Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (86 page)

But modernity isn’t the only force at work hastening an end to the
itako
. When I called Mount Doom to ask about meeting one, I was patiently told that the blind mediums did not have an official relationship with the temple, and that I was welcome to come during the Autumn Festival and to hire a priest to read a sutra to commemorate anyone I might be grieving. “You know, there are only two
itako
left, and one is very old and might die at any time.”

It is often said—by the Japanese themselves—that Japan is the
country of nuance. There is a great deal of nuance contained in the conversation I had with the priests at Mount Doom. Even though the place is most famous for its
itako
, visitors are discouraged from coming for the sole purpose of meeting with the mediums, all of whom are female and the final inheritors of Japan’s old matriarchal, shamanistic tradition. Instead, visitors are encouraged to visit with Buddhist priests, who are male.

Before going to Mount Doom in the fall, I exchanged a series of emails with a young Buddhist priest with whom I had become friendly, and who lives in T
hoku but isn’t officially connected to the Mount Doom bureaucracy. I asked him if the
itako
would most likely show up on Mount Doom for the Autumn Festival. His answer was carefully worded. Yes, he said. There would be
itako
. But I had to understand that it was not the policy of the temple bureaucracy to support the work of the
itako
, and there was no guarantee that the
itako
would show up. Further, if what I wanted was to truly understand the meaning of Mount Doom, then I ought to meet with its vice president, a mercurial man named Minami Jikisai who was considered a great Buddhist thinker and teacher, and whose writings on grief and modern spirituality had made him quite famous in Japan.

This young priest in T
hoku was not the first person to bring up Minami Jikisai with me. Kaneta, of Café de Monk, had also once laughingly suggested I try to meet with Mount Doom’s vice president. “A very interesting man, I hear. Most unusual.” I had had dinner with the folklore scholar Hijikata Kisashi, who had also told me once that I ought to read Minami Jikisai’s book on Mount Doom, if not try to meet the great man himself. At that time, I had not read Minami’s book, though I would later when I was not traveling so much.

Arrangements were made for me to meet this vice president during the Autumn Festival. But there were conditions: I was not
allowed to photograph the vice president, and I could not record our conversation. Further, if I wanted to meet with him, I was requested
not
to meet with an
itako
.

So there was the choice: I could meet with the vice president of Mount Doom, but not the blind medium. Or I could go to Mount Doom hoping that the
itako
would be there, but I would not be able to speak with Minami Jikisai.

I have said that Japan is the land of exceptions. And in reading the emails from my contact in Japan, I sensed a hesitancy in the way he worded the instructions. “It was requested . . .” “You are requested . . .” I asked my contact how it would be if I went to see an
itako
the
day before
my scheduled appointment with the head priest. I had lost my grandfather and my father, and I wanted to be able to consult with a blind medium if at all possible.

Oh well, my contact wrote back to me. If I were coming the
day before
, and I was not going to be mixing my meeting with an important leader of Mount Doom and a private consultation with an
itako
whose services I would be procuring due to a very real and recent loss, that seemed like a situation with which one could not argue.

I
T WAS JUST
after eight in the morning when I arrived at Mount Doom, but already the parking lot was full of cars and there were two tour buses parked off to the side. I paid my admission fee and crossed the first gate. To the left were two very low tents made out of blue tarp. Each had a line of about fifteen people in front of it. I chose the farther of the two stalls and took my place, bracing against the cold wind.

In front of me, there was a man dressed in down pantaloons and a down vest. It was so windy, he had fashioned a kind of helmet out of a white towel, and that covered his head and mouth. I had seen
farmers wearing towels like this as they drove around in their cars; presumably it was a local method of dealing with the unpredictable weather. The man stood just off to the side, and as I approached, I could hear him lecturing the people waiting ahead of me on the correct protocol for visiting an
itako
. He spoke partly in dialect, so it was somewhat difficult for me to understand, but I gathered that he was chastising the people ahead of me for failing to do a complete circuit of Mount Doom’s grounds before coming to see the medium.

“The proper thing is for you to go to all the main temples! Visit the lake! Then come around there,” he gestured toward a pathway.

Two of the women in the line nodded apologetically. The man kept up his tirade, and I couldn’t figure out if he was there to vet all the guests, or if he was in line waiting for a medium himself. He was so insistent on the rightness of the procedure that eventually a few women left the line and began the long walk through the temple grounds. Then the man’s gaze settled on me.

I was wearing a hat and a scarf, items I hoped would keep some of the wind at bay, but which I also hoped might disguise my obvious foreign features. The man with the white towel on his head now barked at me. “What about you? Have you done a complete circuit?”

“Many times,” I said. Then I tipped my hat so he could see my Caucasian features. He stared at me for a while, trying to take in the conflicting pieces of information, nodded, and drifted off toward a shed behind the tents. Around me, people in line exhaled with relief.

“Is that man here with you?” I asked what remained of the little party in front of me.

“Oh no!” they said. “He was setting up some flags and fighting with the wind. And then he came over to talk to us. He wouldn’t stop.”

“I think,” offered a woman behind me, “that he is a yearly volunteer. He seemed to know a lot.”

After a few minutes, the women who had scattered off to do a “complete pilgrimage” drifted back into line, and so our queue recongealed.

I waited nearly three hours for my medium, a very short time according to some of the “experts” I met that day. Behind me stood a little group of ladies who said they came every year, but usually in the summer when the line snaked all the way around the temple grounds, and then one had to wait for seven hours. Things had only grown worse now that there were only two
itako
alive.

In front of me, a family of four—mother, grandmother, daughter, and father—explained that they had come from the T
ky
area. The grandmother had been before, but this was the first time for the rest of the family. Every now and then, the grandmother went to the front of the line to eavesdrop on the session under way. Then she would return and triumphantly declare, “She’s just repeating herself!” And we would all laugh nervously.

Up ahead of this family was a young woman whom I guessed was in her late twenties; she would later emerge from the tent in tears. Another man was there by himself; when it was his turn to consult the medium, I would hear the
itako
repeatedly examine the issue of marriage. “I guess he wants to get married,” I said to no one in particular.

The grandmother—the one who liked to go and eavesdrop—immediately turned around and said to me, “Oh, he had someone he wanted to marry, but she died in the tsunami.”

After about an hour, I couldn’t help but notice that the line to our particular medium had grown quite long while the other one was short. The ladies behind me noted this too, and again the grandmother ahead of me had the answer: “That
itako
in the other line is old. Ours is young. And she has a book. And she can see.”

We all stood on tiptoe to try to look into the tent. There sat the
itako
in her white robes, her hair pulled back with a piece of elastic.
She had on not one shred of makeup. Above her hung a wooden board with her name: Matsuda Hiroko. It was a name I recognized as the author of a book,
The Last Itako
, that had been recommended to me. I had purchased the book and read about half of it before coming to Mount Doom.

Over the course of the following three hours, it stormed, it rained, and it brightened. When it rained, those of us with umbrellas joined forces, creating a kind of roof so that those without umbrellas could try to stay dry. We held places in line so people could go to the bathroom. At one point, the women behind us handed out rice crackers. Most of the people in line were women who were coming for the first time. A few had tried to come in the summer but had given up due to the heat and the length of the line. Many had stories about friends, or friends of friends, who had come to see an
itako
. One woman had lost her best friend in the tsunami and had asked for the deceased spirit to locate itself because the body was never recovered. A man who had lost his wife wanted her to forgive him for his temper. There were families who wanted to say good-bye one more time to the patriarch of their family.

Because the medium tents were located at the end of the pilgrimage route, we also attracted the attention of those exiting the temple complex, just after they passed the last of the Jiz
statues and the field where tufts of grass were tied together. Sometimes they stopped to ask us how long we had been waiting. Sometimes they tried to eavesdrop for a moment before walking away. Many took photos; they knew who the
itako
were and knew that a consultation was a rare privilege. But most did not join the line; they were on schedules and had places to go, or did not have enough warm clothing on for the long wait.