Through an encounter with Arashiyama’s autumn scenery, the author recalls the cry of Sekihei and reflects on the spiritual journey described in Why I Abandoned China.

I remembered it as though Mr. Sekihei had cried out in anguish in Arashiyama.
2016-11-19.
That fact was fully elucidated by the book below.
2015-11-23.
The autumn leaves of Kyoto two years ago were a once-in-a-decade bumper year, and last year was also very splendid. But this year’s Kyoto autumn leaves seem to be a disappointing year due to high temperatures and rain.
The day before yesterday and yesterday, I headed to Arashiyama, which is also my own garden. The day before yesterday, I arrived around 3 p.m., and the sun soon disappeared. Perhaps by the providence of heaven, yesterday was also fine weather, so I headed to Arashiyama early in the morning. The trains were extremely crowded all the way to Arashiyama, and especially the Arashiyama Line was packed to an astonishing degree.
I remembered it as though Mr. Sekihei had cried out in anguish in Arashiyama. Yesterday’s Arashiyama was not perfectly clear, but just as I had hoped, the soft sunlight necessary for photography somehow poured down over Arashiyama.
There is a photographic spot in Arashiyama where I shoot more than fifty times a year, and when I arrived there, I felt as if the emotion Mr. Sekihei felt when he first saw Arashiyama had been transferred directly to me. I even felt a cry of anguish.
Yesterday, I captured the best Arashiyama and took the best shot of Tenryu-ji among the hundreds of times I have been there so far. I am convinced that they are truly wonderful photographs.
On another occasion, I will write about my thoughts on photography and how they are exactly the same as the way of thinking toward painting held by the wonderful painter Masashi Ishimoto, who passed away this year.
Why I even felt a cry of anguish yesterday, that fact was fully elucidated by the book below.
It is a book titled “Why I Abandoned ‘China,’” first published on August 14, 2009, by Mr. Sekihei through WAC Co., Ltd.
I believe that this preface is a piece of writing that should be read not only by the Japanese people but by people all over the world.
“New Preface.”
As I have already reported in several instances, I, Sekihei, became a naturalized Japanese citizen on November 30, 2007, and happily became a member of the Japanese nation.
On January 3, 2008, the following year, I, then residing in the Kansai region, visited Ise Grand Shrine for the first time as a new Japanese.
After purifying my body and soul with the sacred waters of the divine land flowing in the Isuzu River, I prayed at the main shrine and reported to Amaterasu Omikami that I had become a member of the Japanese people.
Then, on March 24, 2008, guided by Mr. Takanori Nakajo, whom I have long respected, I achieved my first-ever worship visit to Yasukuni Shrine.
I thus vowed to inherit the aspirations of the heroic spirits who had offered their precious lives for the nation of Japan.
With these two “rites of passage,” I believe that I became a member of the Japanese nation both in body and soul, but looking back, the path of life I have walked so far has truly been one of great ups and downs.
A former Chinese boy who once revered Mao Zedong and resolved to become a “little revolutionary warrior” has now become one of the Japanese people and is developing his own line of argument in Japan’s conservative intellectual world.
One can easily imagine the intensity of the changes that occurred during that time.
Moreover, the majority of the discourse activities of Sekihei, a former Chinese, have been devoted precisely to sharp criticism of the Maoist Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China, and to strong warnings against the threat from China, so is it not truly mysterious how fate has turned out in such a way.
Since my visits to Ise Grand Shrine and Yasukuni Shrine, I have never once doubted my identity as a new Japanese, but at times, when I look back on my life so far, I find myself immersed in a certain kind of poetic or philosophical deep reflection.
This manuscript continues.