Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (42 page)

In 835, after a long illness, K
kai died, and his followers interred him in a mausoleum deep in the woods. Several years later, a priest opened the tomb and found that K
kai’s remains had not decayed. The great Buddhist teacher had not died at all. He was still alive, deep in meditation and awaiting the arrival of the future Buddha, Maitreya. To this day, senior priests on K
yasan proceed into the mausoleum, where they are said to change the great master’s clothes. They also bring him two meals a day: one at 5:40 a.m. and a second at 11:00 a.m. Both meals are, of course,
sh
jin ry
ri
.

Over successive centuries, Japan’s elite competed to build their mausoleums close to K
kai to ensure their salvation. Some could not afford an actual tombstone, so they made arrangements to send a lock of hair or a nail to the communal crematorium located just off to the right of K
kai’s mausoleum. The important thing was to be near the great master. From time to time, people even encountered K
kai. I had read a particularly moving story about a World War II veteran who encountered K
kai in the fog in the cemetery. The great old priest looked exhausted, and the soldier realized that the great man, too, was weary, after struggling to save as many people as possible during the war.

I
N 2004
, K
YASAN
was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO, and it is now a popular overnight stop among foreigners. There are no hotels on K
yasan. If you stay here, you must spend the night in a temple.

With over seventy temples to choose from on K
yasan, I had no idea which one to select. On a whim, I phoned a place called Sh
j
shinin because my guidebook had starred it, noting its lovely medieval-period gardens. Sh
j
shinin was located just before the entrance to the Okunoin cemetery. I couldn’t see Sh
j
shinin when I first disembarked from the bus. Only after I crossed a stone bridge suspended over a canal did Sh
j
shinin unfold in overlapping layers of gray, brown, white, green, and pink. There was a wooden gate just on the other side of the bridge, flanked by two large wooden buckets of water; samurai had once visited K
yasan on horseback, and the buckets for watering the horses are today maintained out of respect for tradition. It was late April when I visited, and spring had long since passed in the T
ky
area. But here, behind a low wall made of white stucco and neatly pieced together pieces of wood, two large cherry blossoms spread up and out like geysers.