The little old lady at the Neshiko cemetery invited Etsuko and me back to her home for tea and a chat. A small
kamidana (Shinto shrine) adorned a corner of the living room of the house where eighty-year-old Mrs. Kuni Tsuji lives with her son and daughter-in-law. There was nothing to suggest that the family had once been Christian, but it turned out that Mrs. Tsuji’s ancestors had been among the first to convert to Christianity on Hirado. On hearing that my name is Mary, the old dear’s eyes lit up and she gave me a tender pat on the knee. "Maria," she swooned apologetically, "we no longer keep our traditions. Twenty years ago we became members of the local Soto Buddhist temple, but my eldest son, like his father became the
chokata (highest-ranking member), learning the
orassho (latin: oratio) and saying the prayer at three of our Otaiya festivals," she explained. The Hidden Christian community, Mrs. Tsuji told us, would meet each year for prayers on a site just behind the
Kirishitan museum. The men would pray together while the women prepared food. Mrs. Tsuji explained that she herself was not familiar with the prayers or rituals. "Women weren’t allowed to see them. Apparently, once a bride from outside the village had discovered that the family she married into here was praying to Saint Mary. She informed somebody and the whole family was massacred. After that, women weren’t trusted to learn anything of the religion," she said. Etsuko asked her if she still kept any Christian items. "We no longer have the
takaramono (treasures). Only my son, the carpenter and me know where the treasure is hidden," the old dear whispered as if divulging snippets of the most sensitive information. Etsuko and I couldn’t resist laughing. Why in this day and age did Mrs. Tsuji feel she had to hide the family’s
Kirishitan icons? Might it not be better to hand them over to the museum? The old woman looked horrified at the suggestion. "The treasure has been in my family for many generations; it was given to my ancestors by European priests who came here. In exchange, my family would give the foreigners a cow because they liked to eat beef," she said in defence. "What is your treasure?" I asked, realizing that whatever it was, it still held incredible power over the old woman’s mind. Mrs. Tsuji gasped in shock at my question. "I can’t tell you that," she snapped, "it’s a secret." But never being one to give up so easily, I pursued the topic. "Is your treasure a Saint Mary?" I gently inquired. The old woman jumped out of her skin, and started to tremble with fear. "You shouldn’t ask that question ever; it’s
takaramono," she snapped again. "The treasure is now hidden and only three of us know where it is. But the next time you visit I will tell you more secrets of the Hidden Christians in Neshiko, as well as about the
komugi-sama (wheat god) that came from Korea," she proffered as she saw us off with a little bow at the door.
Mrs. Tsuji’s daughter-in-law, Shizue, volunteered to point out a tree we had heard bleeds the blood of Neshiko’s Christian martyrs. As we strolled out down a winding country lane, passing paddies that glinted in the late afternoon sun, Shizue, 43, told us that she had known nothing of Hirado’s Hidden Christians, let alone the massacres at Neshiko, until her child came back from school one day and told her. "I was never taught any of this history when I was at school, I knew absolutely nothing about the Christians here yet I have lived in Neshiko all my life; that’s how secretive the community was. And, it was a surprise for me to learn that my husband’s family had been considered the most important Christians on Hirado, that they were the ones responsible for leading prayers and carrying out such rituals as baptism," she explained to us. "As for the tree, I’m not sure what I believe about it, but one day my son rushed home in tears, saying that he had been tearing at the bark with a stick when the tree had suddenly started to bleed," Shizue added as Etsuko and I peered up at the gnarled boughs of the huge, old tree.
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PLANNING OUR zigzag route through Japan has led to a few tiffs en route. One of the bitterest fights took place shortly after leaving Hondo city, in Kumamoto prefecture. Standing at a junction out on a mountain road, Etsuko presented her case for why we should take the road turning south to Kagoshima prefecture, from where she intended us to take the leap from Kyushu to Okinawa prefecture. But I had another plan in store. My route was incredibly illogical. I wished first to head north, I explained as gusts of wind whipped at the oversized map I was holding, sending it flying heavenwards like a great kite before it came spiraling down into some bushes. After cutting east to Miyazaki prefecture, I continued, we could mosey down the coastline and then zigzag back west to Kagoshima prefecture. With eyes bulging ever wider, my partner looked like she was on the verge of apoplexy. It seemed Etsuko really didn’t like my idea. "You’re adding at least another three weeks to our walk in Kyushu; for what? The weather is already unbearably hot; Okinawa will be a blistering inferno by the time we get there. Are you mad?" The truth was that I was mad, quite barmy, in fact, about meeting a particular Japanese scientist, and I didn’t care if it involved adding another 350 kilometres—or even thousands more—to our walk. "What’s another three weeks? We’ve already been walking for over a year now, anyway," I challenged. "This guy is worth the extra effort and he’s worth being fried for later on in Okinawa," I added, knowing full well that I would probably live and fry to regret my words. Etsuko pouted, I pouted. I agreed that she was right, and we both agreed that I was an absolute idiot, but… "I’ve wanted to meet this professor for years. His work is mind-blowing; this man wants to resurrect the mammoth for God’s sake," I screeched. Even if we traipsed the extra distance I had no guarantee that Professor Kazufumi Goto was even in Japan, let alone available for an interview at the kindergarten he runs in Kumamoto City. "We may be completely wasting our time," Etsuko warned me. "It’s very likely that Goto-sensei is in Siberia right now, digging for mammoth remains." But realizing how much it meant to me at least to try and meet him, my partner caved in and agreed to go the extra distance. I felt swelling pangs of guilt well up inside of me as we hauled our luggage trolleys up the steep mountain pass. After three days of pounding the asphalt we entered Kumamoto City none the wiser as to whether we would be able to interview the “Mammoth Man.” Toddlers scampered here and there. Some chased each other around the kindergarten’s playground while others clambered over a life-size model of a woolly mammoth. Professor Goto had inherited the kindergarten from his mother, Tadako, who started the school when the scientist himself was just a child. A kindergarten seemed like an incongruous place to meet a man whose life dream is to bring back the woolly mammoth, a tusked giant whose heyday was the Pleistocene Epoch, a period stretching from 1.8 million years ago to the end of the last ice age eleven thousand years ago. Preyed upon by lions, wolves, sabre-toothed tigers and our ancestors, the Ice Age proved to be the ultimate death knell for this big grazer. Running a kindergarten must be a mammoth project on its own, I pondered as Professor Goto led us around classrooms where kids were immersed in a number of activities. Etsuko and I wondered if the scientist had forsaken his scientific plans for the more down-to-earth role as an educator. Professor Goto laughed at the idea, telling us that plans were on the burner for a trip to Siberia within the next three months. He is still determined to find the remains of a healthy mammoth carcass that will put him on the rung to realizing his dream. But, Professor Goto emphasized, he also sees his role of working with children as the other important vocation in his life. "Society is changing for the worse. The environment isn’t good for children these days and that’s why we are seeing so many problems such as bullying or school dropouts. Also, very few teachers are inspired enough to give children a dream," he said as we sat around a table in the open staff room. "Too many people are locked in a frame; I want children to grow up with imagination to have a dream. I also wish to retain a child-like mind—a curiosity for all life around me. As a scientist I’m always looking at life and I think that I should also be responsible for children too, as they are our future. I want them to learn the importance of life," he explained. Professor Goto says that too many people only want to focus attention on the fact that he plans to resurrect the mammoth. "The mammoth project is not only about resurrecting the past, it is also about learning the future. My work here and my work as a scientist go hand-in-hand," emphasized the fifty-one-year-old scientist as youngsters tugged at his sleeve to draw attention to their morning’s paintings. Etsuko and I were both impressed that Professor Goto had agreed to meet with us, but he said that he was excited to learn more about our project too. After reading a report on our walk in the Kumamoto Shimbun newspaper, Goto had even contacted Kumamoto TV to put them onto our project. "I am extremely moved by what you are doing," he announced, surprising both Etsuko and me because many people we meet can’t get their heads around the idea of why anyone would choose to walk through Japan. Most give us blank stares or simply grunt on hearing what we’re up to, some people laugh, believing we’re telling lies, or people just assume that we’re a couple of female loony losers. "I see your walk as something highly significant. It represents the very origins of the human race, of a time when man branched away from the ape and started to evolve. Man evolved through walking; through making journeys," the scientist elaborated. Professor Goto has been pursuing his mammoth project for more than ten years now. Once he has found frozen sperm or a well-preserved frozen carcass of the beast out in the wilds of Siberia, he will then have acquired the key to bring it back to life. "First of all, I want to emphasize that the mammoth has nothing to do with dinosaurs. I’m not interested in resurrecting dinosaurs or creating Jurassic Park," Professor Goto laughed after explaining that Russian scientists have spent fourteen years working on an Ice Age Park, "Pleistocene Park," that is the intended habitat of the animal once resurrected. "I’m interested in bringing back an animal that once lived alongside man, and this will become possible once we find the frozen sperm or carcass," continued the biologist who is the first person to have succeeded in using dead sperm to fertilize a cow, resulting in the birth of a healthy calf in 1990. With dead sperm, Professor Goto has also raised mice and rabbits. "This success of creating life from dead sperm raised the huge question of ‘What is death?’ Basically, as long as DNA is viable there can be life and this gives huge hope for the survival of many threatened species on our planet," he enthused. Professor Goto believes that there is no reason why the dead sperm of a mammoth would not be able to fertilize an elephant’s egg, which would then be planted back in the elephant’s uterus and eventually result in an offspring that is fifty per cent mammoth. The woolly mammoth, he says, was about the same size as an African elephant. "If a female half-mammoth, half-elephant is born and reaches maturity, its egg cells would be collected and fertilized with mammoth sperm to produce a purer hybrid mammoth. Over successive generations of impregnating female hybrids, a beast increasingly close to the original mammoth, which stood around three metres and weighed up to four tons, could be created," explained Professor Goto. The scientist is undaunted by the fact that there have been few officially reported findings of frozen whole-body woolly mammoths in Siberia over the course of the past one hundred years. "There are more findings than we hear about. I daresay many are kept secret because people have profited by selling the tusks for ivory. On the other hand, there are accounts of elderly Russians having dug up whole carcasses for the purpose of eating the meat," he laughed. "Can you imagine that, meat frozen for ten thousand years? People eating mammoth steaks?" The implications of a technology that can produce life from death are mind-blowing. "So, if you found the carcass of a prehistoric man, it should be possible to bring our ancestors back to life through either using dead sperm or DNA?" I asked. "In theory, it should be possible," agreed Professor Goto. "Of course, you would have to find women who are happy to partake in such an experiment, and beyond that society would raise huge ethical barriers to it ever taking place," he concluded.
Valley of the Gods
ALL PHOTOS BY JAPAN ON FOOT 2001/2002
TORRENTIAL RAIN pelted down as we plodded on over mountain roads that took us through the Aso-Kuju National Park. As the month of June drew to its end Etsuko and I battled on through the elements — a mix of either typhoon rains or days where temperatures soared to thirty-six degrees centigrade. We passed through Takachiho, where we enjoyed a Yokagura dance performance at Amanoiwato shrine, one of Japan’s most sacred sites. The shrine is said to be the home of all the gods from which the Imperial line has descended. Not far from Amanoiwato shrine, across the Iwato River, is said to stand the cave in which the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, hid after her evil brother Susanoo went on a wild rampage, trampling and defecating over the goddess’s rice fields.
The average Joe Soap, Mary King or Shimabukuro Etsuko is not allowed to venture out to Amanoiwato Cave, but we did stroll out to another cave along the same river where it is believed all the gods gathered to discuss how they could lure Amaterasu from her cave and thus restore light to the world. Apparently, the goddess Ameno Uzume performed a lewd dance in front of the cave, waving her genitals at all the gods, who creased up with mirth at the wild spectacle. Becoming curious about the commotion, Amaterasu peeked outside her cave only to catch a glimpse of her face in a mirror.
Takajiro, a god of enormous strength, then pulled back the boulder covering the mouth of the cave and together, the gods pulled Amaterasu back into the world. In Saito Cty, also in Miyazaki prefecture, we strolled out through an area that is dotted with more than three hundred ancient tumuli—a verdant area that is Japan’s equivalent of the Valley of the Kings and Queens. The sun was a bloodshot eye as it drifted below the horizon after we had spent an arduous day traipsing out of Miyazaki City. Out in Futo hamlet, Etsuko and I found ourselves without accommodation for the night. Kipping out on the beach had all felt very romantic at the time. "How lovely it would be to sleep under the stars," Etsuko had said to me. "Yes, indeed," I had oozed. How idyllic to spend the night listening to the soporific lapping of waves and feeling the gentle sea breeze on our faces as we lay tucked in our sleeping bags. Surely, nothing could be more beautiful. But neither of us would grab more than the odd wink or two of slumber that night. Miyazaki’s mosquitoes viewed us as a potential banquet and as they pursued their kamikaze conquest, Etsuko and I tossed around in misery, waving frantically to protect ourselves from their savage attacks. Before the sun had even risen, we were back on the road, completely exhausted from the nightlong battle and covered in a mass of huge, incredibly itchy pink bites. With our pedometers having now hit just over seven thousand kilometres, we continued on down the coastline, stopping off for a few hours at Sun Messe Nichinan, a park that has not only attempted to recreate Easter Island with its Moai statues, but has also taken a stab at recreating its own version of England’s Stonehenge. The stone circle was a rather sad affair to say the least, but the Moai were an uncanny experience for both of us, reminding us of the one thousand or so statues we had seen some eight years before out on what is reputed to be the world’s most remote inhabited island. In fact, it was during our time on Easter Island, which lies 3,600 kilometres away from the South American coastline and Chile under whose jurisdiction the island falls, that we bumped into a Signor Martin, an elderly gentleman who had startled us with the fact that his grandfather hailed from Okinawa. As we tucked into a plate of cerviche, a delicious South American speciality of raw tuna marinated in vinegar and lemon, Signor Martin had been unable to conceal his excitement on discovering that Etsuko originates from Japan’s most southern prefecture. He then went on to regale us with the story of how his grandfather had been swept up on the shores of Easter Island, fairly well on the brink of death. "He was a tuna fisherman and with the rest of his crew was lost at sea for weeks, perhaps even months," said Signor Martin. "He was pretty well near dead by the time he landed on this speck of an island, but my grandfather stayed, married a local woman and never went back to Okinawa. He died when I was a small child, but I remember that he spoke with great love for his homeland," Signor Martin had told us, impressing upon us the fact that no island is ever truly an island; that nowhere in the world has ever been isolated, unknown or free from outside and far flung influences.
Onwards to Okinawa
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YAKUSHIMA MARKED the end of our walk through Kyushu. This island that lies off the southern tip of Kagoshima prefecture has been designated a World Heritage Site for its unique flora and fauna. Despite threat of rain—apparently, there’s invariably a downpour up in the mountains—it turned out to be a hot muggy day as Etsuko and I found ourselves clambering over lichen and moss-covered rocks out in this veritable fairy-like world. We spotted deer scampering and snuffling in the bushes; groups of macaque monkeys swung without a care through the tendril-like branches of the great Yaku sugi (Japanese cedar) trees for which the island is renowned, and even a snake didn’t flinch as we approached it; instead it nonchalantly slithered past our feet. Taking tentative steps along precarious tree trunks that span the forest’s gurgling rivers and streams, we spent a day hiking up to the largest Jomon-period sugi—a cedar estimated to be between 2,600 and 7,200 years old that also boasts a whopping girth of 16.4 metres. A late lunch was taken at Wilson’s Stump, where we observed in wonder the grotto-like grandeur of this huge cedar trunk, some 4.39 metres in diameter, inside of which tourists had huddled to peer up at the shafts of sunlight that beamed down upon a small Shinto shrine. With hishaku (wooden shrine ladle) in hand, Etsuko and I scooped sweet mountain water from a stream that trickled through the trunk of the tree and refreshed ourselves before clambering on up to Takatsuka Hut, where we planned to bed down for the night. Deer nervously twitched and sniffed at the curry-essence air as Etsuko and I sat under the stars, slurping our spicy Cup Noodle dinners. The following day, we returned to Wilson’s Stump in time for a late picnic-breakfast. Named after the botanist who found it, Wilson’s Stump is said to be the remains of a tree that was cut down on the orders of the sixteenth-century warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Apparently, the wood was used for the construction of a building to house a great Buddha statue at Hoko-ji temple in Kyoto. This part of the forest is a truly magical place and I was only grateful that we had at least five minutes of it alone to soak up its spiritual serenity before a horde of a hundred or so camera-toting tourists clumped on through. We packed up and continued with our descent, leaving the horde to continue with what looked like a never-ending rigmarole of setting up victory-V group shots. The Queen Coral 8 spirited us out through the choppy blue waters of Kagoshima Bay. Fangs of water clawed at the side of the ship as we rocked, heaved and rolled out into deeper waters until the speck that was Kyushu had completely disappeared from view. Like many other passengers, Etsuko and I lay groaning and moaning on our futon, turning green at the gills and hoping that the motion sickness tablets would soon knock us out. Typhoons had been lashing Japan’s shores for more than a month now, and yet another was on its way. It was with huge relief that—twenty-four hours later—Etsuko and I finally staggered off the ship at Motobu Port. We breathed in the salty, sea air and saluted the direction of Japan. A lump welled up in my throat and I started to choke on tears. We were now approaching the end of our walk; a journey that had already surpassed the fourteen-month mark and a foot-slog of more than 7,300 kilometres that had taken us from a windy, freezing northern outpost of Hokkaido to the northern shores of Okinawa. It had been an exhilarating and exhausting adventure and it would shortly end on Yonaguni Island. We both felt that the walking, freedom and challenges had become an integral part of our daily lives, and it had reshaped who we are and what we value. Biting back tears, Etsuko and I tugged our trolleys along the asphalt road and into Motobu town. The gregarious strumming of an Okinawan sanshin drifted towards us from afar, as if carried by a messenger on the early evening breeze.
PHOTOS BY JAPAN ON FOOT 2001/2002
