Eastward Travel Sketches – Japan (Part 4)
The night before leaving Kyoto, my professor held a farewell dinner for me in the lantern-lit streets of Pontocho. Kaiseki cuisine and Japanese sake surrounded us. As we raised our cups and chopsticks, he never once asked about the progress of my thesis over the past three weeks; instead, he repeatedly remarked on my deep interest in Japanese history and culture. His hopes for me lie not in academia but in society, in the development and prosperity of China. The Kamo River flowed quietly beside us, while outside the window the lights and shadows sank low. Yet I felt the cup in my hand as if it weighed a thousand pounds. The next day, I packed up and departed from Kyoto, taking the Haruka to Kansai Airport. Outside the window, the sky was high and clear—just the right season for mountain climbing. I couldn't help thinking of a few days earlier, on a similarly clear and cloudless day, when I had set out alone to Arashiyama in the western suburbs of Kyoto. In the summer, Arashiyama was a lush green expanse. I walked up the Ōi River from Togetsukyō Bridge, seeking a story from the last century. Eighty‑nine years ago, a young man must have climbed the same path up Arashiyama—but it was early spring then, with a drizzling rain blurring the road ahead. Suddenly a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds, giving the young man light. He descended the mountain and boarded a ship back to his homeland. On the other side of the sea, the May Fourth Movement was sweeping across China like a prairie fire. Another sixty years passed; the young man of those days had long since passed away, but the Japanese people who admired him carved his name and his youthful poems forever into Arashiyama. Premier Zhou Enlai's poem monument “Arashiyama in the Rain” stands quietly deep in the woods. At its foot, the Ōi River rolls on with surging waves. What a tranquil spot. Yet why do I distinctly feel, amid this tranquillity, a heroic spirit of the human world galloping freely? And so I descended the mountain, packed my bags, and set out on a new journey.
