No.12 Chasing the Colors Between: A Kyoto Autumn Pilgrimage

Twenty-eight years in Okinawa have given me many gifts—the eternal summer, the cerulean seas, the unhurried island rhythms. But there are two seasons that still pull at something deep within me, calling me back to the world I once knew: the cherry blossoms of spring, and the maple leaves of autumn.

This year, in my second autumn as a retired professor, I answered that call once more.

The Mirror World of Tō-ji

I arrived in Kyoto on a Thursday evening, checked into a modest hotel near Nishinotōin Street, and headed straight for Tō-ji Temple without even unpacking properly. There was an urgency to it—as if the maples wouldn't wait, as if this might be my last chance to witness them.

The thousand-yen admission felt like a small price for what awaited beyond the main gate. As I turned left, the Hyōtan Pond stretched before me like an enormous black mirror, so still it seemed the wind itself was holding its breath. The illuminated trees stood along its banks, their branches heavy with leaves that hadn't quite decided what color to be.

All around me, I heard the sharp intakes of breath, the whispered exclamations in a dozen languages, the urgent clicking of smartphone cameras. But I stood still, just looking.

It wasn't the crimson that caught me—anyone can appreciate red leaves. What stopped my heart was the *in-between*: the leaves that were half-green, half-amber; the branches where spring still lingered while autumn rushed in; the impossible gradation from emerald to gold to vermillion, all on a single tree.

Then I walked a bit further, and there it was—the five-story pagoda, the tallest wooden tower in Japan, rising fifty-five meters into the darkness, bathed in golden light. And there, in the black mirror of the pond, it rose again, inverted, doubled, a tower reaching down into the underworld. Two hundred maple trees surrounded this vision, each caught in its own moment of transformation, and I realized that this—this suspension between states—was what I'd crossed the sea to find.

Inside the Kondō Hall and the Lecture Hall, photography was forbidden. I was grateful for that. For once, I could face the three-dimensional mandala of Buddhist statues without the mediating lens, without thinking about angles or lighting. Just an old professor and ancient wooden Buddhas, sharing the silence.

The Tree I Come Back For

The next morning surprised me with its warmth. I'd packed for November cold, but the sun had other plans.

I bought a day pass at Shijō Station and headed for the bus stop with the confidence of someone who'd done this many times before. That confidence lasted until I squeezed onto the No. 207 bus, where I found myself pressed between a family from Taiwan and a couple from France, all of us swaying in unison as the bus lurched through the ancient streets.

Overtourism, they call it in the news. I call it the price of beauty.

When I finally escaped at Kiyomizu-zaka, I let the crowd carry me up the slope like a leaf on a stream. I've learned not to fight it. The trick is to have a destination, something specific you're looking for, so the chaos becomes merely the path rather than the destination itself.

My destination was a tree.

I've been coming to Kyoto for fifteen years now, and every time, I climb Chawanzaka slope to see the same maple tree near the final staircase before the temple gate. I don't know if it has a name. I don't know how old it is. But I know that every year, it performs the most exquisite transformation I've ever witnessed.

There it was, exactly where I'd left it last year. The top third of the canopy had surrendered to crimson, flames licking down through the branches. The middle was caught in amber and orange, neither summer nor autumn but something wonderfully uncertain. And near the trunk, deep green leaves still clung to the illusion of permanence, refusing to believe in endings.

It was like watching time itself made visible—past, present, and future existing simultaneously in one living thing.

A young woman next to me was trying to photograph it, getting frustrated. "It's not working," she said to her companion in English. "The camera can't capture all the colors at once."

I almost told her that was the point. Some things aren't meant to be captured—only witnessed.

Framing the Ephemeral

By the time I descended the steep Ninen-zaka slope toward Kōdai-ji Temple, the afternoon sun was painting long shadows across the ancient stones. My knees reminded me I was no longer the young lecturer who once climbed these hills without thinking.

Kōdai-ji in autumn is a different creature from the temple I'd visited in my younger years. Now they use projection mapping, casting digital images onto the gardens—a marriage of the traditional and the technological that would have scandalized the purists of my generation. But I found myself unexpectedly moved by it. After all, isn't tradition just innovation that survived long enough to be respected?

But it was the tree just inside the middle gate that I'd really come for. This maple—my second old friend in Kyoto—was different from the one at Kiyomizu-dera. Where that tree showed the colors of transformation, this one displayed the colors of light itself. The illumination came from below, and the leaves seemed to glow from within, translucent as stained glass.

I found myself standing before an old building, looking through its wooden frame at the garden beyond. The dark pillars and beams created a perfect window, and in that frame, the maples arranged themselves like a painting I could never afford. It struck me then—this is what the architects intended, hundreds of years ago. They understood that beauty needs context, that a frame can transform the infinite into the comprehensible.

The Garyū Pond lived up to its name—the reclining dragon—its surface reflecting the maples so perfectly that I couldn't tell which was real: the trees above or their ghosts below.

Where Motion Meets Stillness

The path led me finally to a bamboo grove, and here I found something I hadn't expected: silence.

After the passionate reds and oranges of the maples, the bamboo offered a different truth. Hundreds of stalks rose straight toward heaven, lit from below so that they glowed like golden pillars of light. When the wind moved through them, they whispered to each other in a language I'd forgotten I knew—the same sound that bamboo makes everywhere, whether in Kyoto or Okinawa or anywhere humans have built gardens.

Motion and stillness. Fire and water. Autumn and eternity.

I stood there longer than I meant to, letting the exhaustion of the day settle into my bones. Somewhere in my mind, I was composing tomorrow's lecture—but then I remembered: there would be no more lectures. This was my life now. Just me and the bamboo and the wind.

What We Carry Home

I left Kōdai-ji as night settled over Higashiyama. The descent down Daidokoro-zaka slope took me through narrow stone-paved alleys where the modern world seemed centuries away, until suddenly I emerged at Yasaka Shrine, bright and bustling with evening visitors.

The bus back to Shijō-Takakura was just as crowded as the morning's had been. I walked past Daimaru department store, into the covered shopping arcade where salary workers were buying dinner and teenagers were laughing over bubble tea. From the sacred to the mundane, from the silent to the raucous—this too was Kyoto.

Back in my hotel room, I scrolled through the photos on my phone. There was the bamboo grove, glowing. There was the pagoda, doubled. There was the maple tree at Kiyomizu-dera, frozen in its moment of beautiful indecision.

But the photos couldn't capture what I'd really traveled for: the feeling of standing between states. Between working and retiring. Between Okinawa and Kyoto. Between the green of what was and the red of what will be.

In Japan, we have a word—awai [1]—that means the space between, the threshold, the boundary that is itself a place. It's the moment between sleeping and waking, the color that is neither blue nor green, the season that is not quite autumn and not quite winter.

For twenty-eight years, I've lived in eternal summer, and I've been happy. But twice a year, I need to remember that change exists, that transformation is not only inevitable but beautiful. I need to see the awai—the colors between colors, the moment between moments.

Seventy is approaching, its footsteps growing louder with each passing season. And next year, if my knees allow it, I'll climb those slopes again. Not to photograph the maples, but to stand before them and remember that even trees know how to let go, how to burn bright before the darkness, how to trust that spring will come again.

The young woman at Kiyomizu-dera was wrong. The camera doesn't fail to capture all the colors. The colors simply refuse to be caught. They insist on being witnessed, moment by moment, with our own uncertain eyes.

And that, perhaps, is the greatest gift autumn has to give.

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[1]: Awai (間, also pronounced ma or aida) is a fundamental concept in Japanese aesthetics referring to the interval, gap, or in-between space. Unlike Western thought, which often emphasizes defined categories and clear boundaries, awai celebrates the liminal zones where two states meet and overlap. It can describe the pause between musical notes, the uncertain colors of dawn, the emotional ambiguity of bittersweet moments, or—as in this essay—the transitional hues of autumn leaves that are simultaneously holding onto summer green and reaching toward winter's crimson. The concept suggests that these threshold spaces are not empty or incomplete, but rich with their own unique beauty and meaning. In traditional Japanese art, literature, and philosophy, awai represents a sophisticated appreciation for ambiguity, transition, and the impermanent nature of all things.