A letter from Asuka

This is where it happened. Long, long ago, but this is where time forked. There are places scattered around this world where you can feel time’s long shadow, places where it knotted up and rippled, changing everything that came afterwards. Most are elusive, forgotten and nearly impossible to find, and the few that still exist, they know how to stay unseen. They keep their wisdom close and hold their silence until you patiently peel away the layers and dig deep enough to listen to their whispers. And then if you’re lucky enough, they come alive.

And today, Asuka came alive for me. Old resplendent Asuka, the tiny patch of land that houses the earliest traces of Buddhism in Japan, the place that changed forever what this country would become. I can’t speak to the course of world history, but I can speak to how this place has coursed through my life, a stranger born four thousand miles away. It is one of the foundations of Japan, the fountainhead from which this ancient culture sprang. How could I drink so copiously from it, without ever being curious as to where it came from, without paying obeisance to its origin story?

So today, I make my pilgrimage. I’m not religious but I do believe in many of the things the ancients believed in, one being that what matters to you assumes meaning only with an element of sacrifice, a certain hardship. After a full day of walking almost until sunrise, I had to get out early and take three different trains, ride a bicycle through some hilly terrain, navigate countless stairs and secluded forest paths to get to this moment.

So I sit here by the terraced rice fields of Inabuchi, embracing a view that likely hasn’t changed in a thousand years, serenaded by the music of a river that flows no more, grateful tears streaming down my eyes.

[4:12 pm, 5th December 2022, Asuka.]