What you want, you should not want.
The Exorcists
From on the bridge
as I throw away the cucumber,
the water sounds and thus I see,
a bobbed head.
– for Owaka-san, by drunken-Gaki
Tanka on a folded screen, painted with a Kappa,
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Nagasaki, May, 1922
A man is standing in my way, blocking my path and shouting in my face, ‘An angel will bring down his sword against this city in judgement! For this is a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a bed of evildoers! Look at the Diet and the city council. Look at the theatres and the department stores and the frivolous men and women who frequent them. Look at the intellectuals and literati they worship, and the magazines and newspapers who encourage them. They do not fear slandering the sacred, they do not fear slandering God! They are apostates, they are heretics! This is not Tokyo, this is not Japan; this is Sodom and Gomorrah! And soon you will feel the wrath of Heaven, for soon you will know the punishment of Heaven!’
I push past the madman, into Tokyo station, through the ticket gates, up the stairs, onto the platform, onto my train, and away …
*
Kyō Tsunetō, his oldest and dearest friend, and the reason he had stopped off in Kyoto, had just started in his new position in the Faculty of Economics at Kyoto Imperial University, and so, during the days, Ryūnosuke wandered across the city, meandered through its streets, dreaming and imagining the streets as they were before, the city of old. Under its blue skies, under its cherry blossoms; the gaze of its skies, the madness of its blossoms.
That particular day in early May, in his serge kimono and his geta sandals, with his notebook in his satchel, his cigarettes and his fan, Ryūnosuke left Tsunetō’s lodgings overlooking the Shimogamo Shrine in Morimoto-chō, first heading south to the fork in the river, then turning onto Imadegawa-dōri and walking west, west all the way past the top of the park of the Imperial Palace and the lower edges of the campus of Dōshisha University, west and further west, west all the way past the Kitano Tenmangū Shrine, west until he turned south again down Nishiōji-dōri, then west again when he came to Myōshinji-dōri, west again until he reached the southern entrance to the walled enclave of the Myōshinji Temple itself.
Here, Ryūnosuke crossed over the stone bridge, went under the wooden gate and entered this other world, this other city, a city within a city – with its forty or more sub-temples, with its avenues of pine and fir trees, its narrow stone paths and raked-gravel lawns, its temples of red and temples of wood – through this labyrinth of low white stone walls with their grey kawara-tiled roofs, Ryūnosuke meandered and wandered, weaving his way towards his aim, his aim for the day; he could have stopped to see the rock garden, the karesansui of the Taizōin Temple, he could have stopped to stare up at the Unryūzu painting by Kanō Tanyū, ‘the dragon glaring in eight directions’ in the hall of the Myōshinji Temple, but Ryūnosuke had only one aim, one thing in mind today.
Between a small bush of blooming peony and a weeping tree of cherry blossom, Ryūnosuke crossed over another tiny stone bridge, went under another small wooden gate, and entered yet another world, another world within another world: the grounds of the Shunkōin Temple.
Here, Ryūnosuke was greeted by a monk. Ryūnosuke introduced himself, apologised for calling without an appointment, but asked if it might be possible to see what he had come, come so very far to see. The monk smiled and led Ryūnosuke into the main building. And here, at last, Ryūnosuke saw for himself the Bell of Nanbanji.
Nanbanji had been the great Christian Temple of Kyoto, founded by the Jesuit Father Gnecchi-Soldo Organtino in 1576, with the blessing and support of Oda Nobunaga. The Great Bell had been cast in Portugal and arrived at Nanbanji in 1577. But ten years later, the Nanbanji Temple was destroyed under the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, during the first great persecution of Christians. Still now, no one could be sure where the Nanbanji Temple had once stood. During the destruction and the persecution, the bell had been lost, too. But early in the nineteenth century, the bell had been found and then brought here, here to the Shunkōin Temple; now all that remained of the great Christian Temple of Nanbanji was its bell, this bell.
Ryūnosuke stood before the bell, staring at the bell, transfixed by the bell. On its surface, there were engraved three Jesuit seals. The three seals contained the Christogram IHS, of which there were three possible readings and interpretations: the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus; the initials of the Latin phrase Iesus Hominum Salvatore, Jesus, Saviour of Man; or the Latin phrase In hoc signo vinces, in this sign I shall conquer. Above the Christogram was the cross and under the Christogram were three nails, and engraved on the side of the bell was the year 1577.
Ryūnosuke reached out across the centuries, over the ocean of history, and touched the surface of the bell, his fingers warm and its metal cold, but in his ears and in his mind, Ryūnosuke could hear the ringing of the bell, sounding across the grounds of the Christian Temple of Nanbanji, calling the faithful to prayer, across the old capital of Kyoto, in his ears and in his mind, and in his heart, echoing in his heart, the chambers of his heart.
‘The Bell of Nanbanji is not the only Christian relic housed here,’ said the monk. ‘In the garden there stands a kirishitan-dōrō, a stone lantern, its leg in the shape of a cross and in which has been chiselled an image of their Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary …’
Ryūnosuke followed the monk along polished dark corridors, past painted gold screens, and out into the main garden of the Shunkōin Temple, the Garden
