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shoulder, as if he were a bodyguard ready to spring to the defense of the dragon god.
    It was, of course, as much theater as many a Christian religious service. But I was touched by an element absent from Christianity: the sense of being present at something primeval, stemming from a time when we were awed by nature and were part of it and eager to please its good spirits and defend ourselves from the bad ones. The spirits were once part of life. For these worshippers, they still are. I’m no believer, but I could imagine myself believing that the good wishes and the smoke and the chanting and the shell blasts summon, or create, the very spirits that must be honored or banished. A Stone Age shaman would have understood. A shadow warrior would surely have been inspired.
    All of which is to explain the background to the Forty-Eight Waterfalls, which in their foundation narrative reach back to the roots of Shugend o . You can’t actually become a modern yamabushi or ninja by walking or running over these towering cliffs and through these looming forests nowadays, because the Forty-Eight Waterfalls is a protected area, but it doesn’t take much to see the challenges they present from the safety of the paved path.
    White waters foamed under little bridges and past massive boulders shaken loose by earthquakes. Falls tumbled into the sudden silence of pools that would have been crystal clear, except for the gray-green cloudiness left by the recent floods. Not far upstream, a sheer cliff and a series of falls, flickering in the dappled sunlight, once blocked the way, which today is carried on upward by a footbridge. It was entrancing. If I ever seek enlightenment, this is my sort of a place, especially on a still September day, with the heat of the sun reduced by leaves above and cool waters below, and absolutely no chance of defying death on some vertiginous rock face or overarching forest. I glanced down and saw, where rock gave way to rising undergrowth, the stone statue of a cow with red eyes.
    â€œYes,” said the guide, Kazuya Yamaguchi, raising his voice above the roar of rushing water. “When En was training here, he saw a red-eyed cow, which is how this place got its name—Akame, Red-Eye.”
    This, apparently, was as far as ordinary people could go in the old days. But off to the right, clear of trees, was a petrified cascade of boulders. In heavy rain, like the storm that had hit earlier, it turned into a torrent that stripped it of vegetation. Now, after a few days of warmth and sunlight, it was a steep and rocky way leading up into the overhanging forest. That, said Kazuya, was where Shugend o practitioners and their ninja students could climb to get to the upper falls. Remember this place; we shall be returning here to follow the last of the ninjas as they escape the army sent in to eliminate them, some nine hundred years after En opened it up.
    Another tale of ninja-like intrigue takes place during a famous rebellion in the tenth century by the warlord Masakado against his own family, the Taira. This was a time when local lords had all but broken free of the central government and set up what were in effect independent kingdoms with their own armies. Masakado was the most ambitious of these great landowners. He claimed that the sun goddess Amaterasu had actually intended him to be emperor, and set about making this a reality by seizing eight eastern provinces as a prelude to taking the capital, Kyoto, and ruling the whole country. He had one main obstacle, the opposition of his uncle Yoshikane. In early 940, Yoshikane attacked, devastating his nephew’s lands, forcing him into hiding, but inspiring in him a fierce determination for revenge. The main source, the Sh o monki , describes the two armies skirmishing, without either gaining an advantage, until Yoshikane found himself a spy, in the form of one of Masakado’s young servants. The teenager, a boy named Koharumaru, had been