I stumble upon an old man while walking along the gravel path. He wears an indigo-dyed jacket with matching trousers, often seen on craftspeople, artisans. A sweat-stained towel encircles his head. He is raking the leaves. He raked them yesterday and is raking them today. And tomorrow too, he will rake them.

In between the space of a falling leaf and the pause he takes in pulling the rake toward him, I ask him the meaning of 「無常」mujou. And his story spills out, the same way as the sun spills onto the gravel path, bathing my feet in warm sunlight.

He is from Kobe, he says. The word Kobe causes my body to quiver, like a wind that is too strong and moves me. His house, destroyed in the Hanshin Earthquake (1995), left his family dead. The \500,000 received from the Japanese Government was not enough to rebuild with. A plea for a bank loan was refused as his land was not within four metres of a main road. And so he followed the worn, ancient path to Kyoto. He rakes the temple leaves there; no monetary payment is received.

In summer, the leaf-raker makes a pilgrimage to the far-away temple of Eiheiji, in Fukui Prefecture. A distance of two hundred kilometres is covered. He makes this journey annually by foot. When he returns, his hairless head is turned to bronze, the same colour as the leaves that he sweeps.

Oh yes, he explains, stopping to look directly into my eyes.
"Mujou: It means softness of heart. Acceptance of the ever-changing."

"After the earthquake I went to Kobe and spoke with the local people. Still, it affects many people's lives-- the changes in Kobe, its landscape, haunts the inhabitants.
I'm always suprised how quickly tragedies are forgotten and so I wrote this piece."

As for the stylisation?

"I tried to make this paper symbolic of what an earthquake does:
Orange: the color of life, vibrancy.
Black: Total destruction"

Sherry Nakanishi