the old woman in the shrine
There's something that stirs my memory now and then, a snapshot of a mysteriously sacred old woman living inside a tiny shrine on a weathered hillside in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture. I want to say the image is true, but since I have no photograph to back it up, I can't be sure. Why I have no photograph, I also don't know. I'm positive I had my camera with me, but that Alex and I were trying to conserve digital memory since I hadn't been smart enough to bring my laptop along on our Kansai trip.

It was our first, last, and only morning on Mount Koya, a spiritual pilgrimage site in the Japanese wilderness. We had already packed our things and were to leave the temple-inn we stayed at in a few hours to catch a train to Osaka. But we hadn't yet seen the main head temple of the Shingon Buddhist sect or the central complex of the mountain. We meandered through those, taking some of the pictures you can see in my photo-essay layout. Then we headed through town to the edge of the mountain, overlooking the valley below, where the original entryway to Mount Koya, a great black gate, stands. It was impressively large, but either the light was bad or my camera batteries were low, because I don't have any pictures of it either.

On the way in (out?) of the gate, we saw a small shrine perched on the steep hillside with a sign pointing toward it. Shrines that small don't usually merit signs because they all pretty much honor the same local or national spirits, so that was enough to spark my interest.

If memory serves me correctly, when we reached the top of the knoll, we found that it was a shrine to love. And it had some unusual ritual prayer/purification that involved incense, or maybe lighting candles. There was SOMETHING inside the small shack-like building that merited specific interest, were it effigies or something similar, created by visitors to the shrine to mark their passing.

But oddest of all was the old woman in the corner. We had stood at the entryway of the shrine while a couple inside prayed, and then turned as if to leave. But instead of leaving, they began to talk to someone. We hesitated at first, unsure if we could proceed to the tiny altar or should wait till they were finished. In the end we went inside, and that's when we saw her. Gnarled and shakey, the tiny woman must have been at least 90 years old. She sat behind a table in the incense-filled room and made-- what was it?-- I can't remember, something that had to do with the shrine. But she made it with her bare hands.

I thought, how endearing, that a local woman has such loyalty to this shrine. But as I listened to their conversation I began to realize that she didn't just work here, she lived here, and had for at least twenty years. In particular, the couple referenced one winter when the snows had been so high that no one could come to the shrine to check on "grandma," as they called her. Some of the villagers had been sure she was dead. Yet when the weather cleared, there she was, right as roses. Sure enough, "grandma" smiled a near-toothless grin at the mention of her notoriety and pointed at a new clipping behind her head that detailed the story.

This woman was a gem, a classic Japanese folk-story right in front of us. I didn't talk with her-- though I'm sure we greeted her-- because her Japanese was so terribly difficult to understand. I was petrified of offending her. I couldn't bring myself to ask to take a picture of her, though in retrospect I regret it. In truth, I think I may have dreamed the whole thing, but that may be true of my whole trip to Japan-- a collective hallucination as a search for meaning in confusion.

I think Alex can back me up on this one, or maybe fill in the blanks. This old woman has been in my thoughts lately, for whatever reason, and it's time I gave her due credit for sparking my imagination. Thanks, obaasan. I hope you're doing well.