On December 18, 2011, two days after I was completely discharged from the hospital following an eight-month hospitalization, I visited Heian Jingū.
This records the moment when, despite having been told by my attending physician that my “chance of survival was 25%,” I made a miraculous recovery and was welcomed by a grey heron.
As my complete discharge from the hospital drew near, I walked every day with my IV stand through the broad oval corridor of Kitano Hospital, training my legs and hips, weakened by the long hospitalization.
While listening to my iPod.
What I always listened to was George Harrison’s final-period album.
I spent eight months in the hospital after my attending physician told me that my “chance of living was 25%.”
These are photographs of Heian Jingū and other places, which I visited on December 18, two days after I was completely discharged from the hospital on December 16.
Heian Jingū was, at the time, a place I visited frequently.
A grey heron welcomed me.
It was a miraculous scene.
As my complete recovery drew near, I walked many laps day after day through the broad oval corridor of Kitano Hospital together with my IV stand, in order to train my lower body.
At that time, what I always listened to on my iPod was George Harrison’s final-period album, including this piece.
As you know, he suffered from a brain tumor and closed his short life.
I know of no other piece as painfully beautiful as this one… ♬Marewa Blues♬.
When I discovered this photo collection, I thought that this was the only piece that could play in the background.
The following is a dialogue between myself and the paid AI with which I have a contract.
“How has the grey heron been seen across times and civilizations?”
How the Grey Heron Has Been Seen Across Times and Civilizations.
Across times and civilizations, the grey heron has been seen not merely as a waterside bird, but as a bird bearing silence, solitude, patience, spirituality, death and rebirth, and the boundary with another world.
First, in ancient Egypt, the grey heron was an extremely sacred bird.
The sacred bird “Bennu,” associated with the sun, creation, and rebirth, is said to have been modeled on the grey heron, and is also regarded as one of the origins of the later phoenix legend.
Because it was one of the first birds to appear after the waters of the Nile receded, it came to symbolize life rising from the primordial waters, the creation of the world, and rebirth.
In Europe, the grey heron carried two opposing images.
One was the image of patience, vigilance, silence, and insight, derived from the way it stands motionless by the water, waiting for its prey.
The other was the image of prying curiosity, born from the sight of its long beak probing here and there.
In medieval allegory and folklore as well, it was sometimes treated as a bird representing the soul aspiring toward heaven, or as a bird gazing into another world.
In the Greco-Roman world, herons were often birds of omen.
Their flight, cries, and the direction from which they appeared were read as signs of good or ill.
As birds belonging both to the waterside and to the sky, they were seen almost as beings connecting the human world with the world of the gods.
In this sense, the grey heron was also a “bird that announces,” a “bird of portent.”
In Japan, the grey heron was not given the same brilliant auspiciousness as the white heron.
Yet as a bird standing silently by watersides, ponds, rice fields, temples, shrines, and gardens, it evokes desolation, yūgen, maturity, and solitary dignity.
In waka, haiku, and fiction, it may appear only as a single point in the landscape, yet it suddenly deepens the entire atmosphere of the scene.
The mere sight of “one bird standing alone by the water” creates the sensation that time has stopped.
In Japanese art as well, herons became subjects of bird-and-flower painting, ukiyo-e, and shin-hanga.
Ohara Koson also produced a work titled “Grey Heron on Tree,” in which the grey heron is depicted not as a flashy bird, but as one possessing dignity within a quiet composition.
Seen through modern eyes, the grey heron also appears like a guide to another world.
In Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, too, the grey heron is not merely a bird, but a mysterious and important being that leads a human being into another world.
This resonates very strongly with the imagery, traceable back to ancient Egypt, of watersides, death, rebirth, and another world.
In short, the grey heron is not pure beauty like the swan, nor festivity like the crane.
Its essence is that of a silent philosopher standing by the water.
It does not move.
It does not make noise.
And yet, in a single instant, it pierces its prey.
Ancient people saw a god in it.
Europeans saw omen and vigilance in it.
Japanese people saw yūgen and solitude in it.
That is why, when a grey heron appears in a place such as Ryōanji or the Shin’en Garden of Heian Jingū, the entire landscape becomes one level deeper.