Gyujiro, Another Monk

I have another Japanese friend who was also a monk.

Gyujiro means ‘The Second Son of an Ox’ and that was his pen name. I do not remember what his real name was. Besides running a temple in Oshima, a small island in Japan, he wrote stories for Japanese Manga and they were all best sellers.

I wanted to make a movie out of the stories he wrote, so I arranged to meet him at the Imperial Hotel in Ginza where I stayed. He arrived in his antique Mercedes Benz.

‘The tempura restaurant in this hotel is quite good. Let’s have some,” he said.

“Aren’t monks supposed to be vegetarian?”

I asked.

“Not the good ones,” he said jokingly. “They can marry too.”

Gyujiro was skinny and was wearing a pair of round rim glasses. His hair was cut short and his teeth were stained with smoking.

“Are you really a monk?” I asked directly.

“Japanese monks are passed down from one generation to another. I was born into a family of them.”

“Thanks for coming to see me in Tokyo,” l said.

“Not at all, I have an office here.”

“Office?”

“It’s not really an office, more like a study where I write. It’s also convenient for me to meet my girlfriends,” he laughed.

That night we ate and talked until the restaurant closed. We had so many interests in common.

“Come and see me in my temple someday.” He bid me farewell.

I made a point of that.

Sometime later, I took a boat from Atami and arrived at his island.

Gyujiro’s temple was situated on the top of a hill and was much bigger than I thought. Facing the sea, the scenery was beautiful.

Behind the temple was his residence. He led me straight to his wine cabinet and there were countless vintage bottles of alcohol. We started drinking to our heart’s content.

“Running a temple is a dying business,” he said, “that’s why I have to write.”

“You’re very successful in whatever you do.”

“Not enough for the way I live my life.”

“I heard that people spend a lot of money on the ceremony for the dead.”

Gyujiro sighed, “Not anymore. They would rather spend money on the living these days. And besides, the Japanese live longer and longer. There’s little money to be made for a temple.”

I didn’t know how to console him.

“But,” he cheered up, “I have invented a new business!”

He brought me to the back of his garden. There I saw a very big incinerator. He patted it like his new toy.

“This is for burning the bodies of cats and dogs.”

“So?”

Gyujiro spouted eloquently, “As you know, Atami with its hot springs is an ideal place for retired couples. Their sons and daughters seldom visit them. So they keep pets for company and become very attached to them. Animals have a shorter lifespan and when they die their owners want to do everything possible for them. That is when the idea of an incinerator hit me! The dead animal can be cremated here. The cost is 200,000 yen. If the owner wants me to say a prayer, it’s another 200,000 yen.

If you bury them in the temple and set up a tombstone, it’s 1,000,000 yen. It has become a very profitable service and people have to line up for it. When the old folks spend, they spend more generously than their sons and daughters would have spent on them!”

I understood completely. One thing still puzzled me though.

“Cats and dogs are small. Why did you build such a big incinerator?”

He answered with a twinkle in his eye. “Sometimes my wife nags too much.”