The Miko [antikvár]

spring, Present Nara Prefecture, Japan Masashigi Kusunoki, the sensei of this dojo, was making tea. He knelt on the reed lalami, his kimono, light grey on dark grey, swirled around him as if he were the eye of a great dark whirlpool. He poured the steaming hot water into the earthenware cup and, as he took up the reed whisk to make the pale green froth, the form of Tsutsumu shadowed the open doorway. Beyond his bent body, the polished wooden floor of the dojo stretched away, gleaming and perfect. Kusunoki had his back to the doorway. He faced the edge of the shdji screen and the large window through which could be seen the chcrry trees in full blossom, clouds come to walk the earth, marching up the densely wooded slopes of Yoshino, their oblique branches as green as the hills beyond, covered with ancient moss. The scent of cedar was very strong now, as it almost always was in this section of Nara prefecture, save during those few weeks of winter when the snow lay heavy and muffling through the ridges and rises of the terrain. Kusunoki never tired of that view. It was steeped in the history of Japan. It was here that Minamoto no Yoshitsune had sought the shelter of these fortress-like mountains in order to defeat the treachery of the Shogun, his brother; it was here that the great doomed Emperor Go-Daigo had assembled his troops and ended his exile, beginning his attempt to return to the throne; here, too, where Shugendo had developed the way of mountain ascetics, a peculiar fusion of Buddhism and Shinto. Mount Omine was out there and on its slopes congregated ihcyamabushi, the wandering, self-mortifying adherents of this syncretic religion.