Nature
To begin by saying that I heard the life story of a traveling actor at a spa
is rather an old-fashioned narrative technique, but then . . . perhaps the
story itself is old-fashioned. . . .
In June of this year, while traveling in Yamagata, it occurred to me that I
might visit a certain spa—I had remembered that a spa once frequented by
a now-dead friend was on the coast of Yamagata prefecture. My return to
Tokyo would be delayed by a day, but since I was in the area anyway it
seemed like a good time to stop by.
My friend had told me that the dunes and the sunsets were beautiful at
this spa, and as my car cleared a stand of pine trees and approached the
shore I saw that it was indeed lined with dunes. The stand of pines and the
fields I had just driven through grew in sandy soil, and undulated gently—
perhaps they had originally been dunes themselves. Or perhaps sand from
the beach had made its way back even that far, even as far as the stand of
pines and the fields.
As soon as I had been shown to my room on the second floor, I stepped
out into the hall and looked at the sea. It was a little too early for the sunset,
and I was unable to discover anything beautiful in the dunes I had seen
from the car. They were bleak. There were large numbers of evening
primroses, but they weren’t yet in bloom, and if there were crinums and
other beach plants growing as well, their flowers were not visible. It must
be that, depending on the season, the time of day, and the lighting, there are
times when those dunes become beautiful. It must be that at times—
regardless of whether or not flowers bloom in the sand—the color of the
sand itself becomes beautiful. The color of the sand and the colors of the
sky and the ocean must reflect off and into one another, delicately merging.
