As always, you’d rather spend the day with your daughter, but you can’t, and suddenly you find yourself remembering where she went to kindergarten. The next thing you know you’re on your bicycle heading for that part of town–and passing through the lotus fields.

Somewhere in Japan, a typhoon is passing through. Here in Shizuoka, though, there’s not much affect, other than thick gray skies and constant gusts.

But just look at the size of those leaves! And just look at how tall those green, green stems grow! They’ve got to get those giant blossoms up out of the elephant-ear leaves and into the sky! And just look at them go! Up, up, up!

After all that effort, do you think they’re going to complain that the sky wasn’t blue enough when they got to where they could see it good?

No, they’re not. And neither did I. Both the lotus field and the sky were lovely, just as they were.

But I did feel like seeing them under a blue sky–and maybe when the blossoms had opened a bit more. So two days later, I went back. Yes, on my bicycle.

Not waiting for the winds to pass,

Not waiting for the sky to brighten,

The lotus rose from swampy ground,

An eager green,  tight-packed titan.

Though its snuggling sheets show rich dark pink,

I know  its need inside to whiten.

It will surrender, will surely show

A naked, tender heart aglow–

And me . . . I’ll feel my burdens lighten?

One who performs his duty without attachment,

surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord,

is unaffected by sinful action,

as the lotus is untouched by water.

(The Bhagavad Gita)

The lotus, if you don’t know, is cultivated for its roots, known as renkon, and is an established part of Japanese cooking and cooking elsewhere in Asia.  You can get some basic English information on the lotus here, including nutrional information for renkon, and pictures of the root and farmers in the fields on this Japanese-language page.

Hiroshima was first, on August 6th, 1945 . . . Nagasaki, second, on August 9th, 1945.

We love firsts, don’t we. Thus, Hiroshima gets tons more media space this time of year than . . . what was it? . . . oh yeah, Nagasaki.

The argument is often made, especially from the American side, that given the great fervor of the Japanese (both the military and the general population) and their alleged intention to defend the mainland to the very last person (man and woman), bringing the war to a quick conclusion by dropping an atomic bomb was justified. That is (the argument goes), by dropping the bombs (two, it was), death and suffering of an even larger magnitude than what the bombs brought was avoided.

That’s an argument. Take the side you like.

But what are we to think about Nagasaki? Even if you side with the “necessity” argument, how many exhibitions of terrifying weapons of mass destruction were necessary? One wasn’t enough?

Recently, I saw a video posted of fighters, seven or eight, scrambling out of tunnels and into Israeli territory, only to be blown away by what looked to be a pretty hefty bomb. (For them, it didn’t seem to matter that it wasn’t nuclear.) There were viewer comments of all sorts, from all points-of-view, but every time I read one, all I could think was this is a point-of-view, a perspective, an opinon, an argument, an interpretion. The only indisputable, no-other-way-of-looking-at-it thing to be said, I thought, was, some people were blown to smithereens.

People who are entrenched on one side or the other often express with a degree of confidence the  tough steps that must be taken to end the crisis. Naturally, those steps depend on which side they’re on. On the other hand–at least in my experience–those who sympathize with both sides, at least to some extent, seem a bit more at a loss.

So what to do?

All I know to think is that it surely begins with the children. Maybe you could take all the children in Israel and Gaza and switch them all around–and then maybe people would be a little less willing to launch missiles into communities in which their own children might be living. Yes, yes, absolutely absurd. Could never be done. Well then, how about at least sending the children to live with a family across the border for a year or so, so that they’d at least know whose death their leaders’ policies were bringing about? Again, absurd? Sorry, sorry, sorry. Could you consider this then: printing this simple message on the back of every textbook used in every classroom (social sciences, math, chemistry, whatever) all over the world: PEOPLE LIVING EVERYWHERE ARE HUMAN BEINGS AND THUS DESERVE TO LIVE IN PEACE AND WITH DIGNITY. WE CAN’T KILL ANY OF THEM, EVEN IF THEY SOMETIMES DO THINGS WE DON’T LIKE. DON’T EVER FORGET THIS. AND DON’T LISTEN TO ANYONE WHO TRIES TO TELL YOU DIFFERENT.

If you think my words sound weak and trite, you could go for a message that sounds a little more authorative, like . . . DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU. Wait, is that how it went? Did Jesus add an UNLESS YOUR AND THEIR PARENTS DON’T LIKE EACH OTHER? No, I don’t believe he did. Did Jesus want us to read that stipulation into his words? Wow, now we’re back in the realm of opinion and interpretation. You can interpret what he said however you like. (Me, I don’t see much trickery or irony in Jesus’s words and tend to take his statement at face value.)

But it does begin with the children, don’t you think? Because if you go around fighting, you’ll eventually have to convince them to do the killing . . . the killing, you know, of people, otherwise known as human beings.

Me, I think that killing other human beings is an unnatural act. Maybe you do, too, in general, at least.

Some children, many I’d like to think, will choose never to kill, not even in a time of war. A few, sadly, might be convinced to kill rather easily.  And then there will be those who might kill during war if they feel there’s a compelling reason. And historically, the reason that seems to be the most compelling is this: the enemy’s culture is barbaric, the greater portion of its population savage and lunatic, and its whole country nothing but a roiling, boiling pot of evil.

If you need to ask a great many children to kill when they grow up, your task will be made much easier if you can deceive them while they’re still young, while they’re impressionable and gullible and wanting to trust.

Deceiving the children. I don’t like that. Not at all.

Here at Persimmon Dreams, we’re particularly fond of a very, very short chapter from a novel we’ve published. A young boy, Kenta Ishiguro, is trying to understand what it must have been like to have been a part of World War II, and he is realizing what education must have been like when his grandfather was young–what Americans must have learned about the Japanese, and what Japanese must have learned about Americans. We re-print the chapter, in its entirety, below.

Sorry, no photographs this time. Come back again if you’d like to see some.

*     *     *

THE ONLY THING TO DO

Yes, it was going to be brutal. And the ones who’d have to finish the brutal task, you’d have to get them ready. So you’d have no choice: you’d have to deceive them.

Yes, you’d have to deceive the children. It was the only thing to do.

In science class, some little boys were so wimpy they cried when asked to stick a knife in a dead frog’s chest. How were you going to get them to stick a bayonet in a live human being?

Human beings. How much more convenient war would be if there were none on the other side!

So you could imagine it.

You could imagine, in New York City, a mother handing a child a sign to carry: Down with the Japs–THE RATS!

You could imagine an elementary school teacher announcing a great victory, marveling at the mountain the dead bodies had become, displaying his astonishment at how foolish such a cowering, yappy species could be. Chinks, chinks, chinks, chinks! he bellows. Too stupid to know what they are!

You could imagine an officer berating a young soldier. The young soldier, still a child, trembles. The tip of his bayonet shakes. The officer growls–They are not human beings!

Nope, it’s not too late to move to Shizuoka! Not too late to find a bike and tool around a  neighborhood or two!

No, no, don’t let a little heat or humidity stop you. Get a bottle of water. Or two. Drink. Sweat. And feast your eyes on all that grows so green under that gorgeous blue sky.

August 3rd. Up to Bara-no-dan.

And then down into the forest.

Each leaf we saw fall

in the odd August cool

fell to the soft forest floor . . .

as only it could.

And then on to the top of Hakkorei.

All day long, looking near and far.

I see friends shaking hands,

Saying, ‘How do you do?’

They’re really saying,

‘I love you.”

*     *      *

The thin stream disappears. You come to the sign that declares This is the beginning of the Abe River. You walk a little farther. Five minutes or so. You come to the Abe Pass, a small, roundish patch of flatness . . . a flatness that is almost indiscernible as you approach it.All around the rollicking hills roll down to this one spot. Stand in the middle of it and you feel the thrust of the earth pushing the trees out of the ground every which way, doing all they can to get the canopies of green up to that one big patch of blue sky right above your head.  The thrust of the earth rushes up the tree trunks and sets all the leaves aquiver. There’s a breeze, yes, but it’s more than that. You feel it. You see it.

The leaves ripple with the light, shimmer. The dog days of summer have just begun, and the leaves are not yet the slightest bit fazed by the harsh heat. You only wonder if each leaf feels itself a single performer for the sky–or a part of a community, a country, a continent, a cosmos.

And then you look down and see a single leaf fallen.  It’s clay red. With suspicious dark spots that ooze an eerie yellow. It’s still soft. And you wonder what it thought, suddenly  growing languid, suddenly unable to keep up the dance, this time of the year. What it thought as it struggled to keep a grip and defeat the dizziness, and then drifted down, helplessly, unseasonably, to where it rests now.

You could leave it where it lies. In its open-air tomb beneath the celebration above. Or you could pick it up. Wrap it in a paper towel. Put it in your backpack. Take it home. Stick it in between the pages of a book. But it won’t  matter. You’ll still feel the spectacle above all the more grand.

Up you go, up the steep bit to Bara-no-dan. You have a feeling the wind is just strong enough to clear out just enough haze to open up a nice view of Mt. Fuji, snowless in late July. And what do you know. Your feeling is right!

This particular hike was on July 27, for those of you who like to keep score responsibly.

And just look at this mushroom. It looked exactly as it does in the pic. All aglow, its stem nearly invisible, so that it seemed to be hovering, or maybe spinning in midair.

Lots of folks were out playing.

They, too, must have thought it a beautiful day.

When we here at Persimmon Dreams discovered online the article entitled “Why Readers, Scientifically, Are The Best People To Fall In Love With” (found at elitedaily.com . . . their capitals, not ours), we knew we had to spring into action. As amazing as it may sound, we’d been familiar with the concept of empathy for quite some time, but we’d always associated it such humdrum, non-sexy, yawn-inducing statements as, “It will make you a better human being,” “It will make you a more responsible member of society,” “It will make you feel the huge part of the universe that you are,” and “It will give you peace of mind.” We had never heard it put as alluringly and tantalizingly as the article above does, basically . . . READ BOOKS, GET SOME EMPATHY, and TURN YOUR LOVE LIFE AROUND!!!!!  (Well, actually, the article said that people who read fiction tend to develop empathy, people with empathy tend to understand their partners better and thus show more consideration, and thus such people may be worth searching out if you’re looking for a significant other. Still, I think what I wrote in capital letters may be what many folks who read the article take from it.)

Well, we’re stubborn here at Persimmon Dreams, so we have to admit that we’d wished that some of those “humdrum” ideas mentioned above had gotten into more folks’ heads, but falling in love with the right person in the right way is an awful good thing too, so what the heck. If it’s romantic love that gets folks worked up about empathy, then more power to it.

Anyway, we know this this new love angle is going to lead to some pretty darned magical stuff. People are going to be out to gorge themselves with all the empathy they can, and that will mean a lot of fighting tooth and nail through bookstores and libraries to secure copies of the most precious (the most empathy-packed) books, and getting out to the park or the beach to  READ! and to BE SEEN READING BY POTENTIAL ROMANTIC PARTNERS!

And how can you read, if you don’t have a bookmark? Why, you’d lose your place! You’d get all frustrated! You’d give up! And all the wonders that empathy could bring you would be lost to you forever!

So that’s what we here at Persimmon Dreams meant when we said above that we knew we had to spring into action. If there weren’t enough bookmarks in the world, this whole empathy thing might blow over. It might come to nothing.

So we fired up the factory. We had every employee pulling double shifts. Our designers made giant pots of coffee. Exquisite ribbons were acquired. The assembly line was reconfigured. The paper mills began bellowing paper-mill stuff into the air, and all sorts of fascinating images began flying out from the presses. In all, a lot of midnight oil was burned. The thinkers thought, the choppers chopped, the slicers and trimmers sliced and trimmed, the luminators luminated, the pokers, twisters, and knotters poked, twisted and knotted.

Quite a lot of time was spent searching for the  scissors.

Lest you doubt the grandness of our factory, take a look at it, albeit at rest, in the two matching pictures below.

So we did what we could.  And as my good friend the cowardly, tail-sucking lion used to say, “we do believe in empathy,we do believe in empathy, we do we do we do believe in empathy.”

But to be honest, we blew a couple of gaskets, and our resources (our accounting staff has just informed us), are far from limited, so the supplies of bookmarks are also limited, but still we would like to get the product of our labors into the hands of as many empathy seekers as possible . . . so if you happen to be in the neck of the woods where our company bicycle is moving merrily along–all company facilities and every single last employee piled up on the saddle (yes, yes, Henry David Thoreau would marvel at our mobility)–and your soul is open wide to the bliss that empathy can bring you, give us a shout out and ask us how you can get your hand on a bookmark.

Remember, though, supplies are limited. Severely.

The midday mist

turned us into shadows,

the rooty, spongy ground

lightened our step,

and once we were wet to the bone–

and knew we would get no wetter–

we minded not

when gusts pelted us with rain,

for we could marvel at the maple leaves,

themselves appreciating greatly

that time-proven partner

–the wet gray–

who enabled  them to show off

(so nimble on their firm little stems)

what dancing stars they were,

and what rollicking constellations they could be  . . .

and I knew I’d been on Aozasa Mountain before,

long ago,

as a little boy,

half a world away,

on a bright June day,

barefoot,

lanky legs flying through fescue,

a skinny arm extended,

raking white petals

in a long line of gardenias,

then stopping,

turning to see,

through a single eye,

a single squinting eye

(a foggy lens, the center wiped clean and clear),

the swirls of fragrance

rise up to mingle

with green pine and blue sky . . .

a fragrance unforgettable,

a fragrance soon to be forgotten.

*     *     *

July 13. Aozasayama (Aozasa Mountain).

We’d driven up through  the hamlet of Utogi and reached the parking lot at Aoi Kogen. Now two of us were sitting in the back of the car, the raised hatchback shielding us from a rain that had just started back up, and two of us were standing out in the rain, rain coat hoods in full use. What to do? Call it a day? Go through with the hike?

The rain was supposed to have started later in the day, and now we all surely knew that, the most favorable scenario was going to be (most likely, probably) five hours of walking through intermittent rain. Still, when the rain would stop for a moment, I’d (we’d?) think, for just a moment, that maybe the heavens would clear up.  That surely indicated something about what I (we) thought we were going to get that day, up along the ridge, whether it rained cats and dogs or not.

So we hiked as planned  . . . and part of the time it did rain cats and dogs. Maybe it even rained a few tanuki and inoshishi. But once you’re wet, you’re wet, and it makes no sense to worry about it. So you don’t. You just enjoy what there is to enjoy.

The sign said this way to Jizo Toge (Jizo Pass), so we headed off that way, along the asphalt  road for a while, until we came to the Jizo Toge trailhead . . . where one of the many Mr. Jizo’s was there to greet us. “You’re good,” he seemed to say. “No worries.  I get wet all the time and look at me.”

It was windy as heck up at the Toge Pass, but fortunately  another Mr. Jizo had a little shack of a shrine that he hung out in, and he invited us in for lunch. Delightful indeed.

And then on we went.

Along the ridge. In the fog and mist. Among the big  beeches and maples. Bamboo grass everywhere. Sasa. Thus the name of the mountain.From Toge Pass, it’s a gentle ascent, but we were happy, just the same, to have the mushrooms applauding our efforts.

A little wet, yes, but that is one happy hiker, don’t you think?

We walked on to Mumei no Toge (No Name Pass), then on up to the summit of Aozasa (top picture), then doubled back to descend from Mumei.

That way back down to Aoi Kogen was a bit steep and I thought I’d rather go up it than down, but there was lots to please the eyes. Long stretches of cool moss and rock. Then wasabi fields.

Wasabi fields. Wet, wet, wet wasabi fields. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing this is where we picked up the leeches. If that was the case, it was lucky we didn’t ascend this way. Those little suckers would have had four or five hours to find our sweet spots. As it was, we got down in about twenty more minutes and found only about twenty leeches in our boots and on our clothes. Only one leech had latched onto human flesh. On a wrist.

Leeches are not only talented vampires, but also awesome gymnasts, amazingly flexible, and capable of extraordinary leaps and somersaults. Yes, there were a few shrieks, and a few uncomfortable moments yanking off that wrist leech with tweezers, but back in the car, down from Utogi and back on the road heading back to town, we were already laughing at the leeches. The rain, as a problem, we’d dismissed hours before.

Note: One leech had hidden really well. One of our hearty hikers found it on her shin, after she’d gotten back home. She reports it was easily done in with salt.

Through the chainlink fence

Far-sighted hydrangeas stretch

To bloom big and free.

After my friend Aki Kauel saw this picture, she showed me one she’d taken herself. It seems flowers don’t like to stay behind chainlink fences.

According to Aki, this flower was insisting, “We want freedom!”

We were too late

to see the deer

walk the foggy ridge,

but we plunged down into the cedars–

as the deer must have–

and glanced back up

just in time

to see the sun clear the ridge

and slice into the woods,

setting the mist and fog aglow.

Were the deer watching, too? Did they wonder why we (I) stopped for such a while?

I started this June 29th hike up Ryuso at 5:25 am. Reason being a guy had told me the day before that he usually started around 5 am. He seemed to like being the first one on the mountain and to get to the ridge when the deer were still out and about. I managed to be the first one up the mountain, but the deer had already chosen other places to hang out. Maybe should have started a half hour earlier.

It was still raining a bit when I started and everything was pretty wet–which made the frogs eager for strolls. This guy was intent on not hopping. A plumpily dignified stride was just the thing for him.

“We.” You know, me and the frogs.

A few days ago,

Your nose was in gardenias.

Do you remember?

If you can’t remember the fragrance of the gardenia well, don’t worry. That’s why we have seasons.

But here’s a couple of reminders, if you can’t wait until next year.

I know, I know, online photographs don’t always give off strong fragrances.