The Divine Crossing of Lake Suwa (諏訪湖の御神渡り)

Lake Suwa exists at the intersection of two great fault lines. The Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line and the Median Tectonic Line — the very seams of the earth's crust — overlap here, and the lake is said to have been born from the planet tearing itself apart. Ancient memory has accumulated in its depths, and the water has long been spoken of as something more than water.

In the hours before dawn on the coldest winter mornings, when the entire surface of the lake has frozen solid, a thunderous crack may split the silence — and a great ridge of ice heaves upward, a jagged spine running the full length of the lake. This is called the omiwatari, the divine crossing. It is said to be the footprint left by the male deity of Suwa Grand Shrine's Upper Shrine, Takeminakata, as he crossed to visit the female deity of the Lower Shrine, Yasakatome. Even now, the chief priest formally observes the shape of the crossing in a rite called haikan, reading from its form the fortune or misfortune of the year to come.

Records of the omiwatari reach back to the year 1443. Yet in recent times, the crossing has failed to appear for years at a stretch. The lake's water no longer grows cold enough; the ice no longer thickens enough to fracture and rise. Among those who live beside a lake the god can no longer cross, there is a quiet sense that something has changed.

The lake was once clear, and the harvest of freshwater clams was rich. When the tide of rapid economic growth swept across the surrounding basin, the surface turned green, and a stench and a froth drifted over the water. More than thirty rivers flow in, but only one flows out — the Tenryu River — a structure in which impurities accumulate easily and escape with difficulty. Water quality has since improved, yet by all accounts the lake has never returned to what it was.

As the years without the god's crossing grow more numerous, the lake's ecosystem too is said to be quietly transforming. What has vanished, what remains, what still dwells there — beneath the thin ice stretched over the fault, the answers have yet to surface.