It began with a Saturday afternoon walk through my town. My friends were all otherwise occupied or not in the area, and left to my own devices for the day, I decided to take an extra hour or two on my errand run and do some exploring. Rather than turning toward the town center and the city beyond, which I had already spent quite a bit of time walking through, I chose the main route toward the countryside and the next small village over. I had become well-acquainted with the stores and auto dealerships of my own town, so why not see if anything interesting lay in the other direction?
After several miles in the hot afternoon sun, I was ready to accept defeat and head back. The road was just as narrow and dirty as it was at my own apartment building; there were the same supermarkets, discount warehouses, and shady bars, even if they were sprinkled along the street rather than packed in tiny shopping plazas as in my own town. As I reached a highway overpass and saw only another supermarket beyond it, I prepared myself to turn around and head home. No stunning countryside or ancient shrines in this village, I thought.
As I turned to had back the way I came, however, I happened to look up at the sign hanging from the overpass. ANCIENT TOMB, it read, and an arrow pointed to the east. Curious, I followed the little footpath that led back from the road behind the houses that lined it. The path soon intersected with another - this one of well-maintained spongy concrete and named "the community exercise path" - and at their meeting place, gravestones were standing up on a hillside. Was this it? There was no sign, and it certainly didn't look ancient to me. I had had a mental image of a little shrine, perhaps, or some rocks, though I wasn't entirely sure what to expect of the "ancient tomb." Moreover, the sign had had a little silhouette of a keyhole shape on it. Surely that was an exaggeration - my town couldn't possibly be home to one of the famous, huge keyhole-shaped burial mounds that dotted prehistoric Japan, could it?
I followed the path back toward my apartment, wondering if the sign was some kind of joke. There was nothing to be found on the path except shrubs, rice fields, spiders, and back yards.
Suddenly, the path opened up and became a wide expanse of well-kept stone that, sure enough, wrapped itself around a tall, steep-sided grassy hill. One could tell by a glance at the hill that it was no simple rise in the land; its clean, terraced shape made its man-made origins immediately clear. This hill was a kofun, a prehistoric burial mound.
These kofun date from before Japan had a written language, nearly 2000 years ago. They are indeed keyhole-shaped, and are enormous structures, especially for the compact towns and villages that make up the Japanese islands. Now they resemble clean-cut grassy hills, but they house bodies and artifacts from the prehistoric period. I had heard of them as a student of Japanese history, but hadn't anticipated that my humble region would be home to literally hundreds of the things.
Now, I was faced with this grassy tomb only minutes from my own apartment building. Where the walking trail met the hill, there was a steep set of stairs winding up and around the back, and I regarded them cautiously. Japanese religious structures had struck me as blasphemously hands-on so far, but would I be committing an unwitting but grave offense if I climbed those steps to tread on the prehistoric grave site?
As I pondered this, a pair of old women happened by on their evening walk. Gesturing vaguely toward the tomb, I flagged them down. ""Um, is it okay to climb up on that thing?"
They blinked with surprise, and then burst into laughter. "Of course. Please go ahead." Chuckling, they continued on their way as I mentally swore to just be braver in the first place next time, rather than become entertainment for senior citizens. Humbled, I summoned my remaining energy and made the arduous climb to the very top of the mound. Out of breath, I sat down at the edge of the wide, flat expanse and surveyed the area that stretched out before me.
The mound had not seemed quite so high from below, but now that I had reached my perch at the top, I was amazed to find that I could see for tens of miles upon miles. Cars made their way down the main road stretching out straight north through my town and beyond, and the roofs of the boxy supermarkets and furniture stores stood out as squares of flat gray against the sea of tiled houses, monolithic schools, and brilliantly green rice fields. Even our small airport was visible from here, planes shooting up against the glowing evening sky at severe angles. Behind me, the mountain range that circled my town stretched out silent and grand along the horizon, houses and buildings and roads pushed up against their feet like foam on retreating waves, unable to climb any higher on the steep green slopes. Breathless, I took it all in, watching as parking lot lights were illuminated and the diesel engines of the buses echoed up from the street. It was as if I could see the entire life of my town from up there in my invisible and protected place; I could be intimately involved as an observer, nothing more.
I came to the kofun often after my initial discovery, bringing along a book or headphones, sitting on one of the lower terraces to avoid the junior high students who sat at the very top in pairs, gossiping and smoking. Somehow, I didn't want to spoil my evening by being noticed, by enduring the inevitable loud whispers of "hey, it's a foreigner!" and the awkward silence that would settle upon the area. Instead, I sat there in my own private hideout and let my mind wander as I surveyed the town. I often found myself wondering at the nature of the kofun itself as I sat there, its long and ancient history. If the plaque nearby was to be believed, it was constructed in the 4th century, and I could hardly fit my mind around the idea of human hands shaping those very slopes so many hundreds of years before. How careful they had been, that the mound could be preserved in this clean and solid form for nearly two thousand years. Coming from a place where a two-hundred-year old house seems a marvel of antiquity preserved amidst the forces of nature, I simply couldn't imagine something remaining more-or-less the same for ten times as long.
Likewise, the people who built it - what were they like? Because the mounds were built before written history in Japan, we don't know much about the civilization who constructed these artificial mountains. But to sit upon this one and feel its solidity and structure below my hands, below the long grasses and wildflowers, my mind wandered to the thoughts and dreams and intentions of the people who had built it. What were they thinking as they hauled dirt and so deliberately shaped it? What were these people like, who endured the same oppressive humidity and saw the same jewel-like mountains in the distance? What had they glimpsed when they looked down from their handiwork at the landscape stretching below? For the people who built this mound could not have been very different from the people who now occupied the land; they may not have had the discount stores and plastic-wrapped goods and office jobs that the modern tenants of the landscape created, but they touched this same land, they grew their rice in these wet paddies, they surely explored the same steep hills and they glimpsed the sea from the peaks of the mountains. Two thousand years suddenly did not seem like such a separation when I considered that the surrounding view was very much the same throughout that time, changed only by cosmetic additions but undefeated by the eroding powers of nature.
* * * * * * *
The kofun gave me something besides a private place to relax and contemplate Japanese history, however. Diligent as I was in avoiding others, I could not always maintain my solitude when I climbed those steps on a Friday evening or a Sunday afternoon, ready to clear my mind of the past working week.
In the hot summer, it was often too much to bear to sit on the sides of the kofun in the blinding sun and oppressive heat, often reaching temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and with humidity so thick I could rake my fingers through it. On rare cool afternoons, though - especially those strangely silent days surrounding a violent storm - I hiked over with a book, happy to escape the air-conditioned space of my apartment. One afternoon, pleasantly sunny and refreshingly cool, I lay on my stomach on the grass, enjoying the sun more than keeping up with my book. Suddenly, I heard rustling from below where my arms rested against the edge of the terrace. Peering down, I met face to face with a small girl of perhaps 4 years old. "Hey!" she said. I asked her what she was doing, and motioned to the little clear plastic box she carried. She thrust it up near me and cried out, "Bugs! I am catching bugs."
Without another word, she clambered up the side of the terrace to join me. I watched politely as she sat herself down near my head and proceeded to comb through the grass, presumably for insects; I was summarily proven wrong, however, as the girl plucked a small clover flower out of the ground. "Here." Without waiting for me to take it, she let it fall from her hand onto my arms. Cackling at her discovery, she then - less carefully - took a handful of grass to put on my arm as well. The next tiny fistful of greenery was placed on my head. She laughed with delight as I shrieked in mock surprise and annoyance, brushing the grass off of my nose. "Yuck!" I yelled, and she laughed harder.
Another face showed itself from the edge of the kofun. "Oh, stop that. Leave that person alone, honey." Her father had appeared to scold her, butterfly net in hand. Pouting but obedient, she climbed back down the slope to rejoin him. I smiled and nodded to him. "Don't worry about it. She wasn't bothering me at all. She's so cute." He smiled back and admonished his daughter to be more diligent in looking for bugs to put in her contain her. "Come on, don't you want to find a cicada or a butterfly? Let's look some more."
I went back to my book, thinking that was the last of her. Not five minutes later, though, I heard the scuffling in the grass again. "Hey! Look! Look at the bug!" She appeared with her bug cage again, pushing it up into my face. Indeed, there was a large beetle crawling in there on a bed of leaves, confused in its new environment. "Oh, wow. Very cool," I told her. "Did you show your daddy?" She nodded emphatically, and clutching the plastic box, she worked her way back down.
I sat up and opened my bottle of iced tea that I'd brought along, grinning as I watched her scamper back and forth, trying in vain to catch something. Butterflies, beetles, bees, they were all beyond her clumsy swing with the net. Presumably to make her feel better about the expedition, her father would indulge in snatching bugs with his cupped hands and sneak them into her container. "Hey, look at this. A big one." The girl yelled with delight and immediately - much to my surprise - grabbed the box to show me. Without hardly any words exchanged, she would simply point. She wanted me to express just as much amazement at her catch as her father did.
As they got ready to leave, her father climbed up the mound to retrieve her from where she had resumed tossing grass at my face. Most Japanese I met were not unfriendly, but they were not talkative either; they had nothing to say to me. Especially not people my own age - and this father was not that much older than I was. He seemed so shy and soft-spoken that I was surprised once more when he introduced himself to me. "So, are you a teacher around here?"
"Yeah," I replied, "I teach English at that high school." I pointed at my concrete-and-green-plastic high school, only a few hundred meters away. "I've been here for almost a year now."
"Where are you from?"
"America."
"Ohhhh. Interesting." He nodded to himself, and then turned his attention back to his little daughter, who was completely ignoring both of us as she arranged piles of grass around her feet. "Honey, this person is a teacher." He said it slowly and deliberately; in truth, he simply addressed me as "Teacher" (sensei) in Japanese, but it's hardly a title we'd put in front of our names in English. "So we must be very respectful, okay? Can you say 'Teacher'?" She became suddenly shy and smiled as she hid her face in her shoulder. Her father smiled back at her, and then repeated, "It's time to go, now. Let's say goodbye to the teacher and go home, okay?"
She stood up with a little help, and buried her face against her father's shoulder as he picked her up. Gently, he took her hand and made a little wave with it, encouraging her. "Goodbye, Teacher. Can you say it?" She grinned and peeked out at me, but was too shy to try out saying anything new. Her father, on the other hand, bowed his head a little and said goodbye, politely. I returned the gesture and watched as, armed with nets and insect boxes, they headed home for dinner.
The encounter with the little girl and her father was memorable not only for her adorable antics and her insistence on showing me everything she found, but because of her father's attitude as well. Especially among people close to my age, my foreignness and my strange appearance always took precedence over my socially-respected position as a teacher. I was the foreigner first, and thus lost any genuine respect that a person would be inclined to give me. Teachers are held up as very respected figures in Japan - much more-so than in the Western world - and they are given a measure of automatic deference. Unless, it seemed, they were foreign teachers - foreigner first, and occupation considered afterward.
The way her father had referred to me was strange for just this reason. He had obviously considered me a teacher first, and a foreign resident after that. His attitude was not to point me out to his daughter as an example of an American or a foreigner, and he didn't want to know about whether I could use chopsticks or how I ever learned to read signs. The lesson to his daughter had been very simple and very Japanese - trying to instill in her a respect for teachers, at a young age. And here I was, supplying the example for "teacher" to a 4-year-old girl. I was not the American here, I was the sensei. Pleasantly amazed, I recalled this experience every time someone at my school insisted on attaching san rather than sensei at the end of my name (something that they would never be so rude as to do to a Japanese teacher; a normal person is san (Mr. or Ms.), while a teacher or doctor, or even simply a learned and respected person, is always to be referred to with the respectful title of sensei). I recalled it every time I was considered for my Americanness first and my position as a teacher second. Yes, most people viewed me in this way, and I was not offended enough by it to take it personally; however, I could also remind myself that at least a few people - and one little girl - in Japan thought otherwise.
* * * * * * *
The other experience I had at the kofun was just as memorable, but significantly more sobering. When I first discovered the mound, I came back the following Friday evening after I had done my shopping. Laden with plastic bags, I stopped there to catch my breath and take in the beautiful sunset that was beginning to glow on the horizon. The kofun was empty and I happily took my place at the very top, without the fear of being disturbed by junior high students or small children. Still somewhat self-conscious, I leaned back on my elbows and breathed in the evening cooking smells that wafted up on a cool breeze from the homes below.
I was startled from my reverie by a quiet voice behind me - "Good evening." As I turned to see who was talking to me, the old man sat down carefully next to me and bowed his head. I returned his greeting, confused but utterly at ease with his friendly demeanor. He proceeded to ask me the usual questions - where I was from and what I was doing in this little suburban town. He listened to my answers with vague interest, and then introduced himself to me, asking me to repeat his name and laughing with surprise when I managed to pronounce it correctly. "Call me by my first name," he said, "don't worry about formalities." It was my turn to be surprised; first names are almost never used in Japan, and I felt especially strange addressing an older person in a way that felt so disrespectful. He insisted, though, and so I did.
He then went on to tell me about his occupation. This old man was no average citizen of my town; he was a retired craftsman who had spent his life making Noh masks, elaborately carved wooden masks used in traditional Japanese theater. He told me about the difficulty of conveying emotion through the masks, which are used to express to the audience what the characters are feeling and thinking. "They are so subtle," he said, "and so lifelike." What he said was true: the masks had always seemed somewhat cartoonish to me when I saw them sitting in a museum or hanging on a wall, but whenever the actors raised them to their faces, they gave me the pure essence of heart-wrenching grief or mischievous laughter. I expressed my amazement at his life accomplishments and artistic skill, and at the chance that I would meet someone with that experience in my own neighborhood.
"That's not all," he said. "You know, the only other American I knew was this man who came here from San Francisco. Actually, I think he might have been German, but he was studying at some institution in San Francisco. Anyway, he had come here to study the craft of making Noh masks. He was so interested and knew so much about it, and he made them himself. The only foreigner I'd heard of that made them himself. It must have been at least 20 years ago now that he came here, but I still remember him. We had some great conversations together."
Impressed, I asked why the man had come to this area of all places, and not studied in Kyoto instead. The old man shrugged and said he thought there used to be an institute in our own city that was devoted to Noh. "Yes," he said, "there were a lot of Noh masters here. You wouldn't expect that, would you?"
I told him that no, I hadn't expected it. And just as suddenly as he had turned to this topic, he turned away from it again. He asked if my family missed me and if they were upset that I had come all the way to Japan, and then embarked on a tangent about his wife, who was taking her evening walk, and his children who didn't live in the area. Finally, we lapsed into silence, awed by the sunset that had suddenly burst forth in front of us, coloring the whole sky orange with airplanes taking off in the midst of it like little black darts.
"You know," he said, "people here love to come to this kofun in the summertime for the cool breezes. And then they'll stay up here to watch the sunset too. It's a great thing to have around here."
I agreed with him, already enamored of the strange mound only minutes from my apartment.
He continued, looking off into the distance as he spoke. "You know, I'm getting old already. I'm 74 this year. I think I like to come up here every evening to watch the sunset because I can never know how many more sunsets I'll see, at this age."
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, surprised that someone would bring up such a heavy topic offhandedly. He didn't seem saddened or upset by this knowledge, simply accepting of it.
"Perhaps that's why they seem so beautiful to me," he said. "I don't know if this will be my last sunset, and I suppose it becomes even more beautiful when I know it won't last."
I nodded silently, unable to disagree with that. We sat in silence together a little longer, letting that sad and wistful mood wash over us as we watched the sky darken from that orange blaze.
The man's wife came along soon enough, smiling and introducing herself, but saying little. She was not as talkative as he had been, and gave the impression of having suffered his rambling tales for many years. "Come along," she said to her husband, "we have to go make dinner now. I'm hungry. Let's go."
I smiled and waved to them as they made their way back down the kofun, the mood broken by the wife's cheerful bossiness. Still, for several minutes more, I had to simply sit at the top of the kofun, thinking about how he had viewed the sunsets up there. I, too, could not know how many more sunsets I had left before me, and soon I too would only be able to look back on them as a pleasant but unattainable memory.