We have arrived in Kamkura. It’s about 4:30PM. We’ve done a little shopping and sight-seeing. The highlight of the day was taking an hour-long ricksaw ride around town, stopping at a temple nestled in a spectacular bamboo forest. I’ll say more about that later (although that pretty well sums it up for the day); first I’ll finish off our day with Tamae-san.
After lunch we went to the Sengaku-ji Temple. It’s a medium-sized Buddhist temple with a quiet, peaceful courtyard. One unusual feature was a vending machine which dispensed incense for the burner in front of the temple. Most temples and shrines have a little booth or window from which someone sells incense; Tamae seemed somewhat put out by the very concept of an incense vending machine. There are small but rather pretty planted areas and small gardens surrounding the temple, and an entrancing ceramic barrel that makes plinky, echoey sounds when you pour water into it. There is also another well in which Kira’s head was bathed again. (Yes, they bathed it outside his dwelling also. Maybe it got a little dirty during the 10-mile walk through a snowstorm.)
Next to the temple was our main destination: the graves of the 47 ronin. They’re arranged in groups of half a dozen or so in a sort of tiered area. Each grave is marked by a tall stone with a name carved into it; there is also a smaller stone in front of each marker for offerings of incense. Asano himself is buried on a hill above the 47 ronin. There is a special shrine for the samurai who led the other 46 to defeat Kira, and another shrine for Asano’s wife.
The cemetery seems to be a fairly popular destination. At least eight or more other people visited it while we were there, and several of them left incense at one or more of the graves. Here an elderly man rather than a machine dispensed incense. He kept a small wood fire burning which he fanned vigorously to light entire bundles of incense at once, which people then carried to the graves in metal-lined trays made of split bamboo.
We noticed after awhile that one middle-aged visitor, accompanied by his wife and their teenage daughter, was carefully placing a stick of incense at each grave. Tamae struck up a conversation with him and learned that he was a direct descendant of the samurai that led the 47 to kill Kira! We were amazed. Tamae said that he said they had traveled quite a distance to visit the site, so we felt particularly lucky to be there at that particular moment.
We went through a small museum that houses a number of artifacts and a video presentation of the events. Among the artifacts were pieces of samurai armor and various written documents, including a receipt for Kira’s head. (I asked Tamae who wrote the receipt. She said it was written by one of Kira’s servants. I guess the 47 wanted some sort of written proof that they were bringing the right head back to Sengaku-ji.) There was a separate gallery containing small wooden statues of the 47, each with a little sign with their names and ages. They ranged in age from 16 to 77.
After that we were a bit thirsty so I fetched beverages from a vending machine (of course) and we sat on a bench facing the courtyard. I took the opportunity to ask Tamae about odd details of the use of the Japanese language that had occurred to me, such as: Are names written in kanji? How do you find an unfamilar name in a phone book? How do the images for obscure family names end up in cell phones? While we were there, a middle-aged woman approached Tamae and handed her a small package. They conversed briefly before she went on her way. Tamae explained that she said that her family has belonged to the temple for many years and that package contained cookies which she was giving us to thank us for visiting. Our poor American brains couldn’t quite come to terms with accepting food from someone wandering around a temple handing out little packages of cookies to strangers, but Tamae seemed to take it entirely in stride. The cookies were pretty tasty.
After leaving the temple we took a taxi back to our hotel and bid Tamae-san adieu. It was good to see her and we’ll certainly see her again on our next visit.
