🌊⛰️🔥Kunisaki Peninsula Fire and Water Pilgrimage: Part 2—From Mountain to People, the Baien Festival, and the Rhythm of Fire and Water Bound to Heaven and Earth—The Day the Gate to “Writing” Quietly Opened at Baien no Sato—

In the first part, I chronicled the first day of the Kunisaki pilgrimage, which led us from the sea to the mountains.
And in this middle part, the journey quietly advances into another deep world of “learning” and “propriety.”

The stage is the 238th Baien Festival, held on May 10, in the 8th year of Reiwa. The singing voices of children honoring Miura Baien, the culture of propriety inherited by the local people, and an encounter with a thinker who spent his life observing the “principles of heaven and earth” have caused me to deeply rethink the meaning of “writing” itself.

Why did Master Baien make nature his teacher and spend his life questioning the principles of heaven and earth? And why is the festival that still breathes on the Kunisaki Peninsula not merely a local event, but a life-giving water vein passed down “from mountain to people, and to the future”?

The Andes and Kunisaki. Mountain worship and the syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism. This is the record of the second day, when two worlds began to resonate as a single rhythm. I hope you will walk the path of this pilgrimage with me until the end.

🌊⛰️🔥【Kunisaki Peninsula Pilgrimage Day 2】
From Mountain to People, the Baien Festival, and the Rhythm of Fire and Water Bound to Heaven and Earth

Sunday, May 10, Reiwa 8. The second day of the Kunisaki Peninsula pilgrimage began with the “238th Baien Festival” held at Baien no Sato. With the lingering echoes of the previous day’s Kunisaki pilgrimage and the stars I gazed at from the Tenkyukan still deep within my body, I encountered on this day, through the name of the thinker Miura Baien, the “rhythm of learning that binds heaven and earth” inherent to the land of Kunisaki.

The festival officiant for this Baien Festival was “Mr. I,” a Kunisaki resident who invited our family to the Kunisaki Peninsula pilgrimage. Despite being extremely busy as the chairman of the Baien Association and the director of the Nishi-Musashi District Community Center, Mr. I came to pick us up at the airport in his own car the day before the festival and guided us very carefully through Kunisaki’s sea, mountains, temples, megaliths, rice fields, and even Baien no Sato.

Our family’s move to Oita itself was only made possible because Mr. I supported us in many ways even before we returned to Japan, and I would like to express my deepest gratitude here once again.

🌸 The Baien Festival—A Water Vein of Propriety Passed Down from Mountain to People

The Baien Festival was not merely a commemorative event. Since the Nishi-Musashi Elementary School, which once served as the venue, closed due to consolidation, the festival has been carried on by the hands of local people at the “Baien no Sato Hall.”

Starting with the incense offering by the head priest of Futago-ji Temple and the monks of Rurikoji Temple, followed by the festival officiant’s prayer, a chorus by fifth-grade students from Aki Central Elementary School, essay presentations, calligraphy exhibition awards, poetry chanting, koto performances, hara-yoga, and a performance by the Aki Junior High School brass band—each element did not assert itself loudly, but was a quiet water vein of propriety, carefully folding, wrapping, tying, and handing down the memories of the land to the next generation.

What touched me most was the “Song Honoring Master Baien” sung by the children. The lyrics were written by Takeshi Takiguchi, a native of Musashi-machi, and the music was composed by Masato Kato. The lyrics included phrases such as “making nature a teacher and a friend,” “like looking at the Futago mountains,” and “the principles of heaven and earth discovered while looking up at the sky every night.”

Listening to that song, I felt that learning is not originally knowledge from a desk, but something that rises from seeing the mountains, looking up at the sky, and the breathing of people living on the land.
I believe that the “heaven and earth” Master Baien spoke of is not just the sky and the ground, but the principles of all creation itself, and the great breath of questioning how humans should live within it.

🎶 “Song Honoring Master Baien”
—The land breathes as a song

“Song Honoring Master Baien”
　Lyrics: Takeshi Takiguchi
　Composition: Masato Kato

Furthermore, at the commemorative lecture, rakugo performer Warakutei Toko, who lives in Oita City and is originally from Futago, spoke about his connection to Teacher Baien, including his own episode regarding Dr. Hideki Yukawa, who visited the former Baien residence. Additionally, his signature rakugo performance, 'Tenshiki,' was presented, spreading gentle laughter throughout the venue.

Within the solemn festival, there were children's voices, calligraphy, music, time to relax the body, and laughter. Watching the whole event, I felt that the Baien Festival is not a ceremony to worship a great man from afar, but a festival that returns Teacher Baien's learning to the breath of the lives of people living today.

As I watched the entire scene, I thought, 'Ah, this is the very etiquette of Kunisaki, passed from mountain to people, from people to children, and on to the future.' A festival is not just about gathering noisily. By calling the names of our predecessors, singing, reciting, playing music, laughing, and quietly bowing our heads, we are once again channeling the energy of the land (the breath of fire and water) back into the human body. The Baien Festival was truly such a modest yet deep rhythm of fire and water, 'from mountain to people.'

👣 Kyakka Shoko (Look at your feet)
— Setting your footing is the path to heaven and earth —

A phrase favored by Mr. I, an expert living in Aki-machi, Kunisaki City, who is the guide for this Kunisaki pilgrimage, is'Kyakka Shoko' (Look at your feet). It is a Zen phrase meaning to look closely at your own feet and reflect on your own words, actions, and heart before worrying about others or distant ideals. Within the visible act of neatly arranging your footwear after taking them off, a deep teaching of organizing a cluttered heart resides.

When I heard this phrase, I felt that the culture of etiquette flowing through the land of Kunisaki and Teacher Baien's view of heaven and earth were quietly and deeply connected. Before speaking of grand ideals or philosophies, first set your footing. Before looking at the distant universe, first arrange your footwear. I believe that if this order is disrupted, no matter how magnificent the words you line up, those words will not contain any substance.

🖋️ Shigin (Poetry Recitation) — A vessel for short and deep Kotodama (word spirit)

At the Baien Festival, there was also a presentation of shigin. Within the short words, landscapes such as mountains, mist, the moon, cold nights, lamps, birds, and plum blossoms breathed quietly. There was a margin left precisely because it did not over-explain, and there was a deep rhythm unique to the Japanese language, where scenery rises up behind the words.

I usually end up trying to write down the resonance of the land and soul in long sentences. It is my nature to want to write like a long epic about things that cannot be contained in a single breath.

However, on this day, while experiencing shigin, I felt once again that short words also have the power to harbor a deep heaven and earth. Whether writing long or reciting short, the root is the same. It is to carefully transfer the atmosphere received by the heart into the vessel called words. I thought that this is the true Kotodama.

📜 Miura Baien Memorial Museum
— The solitude and light of a 'person who observes heaven and earth' —

Afterward, I visited the Miura Baien Memorial Museum with Mr. I to return the statue of Teacher Baien. While looking at the celestial globe and materials, I felt that Teacher Baien was not just a person who accumulated knowledge, but a person who continued to observe the mechanisms of heaven and earth with his own eyes. He must have been a person who did not just follow the common sense or trends of the world, but deeply, quietly, and fundamentally questioned the movements of nature, the structure of the world and the universe, and the way of human existence.

When I looked it up later, I learned that Teacher Baien's 'Gengo' is a work that occupies a unique position in the history of Japanese thought, as it is included in Chuokoron-Shinsha's 'Japanese Classics 20: Miura Baien' and Iwanami Shoten's 'Japanese Thought System 41: Miura Baien'.

However, what attracted me more than the difficult philosophical terms themselves was the prayer, like an obsession, of Teacher Baien, who believed that 'the world has principles' and tried to rewrite those invisible knots over and over again with his own words and diagrams.

In 'The Biography of Miura Baien for Boys and Girls,' there is an explanation to the effect that Teacher Baien divided words into 'voice' and 'substance,' and since voice is something humans attached and substance belongs to nature, words with voices that do not match the substance are useless for thinking about heaven and earth. Reading this passage, I felt that words are not just convenient tools for communication, but when given a voice that matches the substance, they become a vessel for observing heaven and earth.

I was also moved by the mutual aid system for farmers called 'Jihi Mujin' (Mercy Without End) created by Teacher Baien. The system of everyone contributing rice, barley, or money within their means and helping those in need in order was something that resonated deeply with the 'Ayni' I experienced in the Andes, which is the spirit of mutual aid: 'Today for me, tomorrow for you.' The wisdom born in a cold village in Kunisaki and the wisdom passed down in the Andean mountain communities overlapped as the same human prayer, despite being far apart.

Teacher Baien was not a person who just read books and talked about heaven and earth. I think he was a person who continued to question heaven and earth itself, and tried to observe everything from the life at his own feet to the principles of the universe. That is why I received that silence I felt at Baien no Sato not as a mere commemoration of a local great man, but as a deep call to me now: 'Observe heaven and earth with your own eyes, and observe the principles from your own feet.'

🌌 You Cannot Understand Rice Through Sake or Vinegar
— Experience Is What Opens Heaven and Earth —

There is an even more powerful passage in "The Biography of Miura Baien for Boys and Girls."
The gist of it is: "People of the past, when looking at heaven and earth, did not try to see them as they were, but looked with hearts full of desire, so they did not understand the true nature of heaven and earth. The heaven and earth seen by politicians become a world where order is maintained, and the heaven and earth seen by religious figures become a world where human hearts are at peace. Sake and vinegar are made from rice, but no matter how much sake you drink or vinegar you taste, if you do not look at the rice itself, you cannot understand rice. The books that scholars read are like sake and vinegar; no matter how much they read, if they do not see heaven and earth for themselves, they will never understand the true nature of heaven and earth."

Reading this, I nodded deeply, thinking, "That is exactly right." No matter how many beautiful images of Machu Picchu I see on television or in magazines, I cannot truly feel moved unless I stand on that sacred ground with my own feet and feel the air and wind of Huayna Picchu mountain as it appears in the morning white mist.

At Vinicunca, commonly known as Rainbow Mountain, which sits at an altitude of over 5,000 meters, facing the sacred Mount Ausangate of Cusco in the background, struggling with altitude sickness in the thin air, and enduring the unbearable, freezing gale-force winds of the glacier for thirty minutes—these are things that can never be understood through photos or videos alone.

Furthermore, the fact that the snow on the mountains has melted significantly due to global warming compared to fifteen years ago, revealing the rock surface, is something that cannot be understood through armchair theories. Only by standing on the site, breathing the air, shivering in the cold, treading on the stones and sacred rocks underfoot, and receiving it with one's own body can one truly understand, "Ah, heaven and earth are truly in motion."

🍚 Brown Rice from Mount Futago
— The Harvest of Heaven and Earth Called 'Hinohikari' —

I received some brown rice called "Hinohikari" harvested from the rice fields of Mr. Y, a friend of Mr. I. Grown in the fields of Aki overlooking Mount Futago and nurtured by the underflow water of the Futago River, the brown rice had a popping elasticity in the mouth and was surprisingly delicious. This is not just rice. It is a true blessing of heaven and earth, with the life of the mountains, water, soil, sun, and human hands, as well as the memories of the land, condensed into every single grain.

When viewing the character for "rice" (米) through the lens of Kotodama (the spirit of words), "Ko" represents a state of condensation before taking shape, where things gather and move toward the center. And "Me" contains the potential to sprout, grow, and connect to new life from there. By layering these two sounds, I feel that "rice" is a vessel where the blessings of heaven and earth are condensed into small grains, and its life force will eventually sprout and connect to the next life.

The "Hinohikari" brown rice gifted by Mr. Y may have been a quiet reward from Kunisaki for us, having returned to Japan after fifteen years of life in Cusco and twenty-eight years of fieldwork.
Mr. I told me this quietly, without making a big deal out of it.

If Gengo (Deep Words) is the harvest of binding the principles of heaven and earth with words, then brown rice is the harvest of tasting the principles of heaven and earth with the body. Receiving both at the same time was an event of profound significance for me.

🥔 Andean Markets and the Blessings of Heaven and Earth Tasted by the Body

When looking only at the uniform food products distributed in the air-conditioned buildings of modern Japan, one almost forgets how deeply food is inherently connected to the land. However, around Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca Empire in the Andes, if you go to the market first thing on the weekend, you will find vegetables and fruits just harvested from Pachamama, "Mother Earth," lined up by the hands of the local Mestizo people.

There were vegetables and fruits that were rich in nutrients, incredibly cheap, and filled with the fresh water of the earth. Potatoes, of which there are said to be over three thousand varieties, corn, tomatoes, chili peppers, meat, fish, eggs, salt, herbs, and medicinal plants. These are not just food items. They are crystals of heaven and earth, ripened by the altitude, sun, soil, water, wind, and human hands, all coming together as one.

Unless you actually eat it with your own mouth, taste it with your tongue, and feel your body rejoice, you cannot understand the true richness of that land. Life is the same. The truth of life is not found only in dictionaries, encyclopedias, or Wikipedia. I believe that people live by actually living in that land, experiencing, sharing, rejoicing, enjoying, and sometimes getting angry, worrying, suffering, and feeling sad, while laughing together with community members at festivals and rituals, and living by aligning their own "Ki (Iki, Fire and Water)" with the breath of heaven and earth.

References and Related Information

・"The Biography of Miura Baien for Boys and Girls" by Yoriyoshi Miura, published by Kunisaki City Board of Education
・"Manga Hometown Great Figures: Miura Baien," Oita Prefecture Kunisaki City, E-book (Free)
・"Miura Baien: Collected Works on Natural Philosophy," Iwanami Bunko
・"Japanese Classics 20: Miura Baien," Chuokoron-Shinsha
・Seigo Matsuoka's "Senya Sensatsu" (1000 Nights 1000 Books) on Miura Baien's "Gengo"
・"Solving the Mystery of Miura Baien: Gengo Electronic Database" by Tatsuya Kitabayashi

🌾 Next Preview [Kunisaki Peninsula Fire and Water Pilgrimage Journal | Part 3]
Gengo and Brown Rice — From Mountain to People, the Day the Harvest of Heaven and Earth Was Handed Over

In the final part of this pilgrimage, we will trace the two "harvests of heaven and earth": the world of "Gengo," which Miura Baien explored throughout his life, and the "Hinohikari" brown rice nurtured by the underflow water of Mount Futago.

Why did Baien leave "Gengo" unfinished? Why did I feel a deep resonance in his philosophy with the journey I continued for fifteen years in the Andes Mountains?
And what is writing, what is learning, and what is living?
──I will write down the answers I quietly received through the Kunisaki pilgrimage as the conclusion of my journey.

Please look forward to the story that will mark the end of this trilogy.

July 2, 2026 (Thursday)
Hifumi Sumie Aoki

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