The Wind In the Pines 1

("Noh" is an ancient Japanese style of drama, broadly similar to Elizabethan tragedy. "The Wind in the Pines" is my version of a well-known Noh play.) 1. The Buddhist Priest This was the day of the White Crane. I was walking from Kyoto to fair Kobe, and not omitting a single shrine, now nearing the end of my three-day journey. The morning had taken on a hue of pastel. I reached a promontory, above the sea with curious roadside ancestor tombs, slabs of coarse stone. The wind and waves, so restless, had done their work, scarring and scarifying the soft chalk, leaving strange columns, each capped by its crude ashlar memorial tablet. As I prayed to the dead, my bare head was lifted. My gaze (no longer mine) was drawn towards a tall pine, standing alone, its trunk bifurcated. That tree, I felt somehow, had waited for me to come. Looking about me, I saw a peasant, short and stoutly built. "Tell me about the tree," I said. "And what's that poetry? That hanging plaque?" He said I'd found something special. "This is hallowed ground," he muttered. "Matsukaze and her sister Murasame mourned here, Mister. Then Heaven took pity on the two brine girls, and turned them into this pine." By mortal things, we should set no store: but hearing this, I wanted to know more.