Minakata Kumagusu ― When One Is Not Just One
Minakata Kumagusu (1867–1941) was born in Wakayama, Japan. His studies moved across natural history, folklore, religion, history, and other fields, often crossing the boundaries between them.
Along the Nakahechi route of the Kumano Kodō stands a place called Tsugizakura Ōji. On both sides of its stone steps rise enormous cedar trees known as the Nonaka no Ippō-sugi.[1]
Why is this cedar standing here, now?
For a very long time, people have passed through this place. Some stopped to pray on their way to Kumano. Some paused and talked. Others may have met someone there for the first time. While these one-time events came and went, the cedars continued to grow.
But why did one particular person stop and pray there?
The reason cannot be found in that single moment alone. Something had led that person to make the journey to Kumano. Things had happened along the way. And at the place where that person arrived, many people had already come and prayed over a long period of time.
In 1893, while living in London, Kumagusu wrote a letter to the Shingon Buddhist monk Toki Hōryū. In it, he used an unusual expression: “my study of koto.”[2]
What Kumagusu wanted to understand was the jōri―the underlying order―of koto.
Here, koto does not mean only what happens at a particular moment. It also includes what lies behind why a person came to act as they did, at that time and in that place: what the person had carried forward from the past, and what had already happened in that place.
Ten years later, in another letter to Toki Hōryū, Kumagusu wrote that “we carry within ourselves the continuation of many causes and effects.” He then added, “As for en, we encounter countless ones in a single instant.”[3]
Carrying what has come before does not mean that what happens next is already decided. At a particular time and place, a person may encounter another person, a thing, or another event. From that encounter, a new koto can arise.
Kumagusu visited Tsugizakura Ōji the following year, in 1904. He was returning toward Tanabe after conducting biological research centered on the Nachi area. He visited the region again in 1908.[4]
In 1908, Tsugizakura Ōji was merged into a nearby shrine, and its cedars came under threat of being cut down.[5] Kumagusu opposed the felling.
He also opposed a proposal to preserve only the great cedars while cutting the smaller vegetation around them. Without the undergrowth, he argued, there would be no humus, and eventually the old cedars themselves would suffer.[6]
To preserve a single cedar, it was not enough to look only at the cedar.
But why did Kumagusu try to save this tree?
Before Kumagusu came to Tsugizakura Ōji, many different koto had already occurred. In London, he had written of his “study of koto” and pursued its underlying order. After returning to Japan, he walked through Kumano, studying its plants, animals, and other forms of life. Then he came to Tsugizakura Ōji and saw its cedars. Later, he encountered something new: the shrine-merger policy and the threat it brought to the trees.
Kumagusu acted to preserve them.
Not all of the cedars survived. Of the thirty-one Ippō-sugi that once stood there, nine remained.[7]
Those nine still stand at Tsugizakura Ōji today.
Look at one cedar.
After following it this far, are we still looking at the same single tree we saw at the beginning?
When one is not just one.
Notes
[1] Tsugizakura Ōji and the Nonaka no Ippō-sugi
Tsugizakura Ōji is one of the Kumano Kujūku Ōji, the subsidiary sacred sites along the Kumano pilgrimage routes, and stands on the Nakahechi route. Its earliest known appearance in written records is generally traced to Fujiwara no Teika’s Kumano Michi no Ma no Guki, an account of the retired emperor Go-Toba’s Kumano pilgrimage in 1201. The giant cedars in the precinct are known as the Nonaka no Ippō-sugi because their branches characteristically extend in one direction, toward the southeast.
[2] “My study of koto”
The expression appears in Kumagusu’s letter to Toki Hōryū dated December 21, 1893. Kumagusu wrote of koto that appear in everyday life where the realm of mind and the realm of matter meet, and sought to understand their jōri, or underlying order. The explanation in the main text concerning what a person “carries forward” should not be read as a definition taken directly from this letter alone. It is a concrete interpretation used in this essay in light of Kumagusu’s later discussion of in, en, and ki in 1903.
[3] In, en, and ki
In a letter to Toki Hōryū dated August 8, 1903, Kumagusu wrote that human beings carry within themselves the continuation of many chains of cause and effect, while encountering countless en in a single instant. He further described koto as arising when such en engage the mind or body, and suggested that this arising―ki―can alter the course of what had been continuing until then. The main text draws on this passage to describe a present koto as involving what has led up to it, without suggesting that what happens next is predetermined.
[4] Kumagusu and Tsugizakura Ōji
Kumagusu visited the Chikatsuyu and Tsugizakura Ōji area in 1904 while traveling toward Tanabe after biological research in the Kumano region centered on Nachi. He returned to the area in 1908.
[5] Shrine consolidation
Tsugizakura Ōji was merged into Chikano Shrine in November 1908. The consolidation placed the Ippō-sugi at risk of being felled. Kumagusu’s broader opposition to shrine consolidation and the destruction of shrine forests intensified from 1909 onward. The detailed history of the preservation campaign has been omitted from the main text.
[6] The cedars and the undergrowth
In a letter to botanist Matsumura Jinzō dated August 31, 1911, Kumagusu opposed a proposal to cut the vegetation around the Ippō-sugi while leaving the great cedars themselves. He argued that removing the undergrowth would eliminate the humus and eventually cause the old trees to die. Drawing on his own observations of the area, he also warned that cutting the woodland above the site would damage the cedar grove.
[7] From thirty-one to nine
There were once thirty-one Ippō-sugi at the site. Nine were preserved and remain at Tsugizakura Ōji today.
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