The Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Journey Into Eternity

The Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Journey Into Eternity Days and months are the travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. With these words, a poet begins one of the most remarkable journeys ever recorded — a walk into the far north of Japan, undertaken not for trade, not for duty, but for something far more mysterious. He calls it a strong desire to wander, as if the cloud-moving wind itself had possessed his soul and turned it inside out. Have you ever felt that pull? That restlessness that makes it impossible to stay idle at home? Our traveller had barely returned from rambling along the coast at the end of autumn. He swept the cobwebs from his broken house on the River Sumida, and then, as soon as the spring mist rose over the fields, he was dreaming again — dreaming of the full moon rising over the islands of Matsushima. He mended his torn trousers. He tied a new strap to his hat. He applied moxa to his legs to strengthen them. And then he did something extraordinary. He sold his house. On the threshold of his old home, he hung a verse on a wooden pillar, imagining a different generation celebrating the Festival of Dolls behind that door, now buried in deep grass. On the early morning of March the twenty-seventh, in the second year of Genroku, he took to the road. Darkness still lingered in the sky. The moon was thinning away. The faint shadow of Mount Fuji and the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka bade him a last farewell. His friends came with him by boat as far as Senju, and there, the thought of three thousand miles ahead suddenly filled his heart. His eyes grew so tearful that neither the houses of the town nor the faces of his friends appeared as anything but a vision. His friends stood in a line and waved goodbye for as long as they could see his back. He did not travel alone. His companion Sora — whose real name was Kawai Sogoro — had once helped him with chores like bringing water and firewood. On the very morning of departure, Sora took the tonsure, put on the black robe of an itinerant priest, and changed his name to Sogo, meaning Religiously Enlightened. That is how deeply this journey mattered. And what a journey it was. At the foot of Mount Nikko, they lodged with an innkeeper who called himself Honest Gozaemon — a man so stubbornly honest, so utterly devoid of worldly cleverness, that the poet wondered if the merciful Buddha himself had taken human shape to help a wandering pilgrim. On the grass moor of Nasu, a farmer lent him a horse with simple, touching instructions: the horse knows the way — send him back when he won't go any further. Two small children ran after him, one a girl named Kasane, meaning manifold, a name he found strange but exceptionally beautiful. There were darker moments too. The Murder Stone, wrapped in poisonous gas near a hot spring, surrounded by so many dead bees, butterflies, and insects that the ground's true color could hardly be seen. And there were moments of overwhelming grief — at the ruined house of the warrior Sato, the poet wept bitterly before the tombstones of two young wives who had dressed their frail bodies in armor after their husbands' deaths. But then came the barrier gate of Shirakawa, the entrance to the northern regions, where his mind finally gained balance and composure. Roadsides covered in white unohana blossoms looked like early snow. And in the village of Ichikawa, he found something miraculous: the stone monument of Tsubo no Ishibumi, erected during the reign of Emperor Shomu, its engraved letters still visible through thick layers of moss. In a world where mountains crumble, rivers change their courses, and old trees yield to young shoots, this monument alone had survived a thousand years. Standing before it, he forgot every trouble of the road and rejoiced — not without tears in his eyes. The journey led at last toward Matsushima, the vision that had haunted his dreams from the start. And when he saw it, he declared it the most beautiful spot in the whole country of Japan — countless islands piled above islands, joined to islands, looking exactly like parents caressing their child. So what does this journey leave us with? Perhaps this: that days and months truly are travellers of eternity, and that we, too, spend every minute of our lives travelling. The poet sold his house and walked into the unknown with tearful eyes and heavy steps. What he found was honesty, kindness, sorrow, and beauty beyond all praise. Maybe the road itself is the destination. Maybe it always was.