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asked.
    Honda hesitated for a moment as he gazed out at the courtyard which lay at the mercy of the blazing sun.
    “Of course ordinary visitors are not permitted to go all the way,” the priest added. “Beyond a certain point the mountain is normally restricted to those who have been devoted to our shrine for many years. To enter there is truly a solemn experience. Gentlemen who have worshipped at the peak say that it gave them a sudden feeling of awesome mystery, as stunning as if they had been struck by lightning.”
    Honda looked once more at the summer sunlight shining on the foliage of the courtyard. Could mystery indeed be so bright? His imagination was stirred and he felt himself tempted.
    Honda was only willing to sanction a mystery that could flourish in the clear light of day. Thus, if there could be mystery shot through with brightness, he would gladly accept it. A miraculous phenomenon with no link to reality had only a shadowy, dubious existence. But any mystery that could maintain itself beneath the pitiless glare of the sun was a mystery fit to occupy a place beside clearly acknowledged principles. Honda was willing to make room for it in his world.
    After a short rest following lunch, one of the younger priests led Honda along the path taken by pilgrims, and after a five- or six-minute walk up a gentle slope covered with lush greenery, they arrived at Sai Shrine, the subordinate shrine within the Omiwa precincts. Its formal title was the Sai Shrine of Omiwa Aramitama. Here pilgrims customarily underwent the rite of purification before proceeding farther up the mountain.
    A grove of cedars encircled the unpretentious shrine, whose roof was thatched with cypress bark. So tranquil was its atmosphere that Honda felt that the harsh god whom it honored must have grown serene. Behind the shrine some red pines rose high above the roof, evoking for Honda the long, agile legs of an ancient warrior.
    After Honda’s purification, the young priest relinquished him to the care of another guide, a man of about forty wearing rubber-soled climbing shoes. His manner was extremely deferential. Just as they were to begin the formal climb of the sacred mountain, Honda noticed his first wild lily of the day.
    “There’s a lily they’ll be picking for tomorrow’s Saigusa Festival, I imagine.”
    “Indeed, sir, they will. But they’ll never find three thousand on this mountain, so they’ve already gathered lilies from all the related shrines around here and put them in water in the sanctuary. The young men who fought in the match today will be pulling a cartload of lilies to Nara tomorrow as a sacred offering.” And then, cautioning Honda that yesterday’s rain had made the clay underfoot treacherous, the guide turned abruptly and started up the mountain path.
    Almost a hundred valleys radiated from the forbidden area of Mount Miwa, including Omiya Valley, which opened out behind the main shrine to the west. After they had climbed a short distance, Honda could see the forbidden zone itself beyond a fence to his right. The trunks of the red pines growing there, in the grip of a tangle of vegetation, glowed like agate beneath the afternoon sun.
    Within this area the trees, the ferns, the bamboo thickets, even the sunlight that spilled over everything seemed, to Honda at least, to create an air of purity and solemnity. The fresh color of the soil at the roots of a cedar, where the guide told him a boar had been digging, made him think of the stories from the old chronicles about the odd forms that the boar could assume.
    Still, as he made his way up the sacred mountain, he had no strong feeling that it was either itself divine or the abode of divine beings. A little disconcerted by the swiftness of his middle-aged guide, Honda was hard-pressed to keep up. He felt grateful that the trees along the stream they were following warded off the afternoon sunlight, which was now even hotter.
    Though sheltered by the trees, the path