Onomichi

I wanna hit one area.

Onomichi seems to be a really popular area, so buying near attractions.

So, uh, there's that Seto, s- right, right in the Seto I- Inland Island Sea area, but it also has that bike path.

What is it? What's like...

We, we gotta do it, and it's like a really cool bike path that goes through these islands.

So we've helped quite a few people.

I think sh- Onomichi is on the come-up.

Um, a lot of my Tokyo friends just generally like the Setouchi area.

But his great mercy never ending Ever lighteth all my wending.

The Right Belief, Song of Invocation Translator's Introduction Kurata Hyakuzo, the author of the reading drama Shuketo Sono Deshi, of which this book is a sentence-for-sentence translation, was born in 1891 in Shobara, a secluded little village some fifty miles north of Onomichi in Hiroshima-ken.

He comes of an old family which has for generations conducted a substantial country dry goods store there and owns a considerable acreage in neighboring rice fields.

After graduating with a good record from his provincial middle school, he was sent by his father to pursue his studies at the first high school in Tokyo.

She reached out to me earlier and said, hey, are you doing SPX? I'm like, yes, so let's catch up.

So, while we also talked about some new zines she has out, some mini-comics, Different Ways to Fly and The Volcano House, we also talked about some of the work I was going to talk about with her last year, like Comicu, a book she had about superpowers and What's her favorite superpower? And living in this tiny little island town in Japan called Onomichi and working in Tokyo and all sorts of stuff.

Always a delight to catch up with Rumi.

Let's get right into it.

My students are science and tech students.

Oh, great.

But you live in a little tiny village, Onomichi?

Yes, I do.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Expatriate in Bangor, Maine.

The Priest and His Disciples by Kurata Hyakuzo Translated by Glenn William Shaw 1886-1961 Epigraph e'en the worst of sinners eyes simply on the buddha cry and safe folded in his breast in salvation's self find rest though eyes have i i cannot see for lust of things preventeth me but his great mercy never ending ever lighteth all my wending the right belief song of invocation translator's introduction kurata hyakuzo the author of the reading drama shuketosono deshi of which this book is a sentence for a sentence translation was born in eighteen ninety one in shobara a secluded little village some fifty miles north of onomichi in hiroshima he comes of an old family which has for generations conducted a substantial country dry-goods store there and owns a considerable acreage in neighbouring rice-fields after graduating with a good record from his provincial middle school he was sent by his father to pursue his studies at the first high school in tokio but he read what appealed to him rather than what he was told to read and left school without completing the course he had just lost his two elder sisters given up his studies been disappointed in love and fallen victim to an incurable tubercular affliction when at the age of twenty-six after having contemplated committing suicide and determined rather to fight out his life to its natural end he wrote this the first and still the greatest of the many successes which have now made him the idol of a growing group of young japanese who find in his writings the encouragement and stimulus to help them brave out their own difficulties shuketo sonodeshi is a story of religion and love woven about the lives of shinran shonin and his disciples shinran eleven seventy three to twelve sixty two was the founder of the shin sect of buddhism the outstanding features of which are its doctrine of salvation through faith in the buddha in its recognition of a normal married life for priests and laymen it is to-day the largest and most influential of the buddhist sects having over nineteen thousand temples nearly fifteen thousand priests and adherents running up into the millions worship for them consists of the sincere recitation of the invocation namu amida butsu save us o amida buddha since its publication in nineteen eighteen she has gone through well over a hundred editions it has been rearranged for stage production and after successful presentation before crowded and almost worshipfully attentive houses at the imperial theatre and the yurakuza in tokyo and later at the naniwaza in osaka is now on the road in the provinces and it has been the immediate cause of a whole flood of books on the life of shinran that still continue to come from the press in undiminished numbers its great popularity seems to be due not to its being good propaganda for the most popular of the buddhist sects which it undoubtedly is nor to its being a historically accurate portrayal of the greatest revolutionising figure in japanese buddhism which it certainly is not but rather to the sincere and moving exposition it presents of the religious philosophy of a thinking and struggling contemporary in an unsettled land of change in japan to-day as indeed in all lands there are many people who cannot believe in anything and kurata offers them in story form what he believes to be the only reasonable attitude toward life his story is packed with anachronisms and errors of fact his shinran is not the historical shinran some of the words he puts into shinran's mouth were surely never spoken by anybody in kyoto in the thirteenth century he has simply taken a grey and admired teacher whose heart looks to him like his own and without violent wrenching made him the vehicle for the expression of his own convictions and where did he get the terms with which to understand and in which to clothe those convictions he got them everywhere just as every modern japanese writer does out of his everyday life out of his reading of japanese chinese and western literature out of buddhism and out of christianity he makes no distinction between them but having taken them all for his own uses them as his own his book may be called the twentieth century laboratory demonstration of that process of borrowing and adaptation that has through the ages altered all religions some buddhist critics have avowed that shinran must be weeping in his grave at the picture kurata has drawn of him some foreign christians will surely call parts of the book deliberate steals but other followers of shinran have pointed out that if that generous reformer were living to-day his teachings to the people of japan would be less unlike those of kurata than the illiberal critics suppose and many liberal christians too care more for the teaching than for its identification and will find this book a mixture in which their favourite beliefs are working as eleven whatever others may think kurata hyakuzo is evidently a serious man fighting death with his art and breathing into that art what he believes to be a vital message leonardo da vinci's last supper and mona lisa hang together on the wall by his sick-bed at o mori near tokio and speak eloquently of two different loves he has added to his japanese birthright one the love of the man jesus and the other the love of the feminine soul i have limited myself to the task of making a faithful translation of the words of the author where the text contains expressions employed in christian phraseology i have tried carefully not to read into them either more or less than their natural content hitsuji should certainly be rendered sheep despite its unnatural use as a japanese religious metaphor but whether doji no mure literally a bevy of boys the doji of which is a word ordinarily used to designate the youths who wait upon saintly persons in the east should be turned into the hebrew word cherubim is at least open to question my only deliberate departure from the original however has been in the rearrangement for the sake of uniformity of some of the material at the heads of acts and scenes and here and there of the paragraphing of stage directions the japanese pronunciation of proper names has been used throughout and all japanese titles of courtesy have been retained I am indebted to the author for his kind permission to publish this translation, and to my friend and neighbour, Mr. Nagurajiro, for the invaluable assistance that makes me believe I have approached accuracy in my work.

Glenn W. Shaw, Yamaguchi, June 3rd, 1922 End of Translator's Introduction Recording by Expatriate in Bangor, Maine induction to the priest and his disciples by kurata hyakuzo translated by glenn william shaw eighteen eighty six in nineteen sixty one this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by expatriate in bangor maine induction mortality a vision that came to me once on a day man walking on the face of the earth i am born and bathed in sunlight and breathing in the atmosphere i live truly i live see that beautifully coloured arch of a sky and this black earth on which these naked feet of mine walk with firm step luxuriant trees and grasses flying and frisking birds and beasts and better still the preciousness of woman the love of children ah i would live i would live pauses up to this day i have known all manner of grief but the more i suffer the more i like this world ah strange world i cling to thee lovable shaba i would play in the forests of worldly passions i would live a thousand nay ten thousand years for ever for ever a being with covered face appears being what are you man i'm a man being then you're a thing that dies aren't you man i'm alive that's all i know being you evade again i see man my father died my father's father too oh many of my beloved neighbours also have died but that i shall die i cannot believe being you're spoilt aren't you man after a moment's hesitation in truth i'm afraid i fear i may die ah you've looked through my heart the truth is i think i may die for from the beginning my ancestors the wise patriarchs have called themselves mortal being it's the truth like birds and beasts grasses and trees fishes and shells you die man who are you you who speak with these words of authority being i'm the servant of that which never dies don't you know me man i seem to know you but no i don't after all being often you seem to call my name especially of late so often as to vex me man then is it possible that you humbly i beg you to take off your veil and let me see your face but once being i don't show my face to mortals to things that die man why not being because if seen of a mortal i'd die of shame man in the words thing that dies i hear what seems to be a meaning of contempt being that's because death comes of sin the sinless live eternally thing that dies is identical with sinner man then do you say that all men are sinners being they're all bad the price of sin is death disappears man this was he that's certain what on earth is he illusion or actuality at first i was sure he was a phantom but gradually i reached the point where i couldn't believe it for his terrible power of destruction is too plain if he's real what on earth is he i'd like to see what he really is if i but knew that i'd not fear him because knowing the real nature of those fearful things fire and water i use them according to their own laws and make them turn the wheels of my mills and heat my furnaces i'd like to know his laws i'd like to get hold of his real being otherwise my life will always be threatened it's my misfortune that i've made his acquaintance but my wisdom also has grown ah but he's fearful being reappearing you called me again didn't you man i want to see your face being it cannot be man not possibly being that wish is beyond your station so long as your eyes are impure man not though i make you being you poor thing man extends his hand and tries to take off the veil being cursed be that hand distant thunder rolls man falls to his knees a phantom procession appears being behold man a line of birds beasts and creeping things goes by the eagle controls the dove the wolf oppresses the sheep and the snake lords it over the frog but he who rides at the head of the procession on a horse clad in mail and armed with bow and arrow looks like a man being he leads the whole procession man he's their conqueror being and the most pitiful of all pitiful things man ah he's clapped spur to his horse and all have broken into a charge boisterous music is heard just like a tempest where can they be going so rapidly being to destruction to that place where go all who know me not man oh the procession passes on the stormy music gradually calms down and changes into a quiet dream tune a new vision appears being behold man it's a young man and woman isn't it he embraces her with his strong arms and she buries her face on his breast her black hair quivers on her pearly shoulders she must be intoxicated with sweet delight being look well man looking intently ah she's crying he talks to her and sighs he looks lonely being they're beginning to know that happiness breaks man aren't they calling you being they've begun to think of me but they naturally shrink from calling me they're deceiving themselves man the man tries to take her in his arms again but this time she resists and gets away and she's cursing him he seizes her he pulls her by main force to the edge of the cliff ah look out he cries ah being it's the mistaken fall of those who see me not directly the music stops and the vision vanishes man i acknowledge you i look straight at you i'm importunate to see your real nature being with the intelligence of a little monkey eh with an intelligence that goes round surfaces but can't possibly go to the heart of things man i acknowledge your power your power of destruction why do you destroy things being to temper the unbreakable and imperishable man i seek such imperishable things ever since meeting you i've been looking for something you can't break being have you found it man not yet you've broken everything i thought permanent desire of conquest friendship love learning being it's my work to destroy all things that deserve destruction a pause man i've found what looks to be permanent this time there's no mistake being what man my child though i grow weak and die my child lives on with new strength i breathe my desires into his soul Being, you don't know yet, I see.

Man, what? Being, your son is dead.

...

if you played, uh, Yakuza, you get Onomichi in Hiroshima-

That's right

... which is obviously in the game.