It was Leo Tolstoy who wrote (in "Anna Karenina"), "Happy families are all the same; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
He might well have been predicting the fallings-out of the Deguchi family of Kamenoka and Ayabe, north of Kyoto. Still there are signs of reconciliation, with next Monday promising interesting encounters on the narrow trail up and down Misen-zan, a mountain just outside Ayabe.
Two groups following the Shinto doctrines of Oomoto will make a pilgrimage to a shrine on the peak. The smaller party will consist of some of the 5,000 followers of Naomi Deguchi, a fourth-generation descendant of the founder of Oomoto, Nao Deguchi (1837-1918). The larger group now follows Naomi's niece, whose uncles and aunts broke away from their sister's leadership around a decade ago and took most of Oomoto's 170,000 members with them.