As some of you know, I left Hawaii a few days ago for Japan to completing the background research for my next novel, "The Sword of Kamehameha," set in 1260 feudal Japan and Hawaii. The last couple of days, I've been meeting with traditional Japanese sword-makers, learning about how swords were made in the 1200's. I was surprised to find that traditional Japanese sword-makers can recount the evolution of their techniques back over a thousand years. That means that the Sword of Kamehameha probably has a close modern analog. What's even more astounding, however, is the incredibly light yet powerful feeling a hand-made Japanese sword has in hand, and it's fighting agility. I can understand why a Hawaiian king who had never seen iron might consider such a sword an instrument of the gods.

After a day stomping about foundries and talking shop with sword-makers and swordsmen, I decided it was time to explore what life would have been like in feudal Japan. This wasn't so easy, but after a while I was able to piece together a personal travelogue to do just that. In the afternoon, I drove into the mountains to a small, country onsen (hot springs) and bathed as tradition requires in the nude to the stares and occasionally smiling giggles of the other bathers. Luxuriating in hot, volcanic spring water, watching the steam rise into the crisp late afternoon air, accompanied only by Japanese began to stir within me a feeling of something essentially and timelessly Japanese.

Afterwards, I drove on to a country inn, where a troupe of Noh actors were putting on a traditional Japanese play.  After the play, much like an opera but more formal (if you can imagine such), I dined at the restaurant, attended by some of the most lovely Japanese hostesses imaginable. I especially enjoyed the koto music and brief performance by the main hostess, who surprised me with her perfect command of English and amazing conversational abilities. After experiencing what I was assured by the inn owner was pretty much what a visiting hatamoto (royal retainer) visiting the inn would have experienced in the 1200's, I retired for the night to my tatami mat bed and fell asleep to the sound of the wind rustling in trees just outside the rice paper covered walls. Never have I enjoyed such outstanding hospitality. It made me wonder how the captain of the ship who carried the sword must have felt when his ship foundered in a great typhoon and, damaged and listing heavily, began drifted aimlessly into the Pacific away from all that he knew and loved.

The next day was spent looking at feudal castles, my favorite being Osaka Castle. Strange how infrequently one hear's about Japanese castles, yet they are in many ways grander than those I have had the privilege of visiting and overnighting in while travelling Europe.  It was ultimately the archeological work that most fascinated me, the Castle having been built, burned and rebuilt numerous times until it began to assume its current, multi-moated configuration.

I've only a few more days to spend in Japan, so I've decided to return briefly to the gorgeous, traditional-style city of Kyoto and then overnight on my way back to the airport at a "love-motel."  What American state could hold it's ancient past, its living present and visionary future together like that in the very palm of its hand? 

Gary Martine
Author of the just-released second book in the "Kingsley & I" series, "Kingsley & I Together" (MLR Press)
Visit MLR Press at http://www.mlrpress.com
Watch for my newest, soon-to-be-released book, "Total Meltdown" (Wildside/Borgo Press) written under my pen name Raymond Gaynor with co-author William Maltese - an m/m erotic romance starring that inimicable duo, Tripler and Clark, as they work to save the USA from a total economic meltdown.