Which is why, around noon, we’re walking past a pair of bronze gate guardians into the precincts of the Fukuchi-in on Kōya-san, the mountain retreat founded by Kūkai in the ninth century. The temple and lodging house is one of Kōya-san's fifty-one hospitable “shukubō”, but the only one to have tapped a spring of geothermally heated water.
After dropping our light packs (best leave your bulky baggage down below), we take refuge from a snow shower in a restaurant. And then, since the snow keeps falling, we wash lunch down with a cappuccino in a nearby café.
When the snow flurries still won’t let up, we flee along Kōya’s high street to the only other modern structure we can think of – the Reihōkan museum. The temperature inside is close to ambient, but at least we’re sheltered from the wind.
In plastic slippers – boots must be left at the entrance – we pad past an impressive Heian-era Buddha into the museum’s largest exhibition hall. And at once we encounter great art. The sculptor Kaikei’s four heavenly kings stand out from anything else in the museum. Occupying the place of honour at the end of the hall, his Peacock King too will live in memory, although it demands a greater amount of cultural adjustment to appreciate.
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| Kaikei's Peacock King. Image by courtesy of the Koya-san Reihokan Museum. |
But what did this era look like to the artists? Did they deplore the collapse of Heian civilisation, or were they hailing a new age of stability? Or both. In the end, genius is genius, even if context matters too. Michelangelo might never have existed. But, if he did, then he could only have been a Renaissance man…
Deeply chilled – at least, in my case; the Sensei seems to be made of sterner stuff – we put on our boots and slip-slide out into the street. The snow has stopped falling, and some weak sunbeams are probing through the clouds.
Over the road is the Kongōbu-ji, the institution that heads up the four thousand or so temples of the Shingon faith.
Skirting a snowball fight between some children by the belfry, we make for the main building. Again, we exchange boots for plastic slippers and skitter our way past a row of stately rooms.
In one of them, a bilingual sign tells us, Hideyoshi’s men forced his own nephew, Hidetsugu, to commit suicide – this was in August 1595 – as the prelude to having his entire line wiped out, women, children and all. They played politics for keeps in those days. Two decades later, much the same treatment was meted out to Hideyoshi’s own family. The Buddhist term inga-ōhō might have been invented for such cases.
With relief, we proceed along a series of galleries that overlook a garden. An array of rocks rise up through the snow like peaks through a cloud sea. The stones are said to have been brought from Shikoku, where Kōya-san’s founder Kūkai was born in 774. That could make them kin to those strange rock pillars that I saw on Tsurugi-san the other day…
While I’m photographing the garden, the Sensei has slipped away. I find her sipping a welcoming cup of tea in a reception hall at the end of the tourist route.
To remind us that we are still in a temple, an effigy of Kūkai presides benignly over the far end of the room.
Daylight has all but faded by the time we return to the Fukuchi-in, where we find our room already warm and cozy, our hosts having thoughtfully left a gas stove running. We take care with the heating: fires have repeatedly devastated Kōya-san, and the most destructive of them all started at this very shukobō in the winter of 1521. (I am obliged to Philip Nicoloff's book on Sacred Kōya-san for this historical detail.)
The Fukuchi-in’s corridors, however, remain unheated and it isn’t until I’ve visited the rotenburo, soaking up the geothermal heat while watching the sunset clouds scrolling by, that I feel sufficiently reanimated to examine the treasures they harbour.
Hidden in an alcove, and quite unexpected in a temple, is a collection of polished mineral sections from all over Japan. And even less to be expected is the suit of samurai armour lurking in a gloomy corner.
On closer inspection, it has a blue crucifix mounted on its helmet. A placard explains that this equipage belonged to the “Christian samurai” Takayama Ukon (c.1552–1615), who was eventually exiled for his faith. But, before that, he was a loyal supporter of Nobunaga – who came within an ace of reducing Kōya-san to ashes during his campaigns to unify Japan.
The characters for Kōya mean no more and no less than “high place”. But I’m starting to realise that this is a place which has fathomless depths too.
After a simple but exquisite supper of shōjin ryōri, we retire to our room. There’s a TV there. There's wifi too, so we could equally well commune with our phones. Or we could dip into the bilingual breviary placed unobtrusively by the teapot, somewhat like a Gideon Bible. When I open it at random, the word “Yama” catches my eye. But not at all in the expected sense:
Once Yama, the legendary King of Hell, asked a man who had fallen into hell on account of his evil deeds in life, whether, during his life, he had ever met the three heavenly messengers. The man replied: "No, my Lord, I never met any such persons."
Yama asked him if he had ever met an old person bent with age and walking with a cane. The man replied: "Yes, my Lord, I have met such persons frequently." Then Yama said to him: "You are suffering this present punishment because you did not recognize in that old man a heavenly messenger sent to warn you that you must quickly change your ways before you, too, become an old man."
Yama asked him again if he had ever seen a poor, sick and friendless man. The man replied: "Yes, my Lord. I have seen many such men." Then, Yama said to him: "You have come into this place because you failed to recognize in these sick men the messengers from heaven sent to warn you of your own sickness …"
Before I can acquaint myself with the third heavenly messenger, I hear the merest hint of a snore from the futons. The Sensei is already asleep. It’s been a long day...
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