Mountain pillars

Jennifer Beetem

 

My introduction to the cedars of Japan came long before I had set foot in this country, in the trade of a sister in Yasunari Kawabata's novel The Old Capital.

Twin children being difficult to support, a family of the cedar forests of Kyoto leaves one as a foundling, adopted and raised in the old capital during the postwar period. The young women chance across each other, and their lives intermingle for a time: Chieko now the adopted daughter of a kimono wholesaler and designer; Naeko grooming the growing cedars to become teahouse pillars.

It was with this image in mind that I first encountered cedars here, on frequent hikes in the mountains of this country. On the lower slopes of mountains I found them everywhere, tall, straight and numerous; the trunks so high that they became the entire tree for me. On trees near the forestry roads the trunks are found branchless for meters, the green of the trees a canopy whose details are lost in the pillars. The ungroomed trees too strive for this end, the green sprigs rising to the sunlight, leaving the lower reaches to become bare ladders or knobs of former branches.

Returning to the pages of The Old Capital, I found that such cedars as Naeko grooms cannot be those that I have seen - hers are truly gardened creations, trimmed by men leaping amid their lofty heights, the leaves like distant flowers. Once the aged trees are felled, the women trim and wash the trunks, smoothing them with mountain sand. They are natural creations, yet only grown to perfect straightness through the cedar villagers' lives and care.

I have not yet seen the Katayama cedars, indeed cannot easily imagine something straighter and nobler than the natural colonnades that drape the mountain hillsides amidst the bushes and bamboo grass. It was only descending a ridge several days after a typhoon passed that I was reacquainted with the shape of the needles. The strong winds of the days before had carpeted the trail with cedar sprigs. Seeing the trees from their midst is one thing, but to see the tops alone, was akin to this carpet. There is an unbounded softness to mountain slopes grown over with cedars, that move like thick tufted grasses in the wind. As if a cushioning moss was spread across the hills and set to dancing.