After two decades of journeying through Asia, the Middle East and Europe and living in the steep mountain ranges of the Himalayas and Japan, Kogan Murata finally chose his path in life: playing the bamboo flute as an itinerant beggar monk, a komuso.
"You could say that I'm an addict," he laughs with typical exuberance. "If I play, I feel good. The more I play, the better I feel, so I just keep playing. I'd rather be doing this than anything else. That's why I don't have a job. It's better just to play the flute."
Though the figure of the man wearing a woven straw basketlike hat covering his face and head and a wooden box around his neck with the words "Without existence, without extinction" has almost completely disappeared from the Japanese landscape, there are still those among the very aged who recognize him as a komuso.