Image: The Kurobe River, Japan Northern Alps, woodprint by Yoshida Hiroshi (1926)
Ink: On the Kurobe River, from Chapter 53 (Washiba-dake) of Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):
Speaking of the Kurobe, Washiba is the cradle for the infant plashings of this river, far-famed for the appalling depths of its gorges below. Stand on the summit of this mountain and you can see, plain as daylight, how the young Kurobe starts life. The source is a modest rill that you could cross with a stride. Soon it is raging on its way, through deep-cut chasms, into pools and hollows, plunging over waterfalls. The headwaters of the Kurobe are like the face of a boy fated to a turbulent youth.
Captured by the Kurobe
5 comments:
That's a beautiful picture.
Truly beautiful! And I thank you for that beautiful moment. Hub and I returned from holiday to learn that my girl friend's son had been murdered on the 29th. Susan, ever so sensitive, didn't want to ruin our holiday so said nothing.
We traveled so freely and so safely for seven weeks without much happening ... and now ... I'm muted.
Another lovely wood-block print of Hiroshi's! I still remember very well one summer day long ago when we walked along the Kurobe River(upper part) on a narrow path for a while. We drank some water of the river. It was cold and very good!! Thanks for sharing!
Last September, when I was heading back from Suisho to the Sugoroku campsite, I was told of a shortcut that would bring me around Washiba instead of over it again. I followed four younger people into a pleasant ravine with interesting boulders of granite that had been eroded with curved hollows; the rowan were just turning yellow and orange; a close relative to the salmonberry was in fruit; and a vigorous little stream bubbled vivaciously through the almost Edenesque autumnal beauty. It was only later that I learned that this little stream was what would become the pounding, thrashing waters of the Kurobe River. I felt as though I had met some elite individual and hadn't even known who it was I had walked alongside.
I think you hit on the matter exactly, Peter - the Kurobe River has a very strong personality, whether upstream as a babbling beck or as the mighty torrent he (definitely not she, although I don't want to start a flame war over this) becomes in those dark gorges above and below the dam....
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