You Are Precious Simply by Existing

In a place called Kawahara, in the village of Asuka, there is a stone known as Kameishi — the Turtle Stone. It is a block of granite about three and a half metres long, with a large, face-like carving low on its surface. The eyes are hollows; the corners of the mouth turn up a little. It is a face somewhere between a turtle and a frog, with a vacant sort of look, and the stone sits half-buried at the edge of a rice field, facing southwest.

When it was made, by whom, and for what purpose, no one knows. Some say it was a stone that marked the boundary of Kawara-dera, the temple that once stood nearby; others, that it is a trace of a faith in this land older than the coming of Buddhism. But these are only guesses. Nothing certain has been left behind.

The place keeps a story, too. Long ago, when Yamato was still a lake, a quarrel arose between this side, Kawahara, and Taima on the far shore. The water was drawn away to Taima, and every turtle in the lake died. The people of the village, pitying them, carved the shape of a turtle into stone and held a memorial for them. And should the turtle ever turn and glare straight west, toward Taima, the Nara basin will sink once more into a sea of mud — so the telling goes. Lichen fills the fine grooves of the stone. When it rains, water gathers in the hollow of its back, and after a while it dries. People walking the lanes of Asuka come here by a sketch-map, stop before the stone, look for a while at its face, and go on toward the next site.