Twelve Views from the Distance

Communities outside the World

209 x Communities outside the World 1 The first time I was ever visited by a sensation of something“outside this world” was probably when I was in a train. I am not sure where I was going. Perhaps I was in the train going with Grandmother to visit my aunt inYame-gun,or perhaps I was on my way to Shimonoseki to go meet Mother, accompanied by my young relative. In any case, I do remember that I had propped my chin on my hands, which were placed against the glass window, as I gazed absentmindedly out the window. The landscape approached us with great speed from the front of the train and quickly retreated to the back. “If you keep looking out like that the whole time, you’ll get sick to your stomach and throw up.” But I continued to look outside anyway. All sorts of things went by—telephone poles, stands for drying rice, clumps of trees. The train was swallowed up in the darkness of a tunnel then spit out again. There was an interruption in the regular rhythm of the track; then we crossed a metal bridge. All of a sudden, the train jerked and came to a halt. The conductor , who was wearing a railway uniform and cap, came around to where I could see him, made a strange face, and shouted,“Shingooo-machiii!” What he was saying was“waiting” (machi) for a“stoplight” (shingō), but to me it sounded like he was saying,“the town of Shingō,” since the word machi also means “town.” I looked around hoping to see the landscape of a town. I looked for an ophthalmologist’s sign shaped like an eye 210 communities outside the world with creased eyelid. I looked for a Japanese-style inn with water spread in front to keep the dust down and a dark, glass door to mark the entrance. I looked for a little girl wearing the brightly colored kimono you might see at the Seven-Five-Three Festival. Most important, I looked for the quaint station you would expect to see in a tiny town. I didn’t see any of these things, however. The only things that greeted my eyes were the cliffs created when the engineers cut the hills away for the train tracks and dark, unpopulated rice fields that the farmers had created among the hills. I quickly rushed over to the opposite side of the train to look, but there was no town there either. Meanwhile, the train shook again and started to move. The illusory town of Shingō retreated into the distance where it would remain forever. Even if I were to get on the same train again, we would never stop there again. The town of Shingō was a strange place indeed. It was nowhere, but it was everywhere at the same time. Every time the train stopped and the conductor came round to shout “the town of Shingō,” whatever was in front of me—the middle of the mountains or the seashore—would immediately be transformed into the town of Shingō. I would look for signs of the town, but strangely enough, there was nothing there but reddish cliffs alongside the tracks or the seashore with lapping, white waves. Nonetheless, the conductor’s solemn declaration led me to think this must undoubtedly be the town of Shingō, and I conjured up visions of a town located there in the middle of nowhere. That was how I learned there were places outside this world we cannot see with our eyes alone. It was the town of Shingō that first taught me there were places outside this world, but it was Otama-san who lived by the Kanroku Bridge who taught me there were people outside the world, too. The Onga River flowed parallel to the eastern edge of Nōgata, and the Kanroku Bridge crossed it near the southern edge of town where the rows of houses ended. On the other side of the bridge, there was a road that led to a cluster of houses known as Tonno. The houses were at the foot of distant Mount Fukuchi, which was shrouded in pale-blue mist. I sometimes went with Mother when she went to visit one of her female relatives in Tonno. As we crossed Kanroku Bridge, she would close her decorative parasol then point with the tip at the riverbank below. [3.19.31.73] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 04:56...