Well, this evening I thought I might tell you a little story about Nara, if you'll permit me.
In the heart of Nara City, there is a shopping complex called Mi-Nara. Some of you may know it. A lively place, bright and busy. Only, the land it stands on — the old-timers in that part of town, they don't much like to speak of it.
This is all secondhand, mind you. I cannot vouch for any of it.
The site was originally home to a department store called Nara Sogo. A grand building, by all accounts. High ceilings, flowers arranged in the entrance, a decent crowd on opening day. And yet.
The customers never came back.
Locals, when asked, will often say that they simply never felt like going in. That phrase — never felt like it — is the part that stays with me. No reason they could name. Their feet just wouldn't carry them there. A heaviness that came over them when they stepped toward the lifts. That sort of talk began to surface, here and there.
And so Nara Sogo closed.
Ito-Yokado moved in next. That, too, shuttered before long.
Twice over, on the same ground.
It was only then that the old ones began to murmur, quietly, about Prince Nagaya.
Prince Nagaya was a member of the imperial family in the Nara period. Brilliant, and powerful. But the Fujiwara clan accused him of treason, and in the year 729, his residence was surrounded and he was driven to take his own life. His wife as well. His children. Every last one of them, gone together.
And that land, it is said, is where his residence once stood.
There is no way to be certain. It may be nothing more than rumour. What follows, however, comes from a man who worked the construction.
This was during the building of Mi-Nara. He had come onto the site for a night shift, and at some point he became aware of something wrong beneath his feet. The ground was bare, not yet laid with concrete. With each step, he said, there was a sensation — a faint give, as though something soft lay just beneath the surface. The earth felt wrong, he thought.
He shone his torch downward.
The ground was wet.
No rain had fallen. No pipe had burst. The earth was simply dark and damp, quietly sodden. And there was a smell, he said. Faint. Something like iron.
He said nothing and carried on working. But the next morning, when he mentioned it offhandedly to a colleague, the man replied: I noticed it too. I just didn't want to say anything.
Mi-Nara is open today. There are days when it does a decent trade. But some of the older residents, when they pass by, will not look directly at the building.
Ask them why, and they will only say: no particular reason.
That no particular reason may have been carrying on for several hundred years — and when I think of it that way, I find a chill goes through me.
The construction worker who told me about the wet ground still passes by the place occasionally, he says. But he has never once gone inside.
Not that he can't. He just never feels like it.
