with his lantern—that they carried them all the way to the graves they were
buried in, but one might also say that they continued to the very end to
value the beauty they had cultivated their entire lives, that they
aestheticized even their gravestones.
Thus the first things that came to mind when it occurred to me to make a
tour of Kamakura’s stone art were the graves of Rikyu and Sansai.
I was looking at a collection of photographs of stone artwork one day,
when my wife looked down over my arm at the book. Seeing that most of
the photographs were of graves, she asked, “What kind of gravestone shall
we have made for you?”
‘‘I’m going to buy an old stone, something I like,” I replied. “I’d rather
choose one myself.” Stone stupas and various other pieces that would make
good graves are still bought and sold as old art. If I had to have a
gravestone, I might as Well learn from Rikyu and Sansai and choose a
stone that pleases me while I’m still alive—thus in my eccentricity I
daydreamed. A many-treasure stupa, a treasure-box-seal stupa, a five-ring
stupa, a seamless stupa—perhaps even a stone Buddha or lantern would be
nice. The very thought of having an old and beautiful stone marking my
grave lessened immeasurably the pain I felt on considering what would,
after all, be my burial. People who came to offer prayers at my grave would
feel beauty. That beauty would be something I had seen, but not something
that either I or my age had produced. It would be a beauty no longer
capable of being produced. A beauty left to us by ancient Japan, a stone
that would not decay, that would remain exactly as it was for ages to come.
Seen in the stream of that stone’s long life, my own life would seem quite
short.
I would use the old stone artwork just as it was, I wouldn’t even have my
name and age carved into it. Only people who’d been told would know that
it was my grave. But even those who didn’t know would be struck by its
quiet beauty as they passed. And even after the people who knew it as my
