ABSTRACT
C.W. Nicholl (b. 1940) is a Welsh naturalist who lives on the Kurohime mountain plateau in Nagano Prefecture. In an essay, entitled ‘Sacred groves’ and published in Jinja Shinpō in 1991, he wrote:
I saw a cave surrounded by tall trees. There was no sound but the cries of birds and monkeys, and the rushing of a pretty waterfall – a beautiful place indeed. A short, dark-skinned hunter, wearing no more than a straw apron, and holding a bow and some poisoned arrows in his hand, picked a flower and put it into his hair. Someone asked: ‘How do you know there are deities in this place? Can you see them?’ I thought it a silly question, but the hunter replied with a smile: ‘The deities are invisible, but I know they are here even though I can’t see them.’
