Jakuchō and the Valley

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

Actually there had been dragons in the valley for generations (and indeed throughout the country) but only as engravings on the temple and shrine walls, as guardians at the wells where pilgrims cleansed their hands and mouths before prayers.

That was before a simple act of kindness by a lonely woman set off an unimaginable chain of events.

Jakuchō lived in the Valley, which was vivid green in summer with towering cryptomeria trees, deep red maples in autumn and in winter covered in snow, like white fondant icing, and like her name, was silent, lonely and listening.

There were others in the Valley who had either been there since birth and hardly ever left except, as services and shops disappeared from the small towns that were dotted along the valley, to go to the nearest town for their needs or a few others, like herself who had fled from the large cities to live in the abandoned houses that proliferated throughout the country.

Jakuchō had retreated to the Valley when she was still young and of child-bearing age after the disappearance of her beloved Ryū who vanished while working high in the mountains of Aomori one winter.

This had brought down great disapproval and pressure on her from her parents and the government as it went against the voluntary (but expected) “children for the future” policy brought in by the politicians to ensure the continuation of the Japanese race. She couldn’t face the thought of having to pick a new partner and try to produce a child just because Ryu was gone. It wasn’t her fault that the ability to bear children had become almost impossible for her people. She would have happily had as many children as possible with Ryū, but now he was gone. How could they think it was easy to draw a line under that love and accept someone the Prefectural Office picked from a lottery for her?

The morning had brought more correspondence reminding her that she only had 5 more years of optimal childbearing and that her duty to her people and her parents should be fulfilled, rather than selfishly indulging in grief deep in the countryside.

The birth rate in Japan had started to decline gradually after the GFC in 2007 and it was supposed that it was due to women working more, tougher economic conditions and cultural changes, but it became apparent that something more disturbing, but unknown, was causing the decline in births. Hardly anyone became capable of becoming pregnant, despite all the help that medical science could provide both at home or from abroad.

Jakuchō sighed and after saying her prayers at the house altar for Ryū, her parents and the unknown former owners of her quiet, cool house on the edge of the forest, left to forage for vegetables and herbs to supplement what her garden provided, high up in the mountains. This morning she deeply felt the loss of Ryu and the gift of a child not only for themselves, but for her parents and the country, if he hadn’t gone.

As she hiked up the steep path, her mind went back to a conversation with Chiko, one of the very elderly women whose family had lived in the Valley for so long, that she did not really believe that cities like Tokyo existed or that indeed there was an entire world outside of the Valley and small town that served her few needs.

Chiko had accepted Jakuchō’s presence in the old house when she arrived but rarely spoke, rather preferring to give her small gifts of vegetables or eggs until her own garden could provide for her or just sit in quiet companionship. But perhaps Chiko, sensing the ending of her own life and wanting to impart some history of the Valley, had started to share folk legends and stories of the Valley with another living being.

Many of the stories and legends were universal to most of Japan, except for a curious and set in stone prohibition, that everyone in the Valley knew and followed, and that Jakuchō had been told of when she arrived. It was this legend that Chiko had spoken of at length for the first time several days ago.

That day, the weather had been strange, with a shifting, multicoloured fog that seemed to cling to the trees like strands of hair or feathers, and then as dusk came closer, the sky seemed to glow an iridescent green and purple like an impossibly coloured fish or perhaps a butterfly’s wings. This seemed to worry Chiko and seeing Jakuchō in her garden, pulled her away to sit on the steps that overlooked the Valley and spoke to her about the legend of the ryū tokage or dragon lizard and the prohibition that all the people of the Valley must follow.

As Chiko recounted the story, it seemed that a long time, well before the monks at the temples and shrines kept such records, it became taboo to ever rescue or feed an injured dragon lizard, especially a female as they were cursed and would bring great misfortune on the people of the Valley and all of Japan.

Now, no-one seemed to have ever seen a dragon lizard for many many generations, so even to know what one might look like seemed unlikely, so people just avoided lizards. Actually it was very rare to see even a common lizard in the Valley, although Jakuchō had seen them sunning themselves on the walls of Tokyo streets and down on the rocks around Kamakura.

This day, the weather started out bright and sunny as it was early Autumn and the bitter cold and snow would not arrive for many weeks yet and Jakuchō took simple pleasure in hiking the steep paths and searching for the fuki no tou, takenoko and yama odo in the undergrowth. Because her mind was distracted, she did not realise how far she had strayed from the known paths, but it suddenly became obvious that she had come far from home and that the weather was gradually changing to a darker more ominous mood, full of dark purple clouds and winds swirling high in the sky, twisting the clouds into fantastic, otherworldly shapes.

However she was not too concerned as when she and Ryu had been together, they had often hiked high into the mountains and understood how to seek shelter and stay warm overnight until a safe passage down the mountains could be found. When she dressed to go up the mountain, it was like Ryu was with her saying, wear this, take that, so she was always prepared with waterproof gear and warm layers just in case.

Setting down the bamboo woven basket from her back, she calculated the time it would take to get back down the mountain before night fell and realised that she could not safely descend. As there was no mobile reception in the Valley or up in the mountains, the risk of getting injured and not being found was too high, so Jakuchō looked higher up to see if there was a small cave or overhang where she could pass the night in relative warmth and then go back down in daylight.

As the late afternoon sun slanted through the breaks in the ridge and trees, it lit up a likely spot not far above and she headed up to find it was a small rounded cave, like a boulder had dislodged ages ago and left this semi-rounded cave which was still warm from the western sun. There were no bears or monkeys in the Valley, which was rather unusual for the region and made it safe to venture into the forests and caves. Most of the time you only saw hares and foxes which never really bothered the people or attacked their farm animals. Indeed, Jakuchō had seen glimpses of a familiar fox that had seemingly followed her up the mountain, when usually it stayed close to the houses below and accepted the occasional offering of food from her as sort of a thankyou for companionship.

Having found this refuge for the night, Jakuchō made a small fire to heat up some rocks to place in the back of the cave to generate heat and sat with her back against the slope of the mountain and ate one of the two onigiri she had brought with her, along with some berries she had picked earlier. There was a stream running down near the cave with clear, herbal tasting water and she settled back feeling at peace for the first time in a long time.

The mountain seemed to exude a feeling of waiting or perhaps anticipation of an event yet to come and when night fell it was so sudden, that Jakuchō had to scramble to make a small light with some twisted vine from her flint striker that she always carried on her expeditions, so she could settle comfortably in the back of the cave.

Tired after such a long hike and lulled to rest by the delicate sighing of the wind through the trees, Jakuchō slipped into a deep sleep and dreamt of Ryu, not of their time together in the city, but a fantastical vision of him on a mountain like this one, smiling and reaching out to her as if knowing where she was and she felt closer to him at that moment than any day since he left her side.

Suddenly Jakuchō was woken from her heartbreakingly realistic dream by the sensation of a warm presence near her. Startled, but not seriously scared, she reached down to feel a small, maybe furred body curled up close to hers and it seemed to be deeply asleep, but whimpering a little while it slept.

A wave of compassion washed over Jakuchō and thinking it was too small to be of danger to her, she pulled her jacket down to cover the little nightime visitor and slipped back into her dreams.