The mountain village was coated jet black, even the asphalt roads lost to the darkness. There were streetlights lining the roads but the lights were dimmed, with little more light from them than the reflection of the night dew. The faintest light splayed on the asphalt, hazily bringing out the white line that denoted the roadway.
Beyond the white line that looked as if it were being sucked into the darkness was a gloomy glow. At the side of the road, near the bridge, a shrine was erected. Countless candles stood around the hokora's stone Jizo, flames flickering in a wind that may or may not have been blowing. That shadowy light shone on the expressionless, half-lidded statue and the oddity that stood beside it.
It was a sotoba about the height of a child.
On the face of the sotoba was a cramped, glued on cut out of a white paper doll. The candle lights crosshatched patterns across the paper dolls, the lights flickering on the paper, shadows dancing as if the doll were writhing. ---Far away, the bell tolled.
The sotoba waited. Illuminated by the lights offered to God, awash in the voices of the insects and frogs, waiting there among the noises mixed then with the faint sound of the bell, it stood in silence.
From the darkness the sound of the bells drew closer. The pounding of drums, vigorous as if as necessary as breath, sounded. There was the dry, pounding noise and a crowd's footsteps.
The wind blew, swaying the candles. The dancing light and shadows changed the Jizo's expression. At last torch light appeared over the hokora.
Black shadows leaped up from the ridges between the rice fields to the asphalt. The numerous flames drew circles in the darkness, beating together and joining with a clash and a shatter of red embers. Those falling lights illuminated their grotesque forms.
They wore masks with short white cloths beneath them. Black monk robes. The Oni who covered their face with old fashioned hand towels carried many huge planks of sotoba on their backs. As they danced, the paper dolls crammed onto the child sized sotoba swayed.
The sounds of the insects were cut short as if seized with fear. The sound of the gongs, the sound of the drums, the sounds of the torches beating together mingled with the sound of the mountain stream. The bullfrogs' croaks were clearer than the sound of the insects.
The Oni waved the torches, their offerings. Bearing down under the weight of the sotoba, they still took what were either long strides forward or small leaps, they bobbed up and down, sounding the bells and the drums as they swaggered over the night streets. The Oni at the head of the procession shouldered a straw figure about the size of a child, crucified at the highest point at the end of the rod.
The red Oni came to the front, waving the effigy like a keyari and stopped before the hokora. There were about twenty Oni who followed after, banging their torches, leaping and dancing past. Sweeping up the offering before the Jizo, they descended the stone steps towards the river valley. The red Oni with the effigy took up the sotoba from the side of the hokora and followed after. In the river valley where the water level was low were three effigies prepared and waiting to be burnt.
The bells and the drums fell silent as if they'd finally solved their crisis, muttering off to a finish that washed over them with a sigh of relief.
"Thanks for your hard work, men!"
An old man called out with a distinctly clear voice. One man took off his mask and sighed heavily.
"Good grief."
Following in suit, about twenty others shed their masks and lowered their burdens. The effigies, the sotoba, piled over the open air fire as if to hide the flames within the small mountain they formed. They chucked their torch lights on top of that pile, offered to the gods. The flames mingled and overtook the dolls, forming one single blaze that shone over the river valley and the faces of the surrounding people.
Seeing the others had done so, Yuuki at last took off his Oni mask. Giving a heavy sigh of relief that at last his torment was over, he took a seat on a nearby rock. He covered his face with a hand towel, wiping away the sweat and shaking his head to wash his face in the night breeze.
"Whew, good work."
Yuuki turned his head towards the voice to find a beer thrust out towards him, which he did take. As he wiped at his face with the black cloth, the man in the strange getup gave him a broad smile, and he couldn't stop a smile from welling up himself at the peculiarity of that disguise, even after all of this.
Mutou may have guessed the reason for Yuuki's smile, going "Ah," as he took his hand towel. Wiping at his sweat with a beer still in one hand, he took a seat next to Yuuki. Mutou's face was red. The man was normally the very picture of sober propriety but on the rare occasions he was of particularly good humor, you could be sure he was drunk. He must have found marauding around town to be a fitting occasion for drink. The beer he was brought was wet in his warm hand. It must have been dunked in the river to cool it.
"So? Bet you're worn out." Mutou spoke,
Yuuki nodded.
"This is what they mean when they say your legs are stiff as rods. I didn't think the mushiokuri would be this big of a thing."
"It's hard labor, being a yuge-shuu. The first time I was a part of the yuge-shuu, I can't remember how many times I thought about giving up halfway and running home," said Mutou with a laugh. "But, well, this's what the men do. Until you take part in the festival, you're just a visitor."
Yuuki nodded.
Yuuki moved to this village--to Sotoba--about a year ago. It wasn't that he had any family here. He had just wanted to move to the country and so he had an acquaintance make arrangements for a house in Sotoba. But there weren't many who came to Sotoba that way. At least as far as Yuuki knew, there was only Mutou, here. Mutou worked in the business office of the one and only hospital in the village. It seemed he moved into a house in Sotoba from nearby about the time his oldest child was in middle school. It wasn't as if nobody ever moved in from the surrounding neighborhoods but, those who did tended to have blood ties to the town. In that sense, Yuuki and Mutou were oddities.
"Is that so, this year is Yuuki-san's first time?" It was a quiet voice. The man was seated on a nearby stone and was looking to Yuuki. "Well, then, it really will wear you down, won't it?"
"Indeed," nodded Yuuki as he remembered, he was fairly certain, that the man was Hirosawa, a teacher at the middle school. "But with this out of the way I finally feel like I'm a member of the village proper now, too."
As Yuuki spoke, Hirosawa took another beer in hand and came closer.
"It will be about one year won't it, since Yuuki-san moved here? To open an art studio, wasn't it?"
"It isn't something that fancy. Azusa--that is, my wife and I do carve wood furniture, and dye and weave cloth---but really, it's just a place for us to do that in."
Hirosawa smiled, but Mutou made a face and thrust his can out at Yuuki.
"That right there! You and your wife being complicated, keeping separate names, that's why it took a whole year to get involved in the rituals. Villagers can't understand that kind of progressive thing."
Yuuki forced a smile. Their houses were somewhat nearby and Mutou had looked over him since they'd first moved in but as soon as liquor was added to the mix, conversation would turn to this topic.
He lived with Azusa as a family without marrying her, without entering her in his family register. Azusa refused to change her family name. He understood her feelings and Yuuki himself had a few doubts about the institution known as marriage, so there was no need to enter her into the family register. He didn't call her his wife, he called her his housemate. They did have one son but the way things ended up was that their son was entered under Azusa's family census, with Yuuki's approval. It seemed the people of Sotoba couldn't understand that at all. Apparently the speculations about them ran wild when they'd first moved in.
"Ah well, the villagers seem used to it now, so isn't it fine?" Hirosawa smiled gently. "Your son is certainly coming along, isn't he. He's gotten so big---this year, he started high school, if I'm not mistaken?"
"Yes. We had my son while in college. Did you look after my son at the middle school?"
"No, I had no connections to him. Just, sixteen, huh? He's at the age where he should understand his parent now, isn't he!"
"That he is," Yuuki laughed. When he was smaller, there would be misunderstandings and it seemed like he was picked on and he'd complain that he wanted them to get married properly but, ever since he'd entered middle school he hadn't said anything of the sort. Yuuki took that to mean that he finally understood what his parents aim had been.
"With that kind of life style, aren't there a lot of parts of country life that don't sit well with you? For example, women not taking part in the ceremonies or such."
Yuuki shook his head lightly at Hirosawa's question.
"It isn't like that. It's not as if Azusa and I think we should lash out against anything old fashioned or anything like that. If anything we're moved by it all, since we were both outsiders born in the city, without any connections to festivals or religious services or local customs and the like."
"You're moved?"
"Indeed so---or should I saw awestruck? It's the feeling that comes with thinking 'I'm really and genuinely experiencing this.' That's the sort of thing we moved here seeking. Well, Azusa might have been a little put out. She said that even though it was the festival at last, if she wasn't a yuge-shuu she couldn't really see it out until the end, she says."
At Yuuki's answer, Hirosawa's voice rose in a quiet laugh.
"I see."
"She pouted 'why don't women become yuge-shuu' but, this, at least, would have to be all men. This calls for physical strength more than anything."
"Yes, indeed." Hirosawa smiled. "It's sweltering hot and we're in these costumes. On top of that, we put on these masks and dance from one end of the village to the other."
"Tell me about it. ---Is there any significance to dressing in a monk's robes like this?"
"The word yuge-shuu comes from the yugyou shounin or wandering monk. That would be why we wear the monk's black robes, I'd imagine."
"A wandering monk?"
"That big straw effigy," Hirosawa said turning his eyes to the rising blaze of the bonfire. "Is called the Betto. It seems that's an effigy of the Betto---I don't know so much about it myself, I was told as much by the Junior Monk."
Hearing Junior Monk, Yuuki turned from the riverbed lit by the bonfire towards the mountains. The village of Sotoba was surrounded on three sides by mountain ridges, and on the slope was the main temple, the heir of which also had a side job as a writer. Yuuki had yet to obtain any of his writings but amongst the villagers, opinions on it seemed tinged with cynicism. They wouldn't say it too loudly, but somebody had called it 'kind of fastidious.' That they could say that with such a warm tone of voice may have been either because having a writer from the village at all was a point of pride or because of their respect and affection held towards the temple's son.
"In old farming villages, it was believed that insects and illnesses were because of evil spirits. During the Hougen Rebellion, there was a military leader called Saitou Sanemori."
"The Rebellion in the Heian period?"
"Yes. That Saitou Sanemori was also called Nagai Betto, you see. He was originally a military commander for the Minamoto Clan but later turned to the Heike clan. Sanemori went to the west to suppress Minamoto's General Yoshinaka and was defeated in the Battle of Shinohara in Kaga, they say because he stumbled over a rice plant stump. The legend that he bore a grudge and became a horde of insects that devoured rice plants spread through Japan, so it seems to have become a custom to offer memorial services to Sanemori's spirit during the mushiokuri."
"Heh? So the Betto--that's Saitou Betto?"
"It's written in an old document that the ghost of Sanemori appeared in the village of Shinowara in Kaga before a wandering monk of the Ji-sect who performed his mourning ceremonies. There's the Noh play 'Sanemori' that's written about this topic as well. The legend must have been passed around in those days. That's why the Betto's attendants are wandering monks, yugyou shounin, but we say it yuge-shuu, according to the Junior Monk, anyway."
"But still, why Oni masks?"
"Ah, that," Hirosawa laughed. "In Sotoba we have an Oni called The Risen."
"The Risen?"
"Yes. We bury here, yes? So we have folk tales about the dead rising from their graves and coming down to haunt the village. We call them Oni. It doesn't make sense for the wanderers who mourned the Betto to be Oni but there are his attendants who wear not only the priest's robes, but Oni masks. They pray to him and then cast him away. That's the mushiokuri."
"Pray and cast him away----" Yuuki looked to the fire. "This is to say, we burn him."
The yuge-shuu carried the Betto. While the Betto itself was only made of straw, it was still rather heavy. It was paraded through the plowed lands and the mountain forests of the village. He had heard that the impurities of the surroundings would flow into it. The others were there to shoulder the weight of Sotoba as they uppoed. Uppo was the footwork performed by the yuge-shuu as they danced and paraded through every nook and cranny of the village purifying it further with each step. Carrying the child sized planks of the sotoba from one hokora to the next while uppoing was truly heavy labor.
"Do we use sotoba because this place is called Sotoba?"
He had heard that the village's name of Sotoba came from the sotoba grave. Hirosawa gave a quiet nod in answer to Yuuki's question.
"The village came to be for the purpose of raising firs and making them into sotoba."
In the past week those big sotoba were planted at the hokora scattered here and there. The people purchased the paper dolls from the shrine and wrote names on them, praying at their household shrines, passing their sins and filth onto them and cramming them onto the sotoba, offering piles of sake and food in a memorial service. The wanderers lapped the village gathering up those offerings. To be perfectly honest, it didn't sit well with him, the sotoba with the paper dolls jammed onto them. Or at least, the first time he had set eyes on the sight, he thought that he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to have seen.
"It must seem in bad taste if you're not used to it."
Yuuki gave a bitter smile, as Hirosawa spoke as if reading his mind.
"I was surprised at first. What's worse is that the Oni dressed like that were parading around with torch lights--it was more like a black magic ritual or a curse than a festival."
"A curse and a prayer are the same thing in the end. They're both supernatural. The mushiokuri could also technically be called contact with the dead. We pray the spirits away so as not to be cursed by them. The relation between man and the gods is colder than one would expect."
"Aboriginal religious festivals might have been just like this."
Hirosawa nodded. At some point, Mutou, beer can gripped in hand, had nodded off.
"Since we worship and cast it away, we can't wear the masks on the return trip. The Oni were chased out of the village. In the past, it seems they used to even bathe in the river and change clothes. But that could be dangerous when liquor's involved, so that tradition died out."
"I see. ---Then it's changed, hasn't it."
Thinking he heard disappointment in his words, Hirosawa made an apologetic expression.
"Originally the mushiokuri was meant to take place in the hottest days of the summer, but now it's set on the night of a Saturday right around there. If we didn't, then working men wouldn't be able to take part. Without those kinds of changes, it wouldn't take place at all anymore."
"Oh, no, I only meant that while it's conforming to the status quo, it's still carrying on. It couldn't be called a real and live festival if it was just a matter of preserving an old tradition because it's old, would it?" Yuuki quickly supplemented, earning a smile from Hirosawa.
"I don't know about all that. --Well, if you compare us to the surrounding villages, we would probably have more remnants. Sotoba is a bit unique. Even amongst the other villages around here, we're a singularity."
"Is that so?"
"It was a village opened by lumberjacks who came from other places, so much it's called the 'other' or 'outside' Soto-, 'place' -ba. In truth, it wasn't really even consolidated enough to call a village, but the people of Sotoba said 'village' and people from outside said 'village'. Maybe there's some understanding that we mustn't become too much of a mixed bunch. People rarely come and they don't leave. That's what sort of place it is, this place."
"Then, I'm an oddity in an oddity," Yuuki said as Hirosawa laughed.
"What? Now that you've experience being a yuge-shuu, you're one of the village. It's going to be trouble you know, there are things that need to be done, you'll be assigned your role so to speak, and the leading and supporting actors have to have a hand in the physical labor."
"The yuge-shuu don't change?"
"Since you had participated this year, you'll likely be invited next year too. It isn't something you absolutely have to do but, who's going to participate is more or less decided. From the gong and taiko drums to the uppo, there's a way things are done."
"I see."
Yuuki forced a smile. As a man going on forty, practicing dancing was embarrassing, if he did say so himself.
"It goes Kami-Naka-Monzen, Shimo-Soto-Mizuguchi."
"What does that mean?"
"The village of Sotoba is made up of six subdivisions. Kami-Sotoba or Upper Sotoba, Naka-Sotoba or Mid-Sotoba, Monzen or Gatefront, Shimo-Sotoba or Lower Sotoba, Sotoba, and Mizuguchi or Waterspout. There's actually one more, a settlement set off a bit in the mountains called Yamairi or Mountain Entrance."
"I heard there weren't many left there, but…?"
"Indeed. There are only two houses left. Well, there's an upper and lower part of Yamairi itself that are assigned works. The organization of shrine members is called the Miyaza or Shrine Parish Guild but, if duties aren't assigned by the Miyaza, duties flow from the top down. That was the case, though things have changed. Lately houses have sprung up along the highway and the lower part's become bigger but in the past, it was nothing but rice fields. --The lower part is in charge of the Chinese New Year and the Shinkousai festival done right before the mushiokuri. That's quite heavy labor itself but, since we're in charge of the New Year's toshigamisai and the mushiokuri, we just watch those."
"Heh?"
"Even a village as small as this is wider than you'd expect. It's not just the religious rituals, all village events are handled top-bottom. The smaller events are handled by individual territories. Congratulatory or consolatory events are done on a smaller scale, you see. With the village subdivided as it is, your role is more or less decided, no matter what. At that event, he will be the one with the bell, at that event, he will be the palanquin bearer, and so on and so forth."
"I see. Then, to prepare for next year's mushiokuri, I'll have to build up a little endurance," Yuuki laughed, Hirosawa's own light laugh joining in.
"Where is your house, Hirosawa-san?"
"The same as you, Yuuki-san. Naka-Sotoba."
"Is that right. --Then be sure to stop by sometime."
"Likewise," said Hirosawa with a smile as Mutou raised his head. It seemed he woke up from his doze.
"...A car."
Yuuki and Hirosawa both took a look at Mutou's face, then up at the bank.
From the village entrance, that is to say the south, they could see headlights.
"Hahaa, wrong road, I bet," said Mutou, his enunciation hazy. He may have been right. The car lingered there as if bewildered, and slowly, bit by bit started to turn back.
Mutou squinted, expectant, and Hirosawa knitted his brows. Maybe Yuuki himself was making a similar expression. ----That was a cargo truck they saw. The back container was rather large. The car behind it was in the truck's shadow and couldn't be well seen.
The yuge-shuu surrounding the bonfire were all surprised, turning their backs to the flame to see the truck depart.
"Are they moving...? At this hour." Mutou's voice was half surprised, half doubtful. Yuuki nodded for the time being, for some reason turning to look at the backdrop. Against the sky with stars dotted like grains of sand, the looming mounds of the mountain range were simple blackness. The village was wedged between that blackness, where the upper mountain streams converged. As if trapped in by the merging mountain ranges, an especially large mountain range rose in the depths. Immediately to the left of that northern mountain, in the northwest of the village, the northern and western mountains convened. Yuuki knew as well as anyone in the village that there was a single residence there, one awaiting its master.
Since the truck turned back, it was probably unrelated to that house. ---But.
Maybe they were thinking the same thing; as soon as he thought to look, he realized that not only Mutou and Hirosawa but the yuge-shuu surrounding the bonfire were all doing the same, looking up to the northwest mountain.