The Sound of the Mountain
Takuma Valley
Kamakura is a coastal town in Japan, surrounded to the north, east, and west by hills and to the south by the open water. The hills make Kamakura a natural fortress, which was very useful back in samurai times. It also means that our town has many green valleys between the hills. We call these valleys “yatsu” or even more locally, “yato.”
We live in Takuma-ga-yatsu, named after a famous painter for the shogunate during the Kamakura Period (1185–1333). It’s said that Takuma lived in this valley and many of the paintings in the temples were done by Takuma and his pupils.
Walking up and down this valley has been our daily social-distancing walk for the last month. It’s been a good chance to remember just how beautiful the place where we live is.
Hokokuji Temple
About a three-minute walk from our house, closer to the entrance of the valley, sits Hokokuji Temple, one of the many Zen Buddhist temples in Kamakura. Hokokuji is well-known for its beautiful bamboo garden. Visitors come from all over the world to admire its beauty while enjoying a cup of matcha tea and sweets. During the week-long “Golden Week” vacation in early May, we’re used to seeing long lines snaking out of the temple gate and down the street toward the bus stop. This year’s Golden Week may be the first time we can walk down the road without seeing a hundred people waiting to view the bamboo.
Hokokuji helps keep me on schedule. They are passionate about tidying up the garden, and when we wake up to the sound of leaf blowers, we know we’ve overslept. (I prefer the sweeping sounds instead, but it’s mostly leaf blowers these days.) Also, the temple bell wakes us up at 8 AM every Sunday morning as a signal to start the zazen meditation. It’s a bit like we live in the temple, which is actually more true than I realized when we first moved here. Looking at old maps of Kamakura, you can see that our entire valley was once part of the temple grounds. That means we live in a part of the zen temple. Very cool!
The temple was founded in 1334 by a high-ranking Zen monk named Eko who studied in China, and was famous for his contributions to the Zen literary movement known as “Gozan Bungaku.”
The Sound of the Mountain
Speaking of literature, right across the street from Hokokuji is the location of one of the houses where the writer Yasunari Kawabata lived in Kamakura during the 1930s. Kawabata was the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize for his novel “Snow Country,” but the novel he was working on when he lived here was “The Sound of the Mountain.” This particular sound, of course, is nothing other than what remains when all distractions are gone — the sound of silence, inspired by our quiet valley.
It was like wind, far away, but with a depth like a rumbling of the earth. Thinking that it might be in himself, a ringing in the ears, Shingo shook his head.
The sound stopped, and he was suddenly afraid. A chill passed over him, as if he had been notified that death was approaching. He wanted to question himself, calmly and deliberately, to ask whether it had been the sound of the wind, the sound of the sea, or a sound in his ears. But he had heard no such sound, he was sure. He had heard the mountain. (p. 4)
-The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata (tr. Edward G. Seidensticker)
Now that the temple has closed its gates temporarily due to COVID-19, I think we’ll have more chances to hear the sound of the mountain.
Thank you for reading.
More stories to come about my valley in Kamakura.
Stay mindful, everyone.
