Those Days in Muramatsu: One Woman's Memoir of Occupied Japan

Chapter 1: The Mountain Temple

CHAPTER 1 THE THE MOUNT MOUNTAIN AIN TEMPLE TEMPLE “Head Office Upstairs. The Kambara Railroad Co.” In front of the door that led to the office upstairs I stopped and hesitated a little. “Is it really all right for me to apply for the job without consulting my husband? What would the town people say?” was my question. I had come down to the station after seeing a newspaper advertisement: “Interpreter wanted at the Muramatsu Station.” While I stood there a scene flashed through my hesitant mind—a scene in the mountain temple where I had stayed about three months before. After our house in Tokyo was destroyed in an air-raid in January , we—my husband, our two-year-old boy, and myself—went from place to place looking for a house to stay in and finally settled down in an old mountain temple, the priest of which was my deceased father-in-law’s acquaintance. The temple was situated in a mountain five miles away from a small town called Muramatsu, and it took us twenty minutes to get there from the nearest house at the foot of the mountain. It was such a secluded place. Not even the alarm siren was heard, and the perfect peace and security were appreciated. The days I spent there, however, were far from pleasant. There were only five people living besides us in the big, centuries-old temple which could accommodate a few thousand at the time of its annual summer festival. The temple, surrounded by tall cedar trees and a rapid stream, was dark and humid even during the day and was full of a feudalistic atmosphere. The priest who was called “my lord” was old, sick—half-paralyzed—impatient and ill-tempered. There were two sisters to attend to him. The elder sister Yaye-san had been his maid, and when his wife died, she was adopted as his daughter and had served him ever since. She was proud of it and acted like the queen of the temple. Being thirty-seven, pretty and yet unmarried, ill-tongued villagers who hated the arrogance of the priest and this woman talked behind her back that she was his mistress. Anyway, she did not like my presence because I was the only one she could not order about. The younger sister, Ito-san, I liked and sympathized with. She was of my age and, like her sister, was also unmarried , serving as kitchen maid to her sister and the old priest. There was another girl, Shige-chan, who was their niece. She was thirteen, big for her age and rather attractive. But she was very lazy and stubborn, and was always disobeying and quarrelling with her aunts because she knew that the old man loved her and would always take her side. The second male member was a man, a half-wit called Heizo. He was thirty-seven, and had served at the temple for more than twenty years. He was loved and pitied by all the villagers. His only pleasure in life was to eat, eat, and eat. In fact, one of the reasons for the resentment of the village people against the elder sister was that, since she came, Heizo was not allowed to eat as much as he wanted. He was given only three bowls of rice at one meal while he used to eat ten or more. One of the villagers told me that Heizo was half-starving of late. This temple belonged to the Zen sect of Buddhism, was the oldest and biggest in the prefecture, and, as it was the sacred training ground for the monks, no woman had ever been allowed to live there. However, when the ailing priest’s abode in Tokyo was 14 burnt down, the conservative villagers had to give consent reluctantly to the priest’s request to take Yaye-san back with him. There was a special relationship between the temple and the village. There were four families that were called the “folks at the gate” who served as retainers to the temple. Firewood cutting and other labor was offered by the whole village without any payment. The priest and the village master, an almost hereditary position, were the two outstanding figures in the village. In such a feudalistic atmosphere, I was a misplaced being. People at the temple, with the exception of Heizo, did not like educated...