the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul

"As we approached Ofuna station I glanced out the window and immediately slapped Grant's arm. He looked up and I pointed. The head of a giant, and I mean giant, female Buddha towered over the trees on the side of a hill. "I want to go there." I said."

This weekend, as promised, Grant, Haji and I went to Ofuna.

From the train we could see a crowd working its way down the hill from the great statue.

"Hey Haji, today's not that throw-beans-at-your-dad thing is it."

He shrugged. "I dunno, maybe. That would explain the crowd."

To clarify for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about - In Japan the second of February is considered to be the first day of spring. On the first, To prepare for the coming of spring Japanese families throw beans at demons to drive them away from Japanese homes. Since demons tend to be hard to see and don't stand still so you can aim, the oldest male of the house hold wears a demon mask and prowls around outside, while the rest of the family throws beans at him and yells "Go away demon, come in spring."

At the shrines and temples across Japan, some members of the community are allowed to stand on a platform and throw beans into the crowd below to protect from bad luck in the coming season. The mass of Japanese people coming down the hill as we arrived had just attended that event.

Fortunately, we missed it. I was not anxious to be caught in a bone crushing crowd like we had at the Emperors palace. (note to Mr. Wiers: the low black building behind me was the palace and yes it did look like a conference hall)

We pushed against the last stragglers of the crowd so we could cross the street outside the train station. Safely across, we stopped to look up at our destination. From where we stood we could see only her face and headdress.

After a false start, we found this:


And followed it to a checkpoint at the base of the steepest paved hill I had ever seen. A Japanese family giggled and tilted as they tried to walk down the thing without overbalancing.

We climbed the mountain, paid our $300 yen entrance fee, and allowed a guard to lead us to the base of the stairs. He tried just gesturing a couple of times but the stupid gaikokujin had to be led since we didn't speak Japanese enough to know he was saying, "The Kanon Statue is that way."

From the foot of the stairs it seemed the lady was looking down at us, waiting for us to climb up and meet her. It's bad form to say no to the goddess of mercy so we climbed. To give you a sense of how truly massive this statue is look at the picture above. The man you see silhouetted in black is standing at the top of the stairs, the statue is about 200 feet back from the top of the stairs.


Unlike the Great Buddha, she is only a bust, she has no legs to fold in meditation, no hands to form the meditation mudra, but you need only tip your head back and look at her face to see that she is meant to be mediating.

We followed the path around the statue to some scaffolding at her back. Climbing a few steps we were able to go inside the statue. It was nothing like entering the Great Buddha, where he was dark and basic, she was bright, with white wash covering her cement skin. It was like stepping into a cool building with only one oddly shaped room.

As we watched a Japanese man threw a coin in the offering box and knelt to pray. It struck me that he was inside the lady praying to a statue of the lady. And that struck me as both strange and beautiful.

Outside again we stopped to take more pictures.

Then made our way down another little side path which led us down some stairs. Halfway, we stopped to watch a animated little girl dart forward, ring the prayer bell, bow her head quickly then look at her mother as if to say, "I did it, you see, I spoke to the gods and I rang the bell and everything."

When they had gone we looked around to make sure no one else was waiting to make their devotions and then stepped forward to peak through the square window at the space the monks used for meditation.

While Haji was still trying to take a picture of the ceiling fixture through the glass, I went back and put my hands on the bell pull. Up close, I could see the cloth was worn to bursting where thousands of hands had grasped and pulled. The fabric was faded and smooth beneath my fingers. I wanted to ring the bell, just to hear the pure sound of its echo. But I didn't. This was not my temple; these were not my gods. My hands dropped. I listened to the silence where the toll could have been.

Further down the stairs we found a pillar with the words "May peace prevail on earth" written on it in several languages. And across from that a garden lantern with glass lenses over the face. Beside it, a monument read:

"The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima brought death to hundreds of thousands of citizens. The flame taken from that conflagration, "burning in deep-seated pain in memory" of those who were killed has been kept burning in Hoshino-mura Village in Fukuoka Prefecture."

"This flame was lit from that flame and is placed here as a symbol of our yearning for lasting peace."

Behind the lantern was an alter bearing two fragments of masonry, one from Hiroshima, the other from Nagasaki. The structure behind that drowned under thousands of peace cranes.

I leave you today with the stones of dead cities and a quote from Stephen Ambrose, "The past is a source of knowledge and the future a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future."