Why a story about “stopping time” was born in the valley of the water god

Why a story about “stopping time” was born in the valley of the water god

VIBES TOURISM ／ SPIRITUAL POWER SPOT — Kuramakibune-chō, Sakyō-ku, Kyoto City, Kyoto

River, Don’t Flow

Let me begin with a single film.

River, Don’t Flow (Riba, Nagarenaide yo). A time-loop film released in 2023, set in Kibune, Kyoto.

The setting is Kibune in winter. A long-established ryokan restaurant-inn, standing on the bank of the Kibune River where the snow drifts down. A waitress named Mikoto, who works there, is standing by the river when the proprietress calls her back to work. But two minutes later — she comes to her senses, and she is standing in front of the very same river, again.

It isn’t only Mikoto.

The head clerk, the cook, the proprietress, the guests. Everyone in the inn is dragged back, every two minutes, to where they had been. The hot sake, no matter how long you wait, never warms. The rice porridge that closes the meal never runs out, however much you eat. A letter half-written turns blank again after two minutes. No one can move past those two minutes, on into the next.

Time circles, and circles again. The same two minutes, over and over and over.

A strange film. And stranger still — why, of all places, was such a film shot in Kibune?

The screenplay was written by Makoto Ueda of the Kyoto theater company Europe Kikaku. He has spoken plainly about how the film came to be. It was not that an interesting time-loop story existed first, and Kibune was then chosen as the place to shoot it. The order was the reverse. First came the feeling — I want to film Kibune. He stood on this ground, scouted the location, and asked himself, “What kind of story could possibly begin here?” And after thinking, and thinking, he arrived at that rule: “two minutes, circling endlessly.” Only from there did he begin to build the contents of the loop.

The land came first. The story came after — decided by the land.

Remember this. The valley of Kibune summoned the story. The screenwriter did not carry a story in from outside; the valley drew the story out of the human being who stood within it.

And what lies at the heart of that story is this drama.

Mikoto, the protagonist, has someone she cares for. But that person is about to leave the small valley of Kibune and go far away. Mikoto wants to stop them. Please don’t go. I don’t want to be apart. And yet, face to face, she cannot say it. That wish — don’t go — swells inside her chest, unspoken.

And onto that wish, fitting it exactly:

No one can leave Kibune any longer. The loop of two minutes begins.

Don’t go becomes time, don’t flow.

The title — Don’t Flow — seems at first glance to be murmured at the Kibune River flowing before one’s eyes. A swift river. Cold winter water. But what is truly being told “don’t flow” is not the river. It is time. To stop time as it streams away. To never let these two minutes end. To never let the moment of that person’s departure arrive. And so — time, don’t flow.

Here, pause for a moment.

I want to stop the flow of time. I want to repeat the same span of time again. That wish is depicted, of all places, in the land of Kibune.

Is this merely coincidence?

When you think about it, it is a strange thing. Kibune is a valley that enshrines the god of water. The god who governs water, sends rivers flowing, lets rain fall. The god of flowing. And at the feet of that “god of flow,” a film was shot pleading “please don’t flow.” In the valley of the flowing god, one prays to stop the flow. There could be no more mismatched pairing than this.

And yet — when you watch it, that pairing fits with an uncanny rightness.

Why?

In the interviews one can confirm, the starting point the screenwriter set down was the idea of how to use the space of Kibune, and what could be done with a two-minute loop. It was not a matter of building on a system of mythology. He simply stood on this ground and searched for the story that could begin here. And what emerged was a story about water and time — about wanting to stop the flow. The land called it forth. Something that had lain sleeping deep in the land passed through the screenwriter, took the shape of a story, and gushed up.

What is that “something”?

It is because Kibune — from the very beginning — is a valley where time does not flow in a straight line.

Ordinarily, we think of time as a single straight line. From past, to present, to future. One way only, never to return. Time that has passed, passes away forever.

But the time of Kibune is not like that.

Water circles. In the rite of purification, time winds back. The god descends, again and again, at the same hour. Not a line, but a circle. Time that turns round and round, returning, repeating. That sensation has soaked into this valley for more than a thousand years.

River, Don’t Flow happened to strike that circular time. The screenwriter thought he was the one digging — but in truth, it was the valley that made the film speak the shape of its own time.

From here, I will tell that story.

Why does time circle in Kibune? What, exactly, dwells at the center of that circle? And within that circle, how have the wishes of people turned, and been amplified, and become stories?

Let us go to listen to the sound of the water. The water that flows, and circles, and comes back again.

When you still your ears to the sound of that water

First, actually go to Kibune.

If you’re going, summer is best.

Summer in the heart of Kyoto is sweltering. Heat pools at the bottom of the basin. The asphalt shimmers and wavers. Even under a parasol, the sweat won’t stop. The air itself clings to you like lukewarm bathwater. On a day like this, you mustn’t stay in the city. Flee north.

From Demachiyanagi Station, you board a little two-car train on the Eizan Electric Railway. Bound for Kurama. Tourists, locals, and hikers with packs on their backs sit mixed together. Everyone has the face of someone going off to find cool air. As the train runs north, the scenery outside the window changes. The houses thin out, the green thickens. Around the time you pass Ichihara, trees begin to cover both sides of the track. The stretch they call “the Tunnel of Maples.” This whole area, which burns into flaming red foliage in autumn, becomes in summer an eye-opening green — fresh young maple. Green floods the whole window, streaming past.

And then you get off at Kibune-guchi Station.

The instant you step off the train, the air is different. That clinging heat of the city is gone. A breeze passes through. Mixed in with the cicadas, from somewhere, comes the sound of water. From here, the valley begins.

Kibune. As a place name it is read with a voiced sound, “Kibune,” but the name of the shrine deep in this valley is read “Kifune,” unvoiced. Because it is a shrine that enshrines the god who governs water, the shrine’s name alone is read “clear,” so that the water may stay forever unclouded. So it is said. Into a single reading of a name, a prayer to the water has been folded.

You walk up the valley.

From Kibune-guchi Station to the depths of the valley where the shrine stands is about two kilometers. There is a bus, but in summer it is better to walk. The road clings tightly to the Kibune River and climbs gently. At first it is still hot. There is shade, but it is uphill, and little by little the sweat comes. Your T-shirt sticks to your back.

But as you walk, all the while, from your left, the sound of the river follows you.

Trickling. Roaring. Babbling. The sound of the water changes from place to place. Where it strikes the rocks and shatters white. Where it gathers deep and stands quietly still. Where it slides over the shallows. In time with the rhythm of your steps, the river keeps speaking to you.

Now and then you stop and peer into the river. The water is clear. Each stone on the bottom is plainly visible, one by one. A small fish darts across. A water strider skates over the surface. The rocks are covered in deep green moss, damp with the spray of the river. Through the gaps in the leaves, the summer light falls in dapples. Green, and water, and light.

As you walk, you notice something.

The sweat that wouldn’t stop a moment ago has, somewhere along the way, receded. The deeper you go into the valley, the more the temperature drops, little by little. The cold air the river carries and the shade of the trees overhead make the whole valley into a natural refrigerator. It’s hard to believe this is the same Kyoto City. The streets were so terribly hot. The body that walked and sweated cools, little by little, and loosens.

And all the while — the sound of the river is beside you.

Whether you walk or stop, it doesn’t disappear. Cover your ears, and it still comes through, from the soles of your feet, from the air. In this valley, wherever you are, you cannot escape the sound of the water.

When you still your ears and listen, intently, to that sound, a strange feeling comes over you.

Where, exactly, does this water come from?

If you follow the valley up, and up, at the end of it there is a source. Rain that fell on the mountains, over a long span of time, passes through the depths of the earth and, somewhere, wells up. The place where that very first drop springs forth. That is the innermost depth of this valley. The Okumiya — the Inner Shrine — of Kifune.

And for more than a thousand years, people have not thought of this water as mere water.

They have thought of it as a dragon.

This pleasant water, sounding now at your side. This clear, cold, refreshing flow. That pure water you peered into a moment ago. At its source, a dragon dwells. So it has been believed.

Dip your feet in, and it feels good. Drink it, and it tastes fine. Cool and comfortable. But that is only one of the dragon’s faces. Let the same water rage but once, and it breaks the embankments, sweeps away villages, swallows people. In fact, the shrine buildings of Kibune, too, have a history of being washed away by the river’s flooding. Gentle water and terrible water. The water of blessing and the water of calamity. Both are the same single dragon.

The name of that dragon is Takaokami-no-kami.

And it is this dragon, precisely, who is the culprit — the one turning the time of Kibune into a circle.

A circling dragon, born from the blood that cut fire

The birth of Takaokami-no-kami is utterly unlike its gentle image of water. If anything, it reeks of blood. It is born from fire, and from death.

The story goes back to the very beginning of Japanese myth.

Izanagi and Izanami. Two deities who give birth to the land, and then to god after god. The god of mountains, the god of the sea, the god of wind, the god of trees. The world, little by little, takes shape. But — when she gives birth to Kagutsuchi, the god of fire, the mother, Izanami, is scorched by her own child’s blazing flames and loses her life.

It was the moment when “death,” for the first time, came into the world.

His beloved wife, burned to death by the very fire god they had brought forth. Izanagi loses himself to grief and rage. And he draws his sword, and strikes the head from his newborn child — Kagutsuchi, the god of fire.

From that spurting blood. From that severed body. Yet more new gods were born.

The Kojiki tells that the blood on the sword dripped down from between the fingers of Izanagi’s hand, and from it came water deities, beginning with Kuraokami-no-kami. One variant text of the Nihon Shoki tells that the body of the slain Kagutsuchi split into three, and from them came the god of thunder, the god of mountains, and the water god Takaokami-no-kami.

From the death of slaying the fire god, the water god was born.

When you think about it, it is a tremendous tale. Fire and water are opposites. Fire burns all to ash. Water extinguishes it. And that water god is born from the death of the fire god — from his blood and his flesh. From death, life. From fire, water. From the utmost extreme of hatred and grief, the water that moistens life springs forth.

This god, from the moment of its birth, carries opposites within a single body. Light and dark, life and death, fire and water — a god that has held them all at once from the instant it was born. And it is precisely for this reason that, in this god’s valley — as we will see later — a tale of light that binds bonds together and a tale of darkness that turns a person into a demon are both born in the same place.

And there is a secret in the very name.

The character 龗. An unfamiliar, complex character. Look at it closely. At the very bottom there is 龍, a dragon. Above it, 口 — a mouth — lined up three times. And above those, 雨, rain, covers it all.

A dragon. Three mouths. Rain.

The three lined-up mouths are said to represent the vessels offered up in prayer to a god. In other words, this single character itself depicts — beneath the rain, with many vessels arrayed, beseeching the dragon for rain — the whole scene of a rite to pray for rainfall. The character is the prayer itself.

And 龗 is an old word for dragon. It means a serpent-bodied god who governs water. The Edo-period Confucian scholar Hayashi Razan, too, wrote in one of his works that “Takaokami is of the dragon-god kind.” In other words, that Takaokami-no-kami is a dragon is no later interpretation tacked on. The name itself has called itself a dragon from the very start. 龗 is the dragon. 高 (taka) is the high peak of a mountain. The dragon of the high peak.

Now, from here comes the first key linking this valley to “time.”

What kind of god, exactly, is Takaokami-no-kami? One shrine’s account states the essence of this god flatly, like this.

Takaokami-no-kami is the very water cycle of nature, made into a god.

The water cycle. You must have learned it in science class. Water evaporates from the sea and becomes clouds. The clouds are carried by the wind and let rain fall on the mountains. The rain soaks into the earth, becomes rivers, descends the valleys, and at last returns to the sea. And from the sea, it evaporates once more, and becomes clouds.

There is no end. There is no beginning, either. Round and round, eternally, it keeps circling.

Takaokami-no-kami is the god of that very “thing that keeps circling.” Not a god that flows in a straight line from one point to another. Turning, returning, turning again. A being that is the circling water, the circular motion of that circuit, made directly into a god.

And this god has another dragon that forms its pair.

Kuraokami-no-kami. Likewise born from the death of the fire god, a dragon of water. 高 (taka) points to the high peak of a mountain; 闇 (kura) points to the deep ravine. The rain that pours down upon the high peak, and the water that flows down through the dark valley. Two phases of the same water. Born as rain on the heights, descending as a river through the valley.

And what matters is this — these two are said to be a pair, and at the same time, to be “the same god.”

A single dragon with two faces: taka (the peak) and kura (the valley). It rises to the peak, descends to the valley, and rises again. Just as water rises from the sea to the sky, falls to the earth as rain, returns to the sea as a river, and rises again.

It rises. It falls. It circles. It returns. And rises again.

The god of Kibune is, from the very beginning, a circle.

Not a god that flows away in a straight line toward somewhere. A being that is the ever-circling water, its circular motion made into a god. With neither end nor beginning, simply that which keeps circling.

Come this far, and the outline of why that film’s prayer was born in this valley begins to come into view.

River, don’t flow.

At the feet of a god that flows and circles, a person wishes to stop that flow. However much one wishes to stop it, the water flows. Time flows. But the water that has flowed away circles, and comes back again. And the time that has flowed away — in this valley, perhaps, it too circles, and comes back again.

The essence of the god and the wish of the human being face each other head-on, at a single point: “flow.” That is why that film fits. A tale that, in the valley of the god of flow, wishes to stop the flow may seem mismatched — but in truth, it resonates with the very deepest place of this valley.

Misogi — winding time back with water

That which shows this circular time is not a matter only within myth.

Walk this valley, and you can actually touch that “circle.”

It is misogi — ritual purification.

Near the entrance of the approach leading toward the Inner Shrine, a bridge spans a small stream called the Omoi-gawa, the “River of Thoughts.” An unremarkable little river, the kind you would ordinarily pass right by. But this river has another, older name. The Omonoimi-gawa. Monoimi — to purify body and mind, to avoid defilement, to ready oneself before a god.

Long ago, when the main shrine of Kibune still stood deep here, it is said that those who came to worship at the shrine always performed misogi at this river. They washed their hands, rinsed their mouths, and sometimes immersed their whole bodies in the cold current. Every defilement they had worn from the secular world, they washed away in this water. Only then were they permitted to set foot into the sacred precincts.

Consider carefully what this act of misogi means.

The origin of misogi lies in myth. Izanagi, who descended all the way to Yomi-no-kuni, the land of the dead, in pursuit of his wife Izanami. But, struck with terror at her utterly transformed form, he barely escaped with his life back to the world above. And then, to cleanse himself of the defilement of death he had worn in the land of Yomi, he entered the water at a river’s mouth and purified his whole body.

That is said to be the beginning of misogi.

To return from the land of the dead. To enter the water. To go back to one’s original, pure self.

This is — nothing other than the act of winding time back.

What is defilement? It is the grime that, simply by living, naturally builds up on anyone. The more time passes, the more a person, without realizing it, comes to wear defilement. Sin, error, sorrow, fatigue. The passage of time is, in a sense, also the process of defilement piling up.

That piled-up defilement — you wash it away, for the moment, with water. You return it to zero. To the very first, newborn, unsullied state.

The reason shrines hold the great purification rite, the ōharae, once every half-year is the very same idea. The last day of the sixth month, and the last day of the twelfth. People transfer the defilement built up over that half-year onto a paper effigy, a hitogata, and purge it away. And they are returned, once more, to the pure initial state. On a cycle of half a year, people keep returning, again and again, to “the beginning.”

In other words, time in Japanese faith is not something that merely grows soiled along a single straight line.

Each time one enters the water. Each time one purifies. A person returns to “the beginning.”

Wind back, and start over. Reset, and begin again. When soiled, wash it, and return it. That repetition.

Here, recall that film once more.

In River, Don’t Flow, the characters were dragged back, every two minutes, to their “initial positions.” The hot sake returned to cold sake again. The porridge returned to a full pot again. The people were standing, again, where they had been two minutes before. Over and over, they were returned to the beginning.

And that — has the same structure as misogi.

To loop, and return to the original place. To start over. To reset. That sensation is not something new that science fiction films invented. In the form of misogi, winding time back with water, it had been flowing along the approach to Kibune for more than a thousand years.

The Omoi-gawa of Kibune is, so to speak, a device for winding time back.

You cross the bridge, cleanse your body with water, discard your soiled time for the moment, and stand before the god in a state of purity. You reset the time of the everyday and enter into sacred time. On this side of the bridge and the other side, the time that flows is different.

Water flows. It flows away both defilement and time. And it returns you, once more, to the beginning.

The circulating water god. The time-rewinding misogi. The time of this valley, after all, does not flow straight. Round and round it turns, returning, starting over. Not only within the film — at the very feet of the actual approach, that circle is flowing.

The hour of the Ox — the time when the god descends, again and again

The third key showing this circular time is carved into the very “hour” of this valley.

In Kibune there is the legend of the ushi-no-koku mairi, the visit at the hour of the Ox.

To worship at the shrine in the dead of night at the hour of the Ox — what we now call one to three in the morning. From these words, most people will conjure up a gruesome “curse.” A straw doll, a five-sun nail. White robes. A candle on the head. A ritual to curse a hated rival to death, night after night.

But that is a great misunderstanding fashioned in a later age, and the original meaning is something entirely different.

And it is precisely that original meaning that shows, more clearly than anything, this valley’s “circular time.”

Why the “hour of the Ox”?

According to the founding tradition of Kifune Shrine, it goes like this. For the peace of the realm and the protection of the people, in the ancient past, the Great God of Kibune descended from the heavens to Kagami-iwa, the Mirror Rock, on the midslope of Mount Kibune — at “the hour of the Ox, on the day of the Ox, in the month of the Ox, in the year of the Ox.”

The year of the Ox. The month of the Ox. The day of the Ox. The hour of the Ox.

All of it aligned in “the Ox.” The sacred moment when the god alighted upon the earth. And precisely for this reason, praying at the hour of the Ox was held to carry a special miraculous power, as though one were present at the descent of the god. Precisely for this reason, the “day of the Ox” is still the festival day of this shrine. The Inner Shrine’s own notice states it plainly: the visit at the hour of the Ox derives from the old tale that the enshrined deity descended in the year, month, and hour of the Ox, and it signifies the potent efficacy granted to every kind of heartfelt human wish. It is by no means something to be confined to cursing alone.

Originally, it was a sacred hour of prayer. A miraculous time when one could draw closest to the god.

What I want you to notice here is that the “hour” repeats.

The god descended in the ancient past, a single, once-only event. In the sense of straight-line time, it should be something that occurred at one point in the far distant past and will never, ever come back again. The past, gone by.

And yet — the hour of the Ox comes around every night. The day of the Ox comes around every month. The year of the Ox comes around every twelve years.

Each time that hour comes around, that ancient moment of descent is “re-enacted” once more.

People worship aiming for that repeated, sacred hour. Pray at the hour of the Ox, and you can be present at the descent of a thousand years ago. You can be in time for that very moment when the god descends, again.

This is a sensation that cannot hold unless time is circular.

In straight-line time, the god descended at one point in the far past, and it will never return for all eternity. But in circular time, the same sacred moment comes round and round, again and again, returning. And so, each time the hour of the Ox arrives, the descent is repeated, however many times. The past revives in the present, again and again.

Water circles. In misogi, time returns. And at the hour of the Ox, the god descends, again and again.

The time of Kibune circles in a threefold way.

The natural circle of the water cycle. The circle of human practice that is misogi. The circle of ritual that is the hour of the Ox. Three circles overlap in this valley, turning on and on.

That River, Don’t Flow depicted a two-minute circle in this valley was, therefore, inevitable.

The screenwriter merely drew the story out of the land. And that land was, from the beginning, a valley where time circles, returns, and repeats. And so the story drawn out of it became, naturally, a time loop that circles, returns, and repeats. The screenwriter did not invent the circle. The valley, borrowing the vessel of the screenwriter, simply spoke — in the form of a film — the circular time it had possessed from the start.

The time of the land decided the shape of the story.

This, perhaps, is the true identity of that sensation so many visitors to this valley vaguely feel: “Somehow, time is different here.”

A wish circles, and is amplified — the woman who became a firefly

In a valley where time circles,

a wish, too, circles.

A wish, once uttered, does not vanish on the spot. It keeps circling, round and round, within the circular time. As it circles, it resonates, it echoes, it is amplified. And when it passes a certain critical point — the wish begins to take on the form of reality.

What shows this more clearly than anything is the tale of two women handed down in this valley.

In the same valley of Kibune. Both bearing the same wound of “a husband’s betrayal.” And they let that wish explode in utterly opposite directions, these two. One, toward the light. One, toward the dark. For the valley of that circling dragon, which holds both light and dark together, there could be no more fitting pair of tales.

First, from the side of light.

In the age of Heian, a woman climbed this valley.

Izumi Shikibu. A leading female poet of the Heian era, who left behind many passionate poems of love. A woman of countless loves, a rare and brilliant talent. But what she carried this time was not the elation of a new love.

The change of heart of her husband, Fujiwara no Yasumasa.

No longer loved, his heart drifting away from her. With that flesh-cutting anguish in her breast, she made her pilgrimage to Kifune Shrine. To bind together, once more, the drifting heart of her husband. To win back the bond that was on the verge of being lost.

And on the bank of the Kibune River — she saw fireflies.

It was a summer night. Over the surface of the river, countless fireflies danced. A fleeting, pale-blue light, flickering on and off in the darkness. Numberless tiny lights, born and vanishing, vanishing and born. Before that sight, she composed a single poem. A poem far too famous, later gathered into the Goshūi Wakashū.

Mono omoeba / sawa no hotaru mo / waga mi yori / akugare izuru / tama ka to zo miru

— When I sink deep into longing, even the light of the fireflies flying over the marsh looks like a soul that has slipped out of my own body and wandered away.

In the depth of love’s torment, her own soul had slipped free of her flesh. The light of those fireflies drifting before her eyes — perhaps it was not insects flying outside at all, but her very own soul, departed from her body and wandering loose.

A harrowing love poem, like an out-of-body experience.

When longing reaches its extreme, the soul leaves the flesh. It becomes the light of a firefly and wanders the dark. By the water’s edge, the soul of a single woman softly slips out of her body. Is love, then, a thing that tears a person apart from within to such a degree?

And it is said that Kibune answered this wish.

The deity of Kibune heard Izumi Shikibu’s prayer. Her husband’s heart returned, and the harmony of the couple, they say, was restored. It is also told that the deity itself composed a poem in reply to her. A god answered a human love, in verse.

Here, circular time shows its face again.

The place where Izumi Shikibu saw her own soul came later to be called Hotaru-iwa, the Firefly Rock. And even now — every year, when early summer comes, fireflies dance over the Kibune River. From late June into July. That pale-blue light, the very one Izumi Shikibu saw a thousand years ago. It comes circling back to the same place, every year.

Across a thousand years of time, the same light revives, repeatedly, in the same valley.

Her wish did not vanish. As fireflies, it keeps circling and returning to this valley, year after year. The light of those fireflies that one sees when visiting Kibune on a summer night — perhaps it is the continuation of one woman’s soul, wandering loose, from a thousand years ago.

A wish circles. As light, it returns, again and again.

This is the tale of the woman of light.

But — in this same valley, there was another woman, betrayed by her husband in just the same way.

That woman did not wish for reconciliation.

She wished for a curse.

A wish circles, and runs wild — the woman who became a demon

The tale on the side of darkness.

The time is said to be the reign of Emperor Saga. There was a daughter of a certain court noble. There was a man she loved deeply. But — the man’s heart moved to another woman.

The daughter was cast aside. The same as Izumi Shikibu. The same betrayal. The same wound. But what welled up in the daughter’s breast was not sorrow.

Jealousy. And — the urge to kill.

I want to kill that woman. Even if I must become a demon while still alive.

The daughter shut herself away at Kifune Shrine. For seven days. And she prayed like this.

— I bow before you, deity of Kibune. I beg you, make me, while still living, into a demon. There is a woman I despise, and I wish to take her life.

A loathsome prayer, begging a god for the power to kill. An ordinary god would turn it away. But — the deity of Kibune.

did not turn this prayer away.

It felt pity. And it told her this.

— Truly, you are pitiable. If you truly wish to become a demon, then change your form, go to a place where the current of the Uji River runs swift, and immerse yourself there for twenty-one days. If you do, I shall make you a demon.

A god. Taught the method. of becoming a demon.

Here, the essence of this valley’s dragon is laid bare. The circling dragon that holds both light and dark. To Izumi Shikibu’s wish of “come back to me,” and to this daughter’s wish of “I want to kill,” it answers in just the same way. It does not judge the good or evil of a wish. To a wish of light, light. To a wish of darkness, darkness. It answers only to the strength of the wish that is uttered.

The daughter returns to the capital, rejoicing. She shuts herself away in a deserted place and transforms her body.

She divides her long hair into five and binds it up into the shape of five horns. She paints her face with vermilion and dyes her body red with cinnabar. On her head she sets, upside down, an iron ring on three legs — a kanawa, a trivet. On its three legs she burns torches. And she takes another torch in her mouth, lighting both of its ends.

Crowned with flame on her head, fire clenched in her mouth, her whole body blazing red — the form of a demon.

And she immersed herself in the Uji River for twenty-one days. Just as she had been told.

The daughter — became, while still alive, a demon.

This is “the Bridge Princess of Uji,” the Hashihime of Uji. The tale of a demon-woman, handed down in “Tsurugi no Maki,” a variant volume of The Tale of the Heike, and in the Genpei Jōsuiki.

What became of Hashihime after she turned into a demon? First, she killed the woman she had envied. Next, that woman’s kin, and the man. And in the end — heedless of high rank or low, of man or woman. It is said she killed people indiscriminately, anyone at all, with no distinction.

A single jealousy. Swelling into indiscriminate slaughter.

This, precisely, is the form of a wish run wild within the circle. Just as Izumi Shikibu’s wish kept circling as the fleeting, beautiful light of fireflies, Hashihime’s wish kept amplifying as a demon — an unstoppable calamity. A wish to kill one person, as it circled, swelled into the madness of wanting to kill everyone.

Physical evidence remains, too. The “Kanawa-no-kakeishi,” the stone where Hashihime is said to have set down the iron ring from her head, is said to stand beside Kibune-guchi Station on the Eizan Electric Railway. That very station where you get off the train. Right nearby. The stone where the woman who became a demon set down her iron ring on the way to Uji still stands there, even now. Hashihime, having become a demon, eventually came whirling back to the capital, fell upon Watanabe no Tsuna — one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Minamoto no Yorimitsu — at the Ichijō Modoribashi bridge, and had one of her arms struck off. By one account, this demon is said to be the same being as the later Ibaraki-dōji.

The woman of light, and the woman of darkness.

Izumi Shikibu sent her soul flying as fireflies and won back her love. Hashihime turned her body into a demon and fell into slaughter. In the same valley. From the same betrayal. The strength of the wish was exactly the same. Only the direction was the reverse.

The fireflies of light, and the demon of flame.

The valley of the circling dragon, which holds both light and dark, gave birth to both of them. And it keeps both of them circling, even now. The fireflies return every year. And the tale of Hashihime, too, revives each time it is handed down.

The protagonist of that film who wished “River, don’t flow” is in this lineage as well. The wish of not wanting to be apart stopped time and kept the two minutes circling. The stronger the wish, the more it bends, in this valley, time itself, reality itself.

Kibune is that kind of valley. A wish echoes within circular time, is amplified, and at last becomes a story, becomes reality. And precisely for that reason, what you wish for here is, frighteningly, a weighty thing.

Not only curses — the other face of the visit at the hour of the Ox

Here, a great misunderstanding born of Hashihime’s tale must be cleared up.

“The visit at the hour of the Ox.” Many people think of it as “a ritual of cursing.” A straw doll, a five-sun nail. A sacred tree at midnight. In fact, even in dictionaries and the like, the visit at the hour of the Ox is often explained as “a method for cursing a resented rival.” But — the visit at the hour of the Ox at Kibune cannot be told through curses alone. Originally, as we have already seen, this hour was also a special time for the fulfillment of heartfelt wishes, tied to the tradition of the Great God of Kibune’s descent. It surely had a face as a sacred method, a prayer at a holy hour.

So why, then, did it become a “curse”?

Hashihime’s tale is said to be the cause.

A woman betrayed by her man shuts herself away at Kibune, receives a divine oracle, and turns into a demon. This far-too-vivid tale seared into people’s memory a dark image: “Kibune = the place where, if you pray at the hour of the Ox, you can become a demon.” Furthermore, the Noh play Kanawa, which made this tale of Hashihime into Noh, spread it. A woman cast aside by her husband receives Kibune’s oracle, turns into a demon, and tries to curse her husband to death, but is driven off by the prayers of the onmyōji Abe no Seimei — such is the plot. This Noh became widely known, and the image of “Kibune = the cursing hour of the Ox” became decisive.

Into that, the cursing methods of onmyōdō, then in fashion, mixed themselves in.

Here, I want to confirm something important.

Neither in Hashihime’s tale nor in the Noh play Kanawa — does a scene of driving nails into a straw doll appear.

That image of “a straw doll and a five-sun nail,” practically synonymous with the visit at the hour of the Ox. It exists neither in the original Hashihime legend nor in the Noh. It is something composited on afterward, in a later age — probably from the Edo period onward — out of an entirely separate sorcery.

To organize it, it comes to this. The sacred prayer of the hour of the Ox (the old tale of the god’s descent). The tale of the demon-woman Hashihime. Kanawa, which made it into Noh. The curses of onmyōdō. And, from the Edo period onward, the straw doll and the five-sun nail. These several layers, over a long span of time, mixed together and accumulated — and the present image of “the visit at the hour of the Ox = a curse” was formed.

The prayer for the fulfillment of wishes and the tale of the curse mixed, and mixed, and made the present image of “the visit at the hour of the Ox = a curse.” It is not that only one of them is the real one. The face of a sacred hour, and the face of a curse. Both of them are folded over one another upon this hour, across long time.

And so — it is no strange thing if, actually visiting Kibune, you feel “there’s no air of a curse here at all,” or “if anything, it’s refreshing.” Clean water. A cool valley. Fresh air. The strong image of a place of cursing is also one face that the tales of later ages greatly inflated.

But there is one thing that must not be forgotten.

This valley does not choose its prayers.

The prayer to bind a bond. The prayer for reconciliation. And even the prayer to become a demon. The deity did not turn away Hashihime’s prayer. It felt pity, and went so far as to teach her the path to becoming a demon. The god of Kibune does not judge the good or evil of a wish. It simply listens. And within circular time, it amplifies it, and returns it.

It is a refreshing valley. But at the bottom of that purity sleeps a terror that will amplify any wish at all. What you wish for here — that is left entirely to you yourself.

The hole you must not look into — the center of the circle

Let us head for the center of the circle.

To that single point where all water wells up, where all time begins, where all wishes gather. To the Inner Shrine.

From the main shrine, you walk upstream, along the river. People grow fewer. The trees grow deeper. The light grows softer. The air turns one degree more chill, more damp, more moist. Only the sound of the river grows louder. You cross the bridge of the Omoi-gawa and, in the spirit of misogi, enter the sacred precincts.

And you arrive at the Inner Shrine, the Okumiya.

This is the oldest place of Kifune Shrine. The site of its founding. Originally, the shrine stood here. Later, in the third year of Tengi (1055), the shrine buildings were lost to the flooding of the Kibune River, and the main shrine was moved to its present site — but this Inner Shrine is the place where everything began.

The precincts are utterly still. The bright bustle of the main shrine seems a lie. Surrounded by trees, the air, holding density, stands still. The clamor of the tourist spot suddenly vanishes. Not cool, so much as — cold. Your spine straightens of its own accord. It is utterly unlike the freshness of the main shrine. Here, there is awe.

And directly beneath the main hall of the Inner Shrine — there is a hole.

The Ryūketsu. The Dragon’s Hole.

A vast, vertical shaft. The main hall is built so as to cover this hole. A sacred dragon’s hole, counted among the three great dragon’s holes of Japan. In the terms of feng shui, it is the outlet from which the earth’s energy gushes up from the depths of the ground. The dwelling place of the dragon.

And this hole has a firm taboo. You must not look into it. Seeing it directly with human eyes is forbidden. Even now. Sacred and inviolable. It is sealed, as darkness, beneath the floor of the main hall.

What happens if you break the taboo? A legend like this remains.

The Bunkyū era — the middle of the nineteenth century. A repair of the main hall was underway. A carpenter at work — accidentally dropped the chisel in his hand down into that hole. In that instant. The whole sky suddenly clouded over. The clear sky was abruptly covered in black clouds, and a fierce wind raged. And that wind blew the chisel that should have fallen up out of the bottom of the hole, into the air. The fallen chisel danced through the sky —

This tale, too, remains in the official records of Kyoto City, as a legend of this shrine.

At the bottom of the hole, there is a dragon. Look in, and it looks back at you. Drop something, and it is thrust back out. And so you must not look. You revere it, keep your distance, and gently build a shrine above it, and enshrine it.

You stand before the main hall of the Inner Shrine. Right beneath your feet. A deep vertical shaft you must not look into opens its mouth. And in its depths, the circling dragon, born of fire, slowly breathes.

That sound of the river you heard while walking the valley. That flow that felt so good. The firefly light Izumi Shikibu saw. The seven days Hashihime shut herself away. The source of all of it is here. The center of the circle where water begins to turn. The first single point where time wells up.

In the Inner Shrine, it is said, Kuraokami-no-kami is enshrined together with Takaokami-no-kami. The dragon of the peak, and the dragon of the valley. Rising water, and falling water. The circling dragon — light and dark, two-as-one — is enshrined above this single hole. At the center of the circle is a dragon that is two-as-one.

And no one has ever seen that dragon.

Because it must not be seen. It is forever invisible. Invisible, it has been believed in, revered, prayed to, for a thousand years. At the center of the circle is an invisible dragon. That alone can never, ever be verified. And precisely because it cannot be verified, the circle keeps turning.

Beside the main hall is the trace of one more thing you must not see. The Funagata-iwa, the Boat-Shaped Rock. In the founding myth, Tamayori-hime-no-mikoto rode a yellow boat up from Osaka Bay, ascending the Yodo River, the Kamo River, and the Kibune River, and reached this land, and enshrined the water god. That yellow boat was piled around and hidden with stones, so as not to meet human eyes. Why it was hidden, the shrine tradition does not say. The dragon’s hole you must not look into. The hidden yellow boat. In this valley, the most important things are always made invisible. The invisible thing becomes the core of the circle.

The root where ki is born — the depleted are filled

The valley of circular time has one more fitting name.

Kibune was, in olden times, also written 氣生根 — Kifune, “the root where ki is born.”

Kifune. The root where ki is born.

The shrine’s name has been written in various ways across the ages. 貴布禰. 木船. 黄船. 気生嶺. And 氣生根. That it settled into the present spelling, 貴船, is surprisingly recent — the fourth year of Meiji (1871). Before that, in the ancient days of Asuka, it was also written 気生根 and 気生嶺.

The root where ki is born.

The root from which the earth’s life-force — ki — rises up from the ground like a dragon. The shrine’s traditions have spoken of this place as “a place where, merely by touching the god’s ki, you are filled with ki.”

Here, I want to set another word alongside it.

Kigare.

Kegare — defilement. There is a theory that the origin of this word is ki-gare, “ki withered.” The state in which ki has withered. The state in which the life-force has wilted and run dry. That is defilement.

Think of it that way, and Kibune is the very opposite place. Not a land of withered ki, but a land of ki being born. Not a place where ki withers, but a place where ki is born. A valley that purges defilement — withered ki — and restores the vigor of ki to body and mind.

Here, the circle turns again.

Recall misogi. At the Omoi-gawa, a person washes away in the water the accumulated defilement — the withered ki. They discard the run-dry ki. And in the land where ki is born, they are filled with new ki. Wither, wash, and fill again. Ki, too, circulates in this valley.

Actually walk the valley, and you understand.

You enter the valley wilted by the city’s heat, in a state of withered ki. As you walk, you are chilled by the river’s cold air, wrapped in the sound of the water, you drink the sacred water, and your body grows, little by little, lighter. The run-dry ki fills again.

This is not a matter of whether or not you believe in the spiritual. Actually walk this valley, and your body grows lighter. You grow well. That is an unmistakable bodily sensation that happens to anyone who walks it. The depleted are filled. The withered are born anew. One of withered ki revives at the root where ki is born.

And the place where you can taste that “ki” in visible form is the sacred water, the goshinsui, of the main shrine.

Before the main shrine’s hall. From a gap in the stone wall, water wells up, gushing forth. The sacred water. It is said never once to have run dry. Cold in summer, warm in winter, and, they say, it does not spoil even if drawn and stored for a whole year. Take a mouthful, and drink. It is cold. It soaks into the throat that has walked all this way. Mellow, with not the slightest harshness. Water that has passed through the mountain’s limestone over a long span of time. It gives the feeling of “living water.”

With this sacred water, you can play one more game of the circle. The mizu-ura mikuji, the water-fortune lot. The lot you receive at the offering office is pure white, with nothing written on it. Float it gently on the sacred water, and, little by little, letters rise to the surface. Great fortune. Fortune. Misfortune. Your wish. The one you wait for. The water teaches you your fate.

And — when the paper dries, the letters vanish again.

Both good results and bad. When the water dries, the words, too, vanish. Fate is not fixed. Like letters written on water, it appears, and vanishes, and changes again. This, too, is the game of the circle of the turning water. You need not even clutch at your fate. For it flows, and vanishes, and changes again.

Deplete, and fill. Appear, and vanish. In the valley where ki is born, everything circles.

The valley of yin, the mountain of yang — Kibune and Kurama, the tree that becomes a dragon

Open a map.

Just east of Kifune Shrine. On the far side, across a single mountain. There is Kurama-dera.

That train you boarded at Demachiyanagi. It was “bound for Kurama.” One stop past Kibune-guchi is Kurama. The two sacred places are that close.

Kurama. The mountain where the young Minamoto no Yoshitsune — Ushiwakamaru — is said to have been taught swordsmanship and the arts of war by the tengu. A temple that enshrines Bishamonten. A sacred place of flame, known for the Kurama Fire Festival, a festival of fire where blazing torches scorch the night.

Kibune and Kurama are the west and east of Mount Kurama. Between them, a mountain-crossing path of about 1.5 kilometers connects the two. Many people walk from Kurama-dera over the mountain to Kibune, or the reverse. With a single mountain for a spine, the two sacred places stand back to back.

And between these two there is a deep karmic bond.

The Nihon Kōki tells it like this. In the fifteenth year of Enryaku (796), the god of Kifune Shrine appeared in a dream to Fujiwara no Isendo, who was overseeing the construction of Tō-ji, and gave the oracle: “Build Kurama-dera.”

Kurama-dera was built by the oracle of the deity of Kibune. The shrine of yin gave birth to the temple of yang. The god of water summoned the temple of fire and arms.

Set them side by side.

Kibune — god of water. Valley. Yin. Damp darkness. Hashihime. The binding of bonds. Passion. Flowing time. Kurama — fire and arms. Mountaintop. Yang. Dry light. The tengu and Ushiwakamaru. Bishamonten. Struggle.

Water and fire. Valley and peak. Yin and yang. Passion and arms. Dark and light. They form a pair, to the point of perfection.

And — this is a structure we have seen somewhere.

Takaokami (the dragon of the peak), and Kuraokami (the dragon of the valley). A circling water god, one body in light and dark. The land itself, as if tracing that dragon’s two-sidedness, has become a yin-yang pair. The structure of the myth is transcribed onto the topography. The two faces of a single circling dragon appear as two lands: Kibune and Kurama.

What’s more, Kurama has a modern tale of “ki” as well. Reiki — the laying-on-of-hands therapy that has spread throughout the world. Its founder, Usui Mikao, is said to have attained that power in the eleventh year of Taishō (1922), after ascetic training on Mount Kurama. Kurama is also the birthplace of Reiki.

Yang Kurama — spread to the world as a place from which ki is “released.” Yin Kibune — has remained here for a thousand years as the root where ki is “born,” that is, as “Kifune, the root where ki is born.” Across a single mountain, two kinds of “ki” gush forth, each in its own form. Released ki, and born ki. Fire, and water. Yang, and yin.

And as you walk this valley, you encounter an extraordinary tree.

In the precincts of the main shrine stands a sacred katsura tree. Roughly four hundred years old. Thirty meters tall. Its form is uncanny. From its base, many trunks divide and reach toward the sky, and high up, they spread their branches outward in all directions, with a sudden burst. A single tree gushes up from the ground and, in the sky, opens as if exploding. Its form is, indeed — a dragon.

The shrine explains it like this. The way the katsura‘s branches spread in all directions resembles the sacred ki rising up from the earth like a dragon. And precisely for this reason, it is revered as a sacred tree. “Kifune” — the root where ki is born. The water god who bears the name of dragon. The dragon’s hole beneath the main hall. This katsura embodies all of them in a single tree. From the root, ki, becoming a dragon, rises up. The tree itself is a dragon, and the very eruption of ki.

And beside the gate of the Inner Shrine is the “Renri-no-sugi,” the Twin-Branch Cedar. A cedar and a maple. Two trees of originally different species grow side by side, and their branches have joined and become one. An exceedingly rare tree. Two different things, deeply bound, no longer to be parted. The Twin-Branch Cedar is, just as it is, a symbol of the binding of bonds. In autumn, the green of the cedar and the red of the maple mingle within a single tree. Different things become one. Yin and yang. Taka and kura. Fire and water. This valley has, all along, made opposites into one. The Twin-Branch Cedar speaks that idea through the tree itself.

In this valley, even the trees take the shape of prayer. The katsura that stands like a dragon. The Twin-Branch Cedar, bound and never to part. Merely by standing, they are dragon, and bond, and the eruption of ki.

A thousand years of dispute — the shrine that did not give up

Here, we descend from the time of myth into the time of human history.

Kifune Shrine has a face apart from its tales of miraculous divine power. It is the face of a shrine whose freedom was taken away for several centuries, and which, even so, kept fighting.

The opponent was Kamigamo Shrine (Kamo-wakeikazuchi Shrine).

The matter began in the Heian period. Kibune was originally an independent shrine of high rank. Under the Engi system, it was ranked as a myōjin-taisha, the highest rank a shrine could hold, and was counted among the twenty-two shrines of miraculous power. From the ninth year of Kōnin (818) onward, it received offerings and prayers from successive imperial courts, again and again. Whenever drought or long rains continued, whenever there was a national emergency, an imperial envoy was without fail dispatched to this valley. In rank, it was a distinguished house, beyond reproach.

But from the middle to the late Heian period. Kibune was incorporated as a “subordinate shrine,” a sessha, of Kamigamo Shrine. By this, Kibune lost its right of ritual and lost its shrine land. Even the right to worship its own god at its own discretion was held by the higher shrine. An independent and distinguished shrine was demoted to a mere appendage of another shrine.

One reason is thought to have lain in its location. Kibune is enshrined deep in a valley in the mountains to the north. Through flooding and various other circumstances, worship there often became impossible. And so Kamigamo Shrine invited and enshrined a branch spirit of Kibune within its own precincts, and the relationship of the managing side and the managed side — of master and servant — hardened.

And the discord between the two shrines eventually escalated even into violence.

The fourteenth century, the period of the Northern and Southern Courts. A dispute over boundaries arose between the people of the two shrines, Kibune and Kamigamo. At this time, incidents in which Kibune’s shrine buildings were demolished and its sacred treasures seized followed one after another, it is said. Those who served the gods, among themselves, seized and destroyed within the sacred precincts.

The struggle was carried over into the Edo period. Kibune, seeking independence, brought suit to the shogunate. But — in every lawsuit, Kifune Shrine lost. A judgment was handed down making Kibune a branch shrine, a massha, of Kamigamo Shrine. It was a total defeat.

At this time, a certain tragedy is handed down.

The shrine official of Kifune Shrine who served as the representative in the suit and conducted the negotiations — a man named Zetsu Danjō. He is said to have gone mad at the result of losing the suit. And, together with two others, he committed seppuku and died. A man who fought, staking the shrine’s independence, was defeated, and took his own life. This is not myth. It is an intensely human, grievous history. Behind that beautiful tale of the root where ki is born, the sacred place where the dragon dwells — living human beings, staking the pride of the shrine, kept warring for several centuries.

And the long-cherished wish was, at last, fulfilled.

The fourth year of Meiji (1871). Kifune Shrine achieved its independence from Kamigamo Shrine. That same year, it was designated a kanpei-chūsha, and its shrine name, too, was formally changed to “Kifune.” Freedom, after several hundred years indeed. It was the moment when the longing of Zetsu Danjō and the others who had fallen wishing for independence was, at last, repaid.

Here, too, circular time can be seen.

Several hundred years. However many times it was defeated. However many times it was robbed. This shrine did not vanish. Like the sacred water that kept welling up without ever running dry. However many times, it rose again, and sued again, and was defeated again, and even so, rose again. In straight-line time, once defeated, that would be the end. But in this valley, what has ended begins again. A defeated wish circles, and comes back again. Zetsu Danjō’s wish, across two hundred, three hundred years of time, at last circled, returned, and was fulfilled as the independence of Meiji.

A wish circles. Even if it takes several hundred years. In this valley, a wish that was not given up draws a circle and, someday, comes back.

That tenacity, too — is one aspect of this valley, which amplifies a wish and never, ever gives up.

Eating a meal over the water — this one instant, now

Up to here, we have spoken of the time of myth, the time of faith, the time of history — of long, circling time.

But Kibune has, too, a joy of a shorter time, the time of now.

It is the kawadoko, the riverbed dining platform that appears in this valley only during summer.

A platform juts out over the river. Along the Kamo River in central Kyoto, too, “yuka” platforms are set out, but those are built at a height looking down on the river. Kibune’s is utterly different. Read “kawadoko,” it is right above the river. Reach out your hand, and you touch the current. Gently, you can dip your bare feet into the water.

You descend onto that platform.

Through the building, toward the river. The instant you step onto the platform. A chill runs through you.

The body that had grown hot from walking, the moment it descends, is wrapped in the river’s cold air. Not the mechanical cold of an air conditioner. A more living, damp, soft cold. The flowing water cools the air, and it rises up, slipping in from your feet. The temperature is nearly ten degrees lower than in the city center. Midsummer, and yet it is almost chilly. “I was drenched in sweat a moment ago.” Everyone who descends murmurs the same thing.

Sit, and first, put out your feet. From the edge of the platform, dip your bare feet into the river’s current. Cold. Startlingly cold. Newborn water, just welled up from the mountain. Your hot feet cool, slowly. This alone already makes the trip worth it.

The dishes are carried out. The star is river fish. Salt-grilled young ayu, caught in the Kibune River. Until the order comes, they are kept alive and swimming, then salted and grilled. The skin is crisp and charred. You bite in from the head. Fragrant, and a little bitter. Soft down to the bones. Deep-fried amago, dotted with vermilion spots. In summer, hamo — the pike conger that represents the Kyoto summer. Order it as a kaiseki course, and more than ten dishes come out in order, from the appetizer to sashimi, simmered dishes, tempura, soup, rice, and dessert.

But the true feast of what you eat here is not the food itself.

The situation of eating over the water — that is the feast.

The river flows ceaselessly beneath your feet. Listening to its sound, you move your chopsticks. Through the gaps in the blinds, the summer light and the green of the young maples flicker into view. The wind crosses over the river and strokes the nape of your neck. Cool. Cool, above all.

And at some establishments, nagashi-sōmen — flowing noodles — is the specialty. Down a flume of split bamboo, cold water drawn from the mountain is let flow, and sōmen is set into it. White noodles ride the clear water and slide down the green bamboo. You catch them with your chopsticks. Catch them, and you can eat. Miss them — and they simply flow on, and away.

Here lies the smallest, most endearing teaching of the valley of circular time.

What a person can do, before flowing water. It is only to seize that one instant, now, flowing past before your eyes.

Time flows. It cannot be stopped. However much you wish “don’t flow,” the water flows on. The sōmen, if you do not catch it, flows away. That person departs. The summer ends.

But — the water that flowed circles, and comes back again. Next year too, fireflies will dance over the Kibune River. Next summer too, the kawadoko will be set out again. Come here again, and again you can dip your feet into the cold current.

And so, for now, you need only seize this one instant. As you catch the sōmen before you. This one instant of dipping your feet into the cold water and listening to the sound of the river.

Grieving for the things that flow away. But knowing, too, that they will circle and come back again.

That is what it means, in this valley, over the water, to eat a meal.

The kawadoko, by the way, runs from May to the end of September. If rain falls, if the river floods, if a warning is issued, it is canceled. In the valley of the water god, in the end, it is at the mercy of the water’s mood. The water of blessing carries the feast; the raging water takes it away. Gentle water and terrible water. Here, too, the two-as-one dragon shows its face.

Circling, and coming back again

You descend the valley.

Your body is lighter than when you came. Even the slope you climbed in a sweat is easier on the legs going down. The body has grown thoroughly accustomed to the valley’s coolness. The body that was withered of ki is now filled with ki.

On the way back, too, the river is beside you, all the while. The same river as on the way up. Trickling, roaring. But now it no longer sounds like mere water.

This water is water set circling by a dragon born of fire. From sea to cloud, from cloud to rain, from rain to river, from river to sea. Circling without end. A circling dragon with two faces, light and dark. Within that circle, a person performs misogi and winds time back, at the hour of the Ox the god’s descent is repeated, and a wish echoes again and again and becomes a story. Izumi Shikibu’s soul, into a light that returns each year as fireflies. Hashihime’s jealousy, into a calamity, handed down as a demon. Zetsu Danjō’s wish, circling across several hundred years, into independence.

When you first came to this valley. That water was just pleasant, cold water. Dip your feet, and it was chill. Drink it, and it soaked into your throat. The meal eaten over the river was supremely cool. It was that much, a refreshing valley.

But now, it is different.

Though it is the same water. Though it is the same trickling sound. In its depths, you can see a thousand years of story. You can see the circling dragon. You can see light, and dark. You can see time that circles, and returns, and repeats.

That River, Don’t Flow was shot in this valley was, therefore, inevitable.

The wish to “stop time,” to “repeat the same span of time,” was a wish welling up from the deepest place of the circling water god’s valley. The screenwriter drew a story out of the land. What was drawn out was the very circular time this valley has held for a thousand years.

Water flows. It does not stop. However much you wish “don’t flow,” time flows on. That person departs, the summer ends, the fireflies vanish.

And yet — the time that flowed draws a circle and comes back, here, again.

The fireflies return every year. The hour of the Ox comes around every night. Perform misogi, and a person can return, again, to the beginning. What has ended begins again. What was lost circles back again. Next summer too, the kawadoko will be set out, and again you can dip your feet into the cold current.

At Kibune-guchi Station, waiting for the train, you listen, one last time, to the sound of the river. Return to the city, and that heat will be waiting again. But the core of your body stays cool, chilled. The cold of the sacred water lingers in your throat. The ki you were given at the root where ki is born. The feel of having touched the circling dragon. You carry it, and go home.

And, probably — you will come again.

Water circles. Time circles. A wish, too, circles. And so, someday, you will circle and come back to this valley again. When your ki withers. When you long to hear the sound of the water. When you want to confirm, once more, the meaning of that prayer, “don’t flow.”

Wish “don’t flow” though you may, time flows. But the time that flowed draws a circle and, without fail, comes back here.

That is the valley called Kibune. A valley where time does not flow straight. A valley where everything circles, and comes back again.

Before you visit

Getting there: From “Kibune-guchi” Station on the Eizan Electric Railway, head into the depths of the valley. About a 30-minute walk to the shrine (uphill; you’ll sweat in summer, but the valley’s coolness pays you back all the more for it). If you’d rather not walk, take the Kyoto Bus from in front of Kibune-guchi Station and get off at “Kibune.” The bus is crowded in tourist season, so allow plenty of time.

When to go: Summer (the kawadoko and the young green maples; the hotter the city, the more the valley’s coolness stands out). Autumn (foliage and light-ups, and the Eizan railway’s special “Tunnel of Maples” service). Winter (snow on the lanterns; the world of that film, River, Don’t Flow). Spring (cherry blossoms and fresh leaves). Fireflies are from late June into July — the light in which Izumi Shikibu saw her soul still circles back, every year.

Worship: The basic course is to make the round of the three shrines: the main shrine, the Yui-no-yashiro, and the Inner Shrine. The sacred water can be drunk, and you may take it home. The water-fortune lot is read by floating it on the sacred water (the letters vanish when it dries — this, too, is a game of the circling water). If you’re going as far as the Inner Shrine, it’s a fair walk, so wear comfortable shoes.

Kawadoko: May to the end of September. Popular establishments require reservations (often by phone only). Canceled in rain, flooding, or when a warning is issued. The decision is often made based on that morning’s weather. Being the valley of the water god, in the end, it is at the mercy of the water’s mood.

VIBES TOURISM ／ The valley that wishes, “don’t flow.” At Kibune, Kyoto.