Celebrating the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, Malcolm Lowry might have been under the volcano, but after taking a ferry from Kagoshima to Sakurajima this morning, we were on the volcano.
And it’s still active.
After the ferry docked in Sakurajima, the island created by the volcano with the same name, we took a bus that made stops along the way to Yunochira the highest observation point, or “observatory” in Japanese parlance. (Seeing “observatory” on the map confused us at first since we thought it signified the site of a large telescope like one might find in Griffith Park, or Mt. Wilson.) Since it was a forty minute ride up to Yunochira in a crowded bus with cramped seating, Ella made sure we pushed the stop button after twenty minutes so we could get off at the Karasujima observatory midway up the lava slope at foot of the volcano.
Following a path that led around a turn away from the road, we came across an enormous sculpture entitled “Portrait of a Scream.”
At first I thought it was a rather graphic and grisly memorial to victims of the 1913 eruption. Then, glancing past the agonized mouth, the neck of a guitar became clear. The artwork actually commemorated an all-night concert in 2024 held by a popular local musician, Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi. Listening until sunrise, 75, 000 fans filled the field that has grown over the old lava flow.
Yunochira was farther up the road where the forest gives way to the dark, dusty- looking lava apron spreading below the craggy mouth of the volcano.
There were no eruptions while we were taking in the site, no billowing fulminations like we had witnessed from our hotel yesterday. It had all the animation of Mt. Taylor, but there something about the jagged maw, the sharp rocks toothing the crater, that made one pause. It let loose with its gassy clouds every day. It was waiting.
Very cool!