“I accept the message of Jesus but some elements that come from the West I find hard to accept.”

“What elements?”

“For example the position of prayer, always kneeling with palms folded. In my opinion one can pray just as well in lotus position. I am also put off by lack of any deep spirituality in the Western Church, its stiff ritual. When I was in Jerusalem I went to the mass to the Coptic Ethiopian church rather than the Catholic one..”

Kimoto-san is a member of the community and comes “back home” here but most of the time he is in Tokyo, where he teaches at an university. He has spent several years in Israel and generally travelled a lot, so I am surprised about what he says about 'the western position of prayer' or 'lack of deep spirituality'. I ask if he has ever been to Taizé.

“Yes, I have been there but it didn't make any impression on me.”

“Why not?”

I am completely surprised. To me Takamori is very similar to Taizé and father Oshida says that they are in touch.

“I encountered ambition there, simple human ambition.”

“What? Ambition? Who did you talk to? Did youtalk to brother Roger?”

“No, I was told that brother Roger has no time, but...”

“Did you talk to any of the brothers?”

“I don't know whether the person I talked to was a brother but I was told he was a secretary of brother Roger.”

“Do you think that nobody here has any ambition?”

“This is what I think. If father Oshida was showing this kind of ambition I would have left this place.”

18.

Father Oshida during a mass:

“Only those who are hungry can taste this bread. How many people go to communion every day but without hunger, only because the Church considers it a good thing? These people won't know its taste.

Those who are not hungry won't know its taste. Those who rely on this world won't know this taste. Those who rely on money in the bank, on education, on reputation...”

He continues the same evening during the Bible study, commenting on John's Gospel:

“'The bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.' The Jews started arguing with one another: 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?'”

At this point father Oshida lifts his head up and combs his hair with his fingers.

“What does it mean - to eat Jesus? Today the Church advises to go to Communion every day but people are not prepared. They go just so, one of the things during a day...”

He mimics somebody's lazy face.

“The Church does not prepare people for that. If you go to communion and eat it like one of the material things you will not, you can not know its taste.

But there are people in this world who know this taste. In the Third world, at the front of war in Nicaragua I saw people who knew this taste. A man who could not walk because his feet have been burned, but full of joy! His son was a priest, they tried to persuade him to join the Communist party, he refused so they forced him to walk through a field of burning Bibles, he did this but later he couldn't walk any more. I have met this man! He had been beaten with sticks, his back was broken...”

...here father Oshida bends his back to demonstrate...

“...but...”

Father Oshida Imitates a blissful smile.

“... full of joy! He He knew the taste of Jesus!”

“We have to remember – eating Jesus is not a cheap thing...”

Komoda san

19.

“I am saying this in connection with sister Kawasumi's hermitage. Some people have this vocation, others don't. Sister Kawasumi has it and I agreed on a condition that half her time she will spend here in the community. The hermitage is important but the life of the community is also important and sister Kawasumi needs it as well. We are here to help each other fulfil each other's vocation.”

Father Oshida says this after the Bible study when everybody is still present. Kawasumi-san says to everybody but mainly in the direction of sister Komoda:

“Ii desu ka? (Is that OK?)”

Komoda-san says nothing, stares somewhere in the distance.

20.

“But these meals!” Claudia says to us, then turning towards Furukawa-san who is cooking this week she adds: “I won't be fasting tomorrow.”

Tomorrow is Friday and Claudia usually only ate suppers on Fridays.

“Those meals, they eat them so quick and so little! When I saw this I straight away thought about you two” she turns towards Kimoto-san and myself. “How could you have stayed there for the whole week?!”

“I was there for a whole month” I say.

“A whole month? I really don't know.”

Claudia has just walked in having come back from Bukkokuji, a Zen monastery where she spent several days. She started talking in the door, couldn't contain herself, she had to say everything before she took her shoes off. We had already eaten supper but Furukawa-san heats up some rice and misoshiru and brings it up to the table.

“Sometimes there was just one bowl of rice and nothing more. And then there was this boy who ate so slowly and everybody had to wait for him.”

“It mus have been Carlos” I remember. “Have you met Carlos, the Spaniard?”

“Yes. He was a very strange boy. I asked him if he spoke Spanish and he said 'A little'. But he is a Spaniard! Everybody is so serious there, they talk so little...”

“Maybe this is a style of Tangen Roshi. He doesn't officially forbid anything but says separately to everybody that too much talk is no good for meditation. Foreigners especially treat this with deadly seriousness. The Japanese monks are not talkative either but when they do talk they joke and laugh, but Westerners are deadly serious and don't joke...”

Kimoto-san:

“Did you use this opportunity to go to dokusan?”

“Yes, I did.”

“With all the bows and everything?”

“Yes. It was so strange. Suddenly during the morning zazen I heard everybody running out from the zendo. I thought it was strange because I knew one should get up slowly from zazen, but then I remembered what Priscilla told me and I thought I should go there as well. So I did. But the best talk with Roshi-sama I had on another occasion, when a new lady from America arrived and I was showing her around and wanted to show her the room where they have dokusan and we went there and Roshi-sama was there with some people. I thought 'Gosh' but Roshi-sama said 'Come in, come in' and then he explained what zazen is, he sat himself in the position with blissful calm emanating from his face. This moment moved me most.”

“Exactly, Tangen-roshi emanates something special, doesn't he?”

“I think Bukkokuji is one of the most extraordinary places in Japan” I add.

“You are right” says Kimoto, while Claudia continues:

“As I sat there in the zendo I wondered about you two, where you sat.”

“So you didn't sit in the corridor before the zendo?”

“No. I sat there at first but later Roshi-sama came and said that I had a place in the zendo, there was a space with my name written above.”

“Amazing. Usually newcomers sit in the corridor. I sat there for a whole week.”

“That's right, I only sat there, never inside the zendo.”

“But those meals! I was hungry all the time...”

21.

Father Oshida always wears simple dark brown kimono and loose trousers. He also has an expensive embroidered kimono which he doesn't wear. It is there, nicely folded, on a shelf. Father Oshida says:

“People bring gifts, sometimes quite expensive gifts, and we not always use them. Like this kimono. I don't use it, it has to wait for the right moment. The right moment will be my death: I will dance in this kimono at my own funeral.”

22.

“Westerners come to Japan to study mysticism in Zen monasteries” says Kimoto-san, “but Zen is not really that mystical. It only scratches the surface. If you really want to see mystical Buddhists you should see the Shin Buddhists.”

This is something I never heard before. Shin Buddhism, otherwise known as Amidism, is known on the West for its practice of endless repetition of the mantra 'Namu Amida Butsu' in a hope that this will cause a rebirth in the Paradise of Amida, where everything is made of gold and precious stones. But Kimoto explains:

“Shin Buddhists analyse how the false ego – they call it jiriki or 'own power' – controls our behaviour and how to make it surrender to tariki, or 'other power'. The Paradise od Amida is a metaphor, anybody who conquered his or her own ego has already been reborn in the Paradise of Amida.”

Later I ask father Oshida about the Shin Buddhists. To my surprise he says that he had been to one of their retreats..

“My spiritual guide told me to analyse my approach to my mother. Whenever I came back to him with my answer he scolded me saying 'You are to analyse your own approach to your mother, not your mother's to you!'”

Only then I understood what confession is about. And I had been a priest for twenty odd years already!”

Sueyoshi san.

23.

The empty gas bottle struck with a thick stick calls everybody to mass. Some people are already in the chapel, others walk there along the path between the trees and tall grasses. Father Oshida sits in the lotus position facing everybody. There is a long silence before the mass. The stole and chasuble woven from thick grey yarn.

On Kyrie all fall to their faces. Words of the readings come from deep silence. Words of father Oshida's homily also come from silence.

“This koan, God's riddle: 'Eat, my body is really your food, my blood is really your drink'. We are called to responsibility. Not ritual responsibility. Not ethical responsibility. We are called to responsibility before the whole of Providence.

Eat, my body is truly your food, my blood is truly your drink. When we eat and drink them our mode of being changes. The apostles until the day of Pentecost – with the only exception of Transfiguration – did not see the real mode of existence of Jesus. But we are invited to responsibility before the whole of Providence.”

A huge flame shoots up from the iron tripod.

“This is my body” says Father over the bread he holds in his hands. “This is my blood” he says over the chalice full of wine. All present fall to their faces. The bread is broken into many pieces and everybody takes a piece; later everybody takes a sip of wine from the chalice.

24.

“Do you want to see another branch of Takamori, fifty kilometres from here, in the mountains of Nagano-ken?”

Kimoto-san calls me while Sueyoshi-san runs to put his boots on. Sueyoshi's boss, the thatch expert, is waiting in a pick-up. They are going to Ima to look at a thatch that needs repairing.

“Of course I do”. I run to put my boots on as well. Not enough room in the cab, Kimoto and myself sit in the back. We drive along the old road parallel to the express-way. Just before Suwa we turn left towards Takato, up the hill. We stop for a moment at a roadside car park to have a look at a fantastic view of Lake Suva and the surrounding mountains around. Then we drive up the hill, over the pass and down to Ina, then left again ap the hill along a valley. At one point we turn into a very narrow lane, stop on a ridge and get out of the truck. Kimoto shows me the other side of a narrow valley saying:

“It is there but the road is impassable because of the rains. Maybe we can get there another way, over the hill.”

We get back to the truck and drive a narrow road around the valley. Here and there we pass houses hidden in bamboo groves. In the end we reach a little house built at the end of the ridge, accessible only from one side. Other sides are steep slopes covered partly by bamboo groves, partly by terraced vegetable gardens. An old woman in a grey dress comes out to greet us, her face radiant.

“Welcome welcome. I just had my lunch. Would you like to eat something?”

The thatch experts prefer to see the thatch in question first, so the sister (this is how everybody addresses the old lady) explains the way. We drive there. The owners are absent but the thatchers inspect the roof anyway. They climb on the top, pull one straw out and discuss it for a long time. In the end we go back to the hermit sister.

Now there is more time to look around as the sister prepares food. Sueyoshi-san brings some bamboo tubes from the grove. There is a kind of disorder around the house, garden tools lying here and there, I can also spot some baskets made with blue and yellow post office tape. In a neighbouring room a loom is looming. The sun slowly goes down and mosquitoes descend on us with vengeance. Refreshments, we sit in the tiny room around a low Japanese table. The sister lights up an incense to drive the mosquitoes away.

“Would you like to eat this? Shall I prepare that for you?”

Time to go back, it is dark already. Dark road through the mountains, Kimoto and myself in the back.

“Who is this sister we visited?”

“Her name is sister Takuchi. She used to be a prioress of a Dominican nunnery but she left and she lives here now. The life here is very hard. Father Oshida has sent some more sisters to live here but none could stand it.”

“Why is life here so hard? Is it harder than in Takamori?”

“Yes, because the work in these terraced fields is very hard, everything on steep slopes. Also here nobody brings any gifts. In Takamori people often bring gifts but here hardly ever.”

“You don't live in a hermitage to get gifts, do you?”

“Yes yes. She has very strong character. She has been living here for the past twenty years.”

Extraordinary journey. Not because on the back of a Toyota pick-up through the mountains at night but because of the places visited and people who lived in those places. I remember when I first came to Takamori, at the railway station I asked where I should go and somebody told me: “Go this way, the Soan is on the left side just before the bridge over the motorway”.

I went along a tarmac road, of the left side there were some houses, very neat, as always in Japan, then there was a pine grove and then the motorway viaduct, so where is that Soan? I went back and noticed a dirt road leading into that pine grove and a few thatched huts that stood between the trees. “Could this be a monastery?” I thought and then I saw a nun in a grey habit running towards me: :”Its here. Did you get lost?” They waited for me because I phoned the night before that I would be coming. This was indeed the monastery and the nun who came to meet me was Kawasumi-san.

“Where does Kawasumi-san live now?”

Kimoto gestures towards the higher part of the mountains.

“She is even farther there, in the middle of Japanese Alps, really in the middle of nowhere.”

All those hermits and beggars of Takamori, dressed in grey patched robes, living deep in the mountains in thatched huts hidden in bamboo groves. I have an impression that I found early Chinese Zen masters. But this is XX century Japan! The expressway that slices the country in two is just two hundred meters from Takamori-soan, houses with TV sets are in the same village!

Father Oshida, sister Kawasumi and myself in Takamori in 1988

25.

I was in Takamori in 1988 on three separate occasions, altogether I spent two months there. All the talks took place then, usually penned down from memory on the same day in the evening. They are not literal but close to it. They are not authorised but when I asked if he had anything against me writing this text, father Oshida answered: “Feel free'”

What is Takamori-soan? If it doesn't transpire from the above, here is the more condesed information. It is a community started by a Japanese Dominican, father Oshida Shigeto (Oshida is the surname here) in the mountains of central Japan, in a village of Takamori in Nagano prefecture. It is a small village but easy to find on a map because it lies just on the border between Nagano and Yamanashi prefectures and just next to the motorway between Tokyo and Matsumoto.

The life of the community is based on simplicity and is open to anyone. Soan is officially on the list of Dominican monasteries in Japan but apart from father Oshida and three nuns there are also some lay people who live there permanently and also many who (like me) come to stay for shorter periods.

Father Oshida is a well known person in Japan. He writes a lot (unfortunately almost exclusively in Japanese). When I was in Japan I visited a number of Zen Monasteries and met many Buddhist monks who read books by father Oshida. He himself came from a family connected to Zen Buddhism and although he later became a Catholic priest he never lost respect for this mystical current. He is known as somebody who tries to join the two. Long silent prayer in Takamori is very similar to Zen meditation although the most important event during the week is the Eucharist, therefore there is no doubt that this is a Christian community. Nevertheless sometimes friendly Buddhist monks visit Takamori. The Catholic hierarchy in the early days didn't have much understanding for father Oshida's activity but later he gained some respect and has even been asked to act as an expert on contact with Buddhist on conferences of bishops of East Asia. He flew on a plane to whichever capital was hosting the conference and afterwards returned to his hut next to the goat shed.

The above was written in November 1988 in Polish. The same year it was published in an underground Polish magazine (Poland was still a communist country at the time). More than a quarter of a century later I translated the Polish text into English.

In the meantime the day came for shimpsan to use his ornate kimono. The day was 6 November 2003. A sad day perhaps. Or was it? What did shimpsan say about dancing at the funeral?

You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".