29 are always here, you end up feeling like it is the center of the world.” Perhaps Enryō also felt that way. This environment may be why we see so many poems mentioning letters from his hometown. It seems only natural that Enryō would feel uncomfortable. Compared with the freedom he experienced in his school life in Nagaoka, the head temple is the sacred ground of the True School. There, the dominant atmosphere is that of the unique character of the Ōtani-ha as a reli-gious group. It seems his inner feelings are expressed in a letter to friends in Nagaoka when he says, “I was loath to leave my friends but I obeyed the order to come to this mountain.” It may be that this experience at the head temple became the basis for Enryō’s perspec-tive in his theories later on reforming Buddhism. Little more than half a year later another major turning point came for Enryō. Higashi Honganji, who saw Enryō as a gifted student, ordered him to go and study in Tokyo, where the University of Tokyo had just been established the year previous in 1877. It was designed to import various types of Western learning and was a first for Japan. On March twenty-second, 1878, Higashi Honganji announced the order for Enryō to go and study in Tokyo. After a farewell party with his friends Enryō left the “Western capital” that is Kyoto on April second. This poem describes that time. In the gloom of the spring showers that fell through the morn-ing mist, green were the willows wet from the rain on the trav-eler’s path. After six months of seclusion from the world near the banks of the river Kamo, I am now prepared for study and I am bound for the banks of the river Sumida.
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