by Osamu Dazai
There is simply the poor life of a poor man. The refined teachers in those days were amazed by this poem and understood it well. The ordinary elegant idea is destroyed. It is a revolution. I got excited and thought it a lie to say good artists like this do not appear. This is what I wrote that night in my travel diary.
A rose
A frog jumps in
The sound of water
Was that a poem by Kikaku? I don't know.
Come with me
An orphan sparrow
Come closer
Frankly, the meaning is awful. The ancient pond has no rival.
The next day, the weather was excellent. My niece Yoko, her husband, Aya, and I set off carrying bento lunches to a small, gently sloping mountain no taller than two hundred meters called Takanagare located about two and a half miles east of Kanagi. Although named Aya, it is not the name of a woman. It meant an old handyman and is also a substitute for Father. The feminine version of Aya is Apa. She's also called Aba. I have no idea where these words came from. My guess is they came from the dialect words of Oya and Oba. Various experts probably offer a myriad of explanations. According to my niece, the correct pronunciation of the mountain's name of Takanagare is Takanagane. The name comes from the expansive, gently sloping skirt of the mountain and is said to have the feeling of a long root, nagane. But this too may produce various explanations from various experts. The tendency for the assorted explanations from experts to be scattered and fickle is the charm of local history.
My niece and Aya were delayed in preparing the bento, so the son-in-law and I left the house a little before them. The weather was nice. Excursions in Tsugaru are limited to May and June. Toyuki comments about travelers:
From long ago, everyone goes north for pleasure in the summer. When the plants are colored green, the winds change to southerly winds, and the surface of the sea is calm. It does not live up to its terrible reputation. If I reach the northern region sometime between September and March, I will meet absolutely no travelers. The sole exception is traveling for the practice of medicine. In this country, people who come in the spirit of searching out only famous sites should always arrive after April.
The reader should take this to heart.
Around this time, the flowers on plum, peach, cherry blossom, apple, pear, and Chinese plum trees bloom once a year in Tsugaru. With confidence, I led the way to the outskirts of town but did not know the way to Takanagare. I went two or three times during my grammar school days and thought forgetting the way was reasonable. However, the area was completely different from what I remember. I was embarrassed.
"Where's the station? This area looks totally different. I have no clue about the best way to Takanagare. Which one is the mountain?" I asked as I looked straight ahead and pointed at a pale green hill rising in the shape of an upside-down V. I smiled and made a suggestion to the son-in-law.
"We'll wait here a while for Aya and your wife."
"Yes, let's do that," said the son-in-law, also smiling, "I heard the Aomori Prefecture Experimental Farm is in this area."
He knew more than I.
"Really? Let's look for it," I said.
The experimental farm was at the top of a small hill about a mile off the road on the right. It was established to train the rural workers and pioneers forming the backbone of agriculture. However, facilities that are almost too good were set up in the wilderness in the northern tip of Honshu. Chichibu-no-miya, the younger brother of the emperor, served in the Eighth Division in Hirosaki and graciously gave substantial assistance to this experimental farm. They are also indebted to him for the auditorium, a solemn building rarely seen in the area, as well as workshops, livestock sheds, fertilizer depots, and boarding houses. My eyes opened wide in amazement.
"What? I had no idea. Isn't this a bit much for Kanagi?" I said and was oddly overjoyed. I was secretly zealous about the land of my birth.
A large stone monument stood at the entrance to the farm respectfully inscribed with its repeated honors.
Visited by Asaka-no-miya-sama, August of Showa year 10 (1935)
Visited by Takamatsu-no-miya-sama, September of Showa year 10
Visited by Chichibu-no-miya and Doko-no-miya-sama, October of Showa year 10
Visited again by Chichibu-no-miya, August of Showa year 13
The people of Kanagi are right to be proud of the experimental farm. Not only Kanagi, this should be the eternal pride of the Tsugaru Plain. The training lands of crop fields, orchards, and rice paddies behind the buildings were created by model rural youth selected from each hamlet in Tsugaru and were developed to be truly beautiful. The son-in-law walked around and inspected the cultivated fields.
"This is very important," he said and sighed. As a landowner, he understood much more than I.
"Ah! Fuji is great!" I shouted. It was not the Mount Fuji, but the 1,625-meter-high Mount Iwaki, also called Tsugaru Fuji, rising gently where the paddy fields stretching as far as the eye can see came to an end. It actually seemed to be rising. The skirt of the ceremonial dress of a lady of the court, more feminine than Mount Fuji, appeared to drip a pale white. Scattered gingko leaves were opened as if standing upside-down. The mountain had perfect left-right symmetry and floated in the quiet blue skies. The mountain is not tall but is an attractive woman of nearly translucent beauty.
"Kanagi isn't so bad," I said in a hurried tone and then pouting said, "Not bad at all."
"It is nice," calmly said the son-in-law.
I saw Tsugaru Fuji from various sides on this trip. From Hirosaki, it is massive and ponderous. On the one hand, I thought Mount Iwaki may be a part of Hirosaki but was unable to forget the fragile form on the side of Mount Iwaki seen from Kanagi, Goshogawara, and Kizukuri on the Tsugaru Plain. The profile of the mountain viewed from the western sea coast is awful. It has collapsed and looks nothing like a beautiful woman. In lands where Mount Iwaki looks stunning, the legend is rice ripens well and beautiful women abound. Rice aside, this mountain looks beautiful in northern Tsugaru, but I was dissatisfied by the beautiful women I saw, which may reflect the shallowness of my observations.
"I wonder what happened to Aya and Yoko," I said worried and in a huff, "Maybe they didn't follow right after us."
As worried as I was about them, we admired the facilities and landscape of the experimental farm. We returned to the road and looked all around. Aya unexpectedly popped out of a path in a side field and smiled as he told us they had split up to search for us. Aya searched a nearby field, and Yoko followed behind on a path leading to Takanagare.
"That's awful. Yoko has probably gone quite far. Hey Yoko!" I yelled, but there was no response.
"Let's go," said Aya while hiking up the load on his back, "Well, there's only one road."
Skylarks chirped in the sky. It has probably been twenty years since I walked in the fields of my home in the springtime. Thick growths of low shrubs and bushes were scattered on the grass. There was a small marsh. The ground gently undulated. Long ago, people from the city might have praised it as a splendid golf course.
"Look there, hoes dig in to steadily reclaim this uncultivated field. The roofs of people's homes were dazzling. Those hamlets have been restored and separated from neighboring villages," Aya explained.
While listening, I keenly felt Kanagi has also progressed and livened up. We would soon be approaching the slope but had still not seen Yoko.
"What could have happened to her?" I asked, having inherited the habit of worrying too much from my mother.
"Where could she be?" asked her new husband looking embarrassed.
"Well, let's ask," I said and approached a farmer working in the field beside the road. I removed my cloth hat, bowed, and asked, "Has a young lady dressed in Western clothes passed by on the road?"
He answered yes and said she seemed to be in a hurry. I imagined my niece running down the country road in the spring after her new husband and didn't think that was bad. We were soon climbing the m
ountain. In the shadow of a line of large trees, my smiling niece stood. She concluded we were behind her because she chased after us this far. While waiting she had gathered bracken fern fronds from the area. She didn't look tired. The area resembled a treasure house of bracken, ginseng, thistle, and bamboo shoots. In the fall, mushrooms like hatsudake, earth covering, and nameko grow in abundance, "like a blanket" in Aya's description. He said people come to gather them from as far away as Goshogawara and Kizukuri.
"Yoko is famous for collecting mushrooms," he added. While climbing the mountain, I said, "The imperial prince has been to Kanagi."
Aya replied yes in a changed tone.
"That's wonderful."
"Yes," he said nervously.
"He came to a place like Kanagi."
"Yes."
"Did he come by car?"
"Yes, he did."
"You bowed to him, too, Aya."
"Yes, I did."
"That made you happy, Aya."
"Yes," he answered and used the towel wrapped around his neck to wipe the sweat off his face.
Bush warblers were singing. Violets, dandelions, wild chrysanthemums, azaleas, snow flowers, akebi, and other flowers unfamiliar to me bloomed brightly on the grass on both sides of the mountain road. Short willow and oak trees were sprouting. As we climbed the mountain, the bamboo grass thickened. Despite this small mountain being less than two hundred meters high, the view was spectacular. I wanted to say the entire Tsugaru Plain could be seen from corner to corner. We stopped and looked down at the plain. I listened to Aya's description and walked a little then stopped to look with pride at Tsugaru Fuji. We soon reached the peak of this small mountain.
"Is this the peak?" I asked Aya a little blankly.
"Yes, it is."
Although I said, "What is this?" I was fascinated by the scenery of the Tsugaru Plain in the spring unfolding before my eyes. The Iwaki River seemed to glimmer and resembled a fine silver streak. In the area where the silver streak ran out, the dull brightness like an ancient mirror was probably Lake Tappi. The whiteness spreading out like dim smoke in the distance was probably Lake Jusan, which is also called Jusan Lagoon. The record states that
The nearly thirteen tributaries of big and small rivers in Tsugaru meet in this area to form a huge lake. And here, each river loses its distinct color.
It is also referred to as Jusan Ourai (thirteen roads).
In the lake at the northern end of the Tsugaru Plain, beginning with the Iwaki River, thirteen big and small rivers flow through the Tsugaru Plain. The lake's circumference is around twenty miles. However, the lake is shallow because sediment is carried by the river water. Even the deepest part is said to be about three meters. The water is salty due to the inflow of seawater, but the river water flowing in from the Iwaki River is not insignificant. Near the mouth of the river is fresh water and is home to both freshwater and saltwater fish. At the southern mouth where the lake opens to the Sea of Japan is the small hamlet of Jusan.
The area opened up seven to eight hundred years ago and was the base of the powerful Tsugaru and Ando clans. In the Edo period (1603-1868), the wood resources and rice of Tsugaru were shipped from Port Kodomari in the north and made this region prosperous. But today, there is no trace of this. Gongen-zaki is north of Lake Jusan. However, this area is part of a region important to national defense. Our eyes moved further past the Iwaki River in front of us to a vivid line drawn in blue. It was the Sea of Japan. We saw an unbroken view of the coastline of Shichirinagahama. From Gongen-zaki in the north to Odose-zaki in the south, nothing blocked our view.
"This is nice. I would build a castle right here," I started to say.
"What would you do in the winter?" interrupted Yoko then said nothing.
"Well, it must snow," I said a bit downcast and sighed.
We went down to the mountain stream in the shadow of the mountain and opened the bento lunch in the dry riverbed. The beer we cooled in the stream wasn't bad. My niece and Aya drank apple juice. Then out of the blue, I screamed, "Snake! Snake!"
The son-in-law put the jacket he took off under his arm and stood up halfway.
"It's all right. It's safe," I said and pointed to the cliff face on the other side of the mountain stream, "He's crawling up the cliff over there."
I saw his head pop out of the rapids and watched him clamber up the rock face for just one foot and then fall back down. He quickly started to climb up again and fell back again. The tenacious snake tried twenty times and, predictably, tired and quit. His extended body floated on the surface of the water as it was swept away by the current and close to this side of the shore. This time, Aya stood up. He ran over carrying a branch about six feet long and plunged the branch into the stream to stab the snake. We looked away.
"Is it dead? Is it dead?" I asked in a grieving voice.
"It's been taken care of," said Aya tossing the branch and the snake into the stream.
"Was it a viper?" I asked. I was already scared.
"If it were, I would have caught it alive. That was a rat snake. The liver of a live viper is made into medicine."
"Are there vipers in this mountain?"
"Yes."
That troubled me so I drank some beer.
Aya finished eating before everyone else and dragged over a large log and dumped it into the mountain stream. He gained a foothold on it and flew to the other shore. He clambered up the mountain cliff on the other side to pick wild edible plants like ginseng and thistle.
"That's dangerous. He shouldn't go to a dangerous place like that on purpose. Those plants grow in many other places," I said nervously, critical of Aya's adventure, "Aya is excited and definitely has the ulterior motive of showing off his bravery by putting himself in danger."
"That's true," said my niece agreeing with a wide smile.
"Aya!" I shouted, "Enough. It's dangerous. Enough already."
"Okay," he said and scrambled down the cliff. I was relieved.
On the way home, Yoko carried the plants gathered by Aya. For a long time, this niece has never been phased by much. On the way home, the "still ageless, healthy walker" tired in Sotogahama and went quiet. We descended the mountain to the song of cuckoos. Great loads of timber were piled up at the lumber mill on the outskirts of town. Trucks went back and forth endlessly. This is the scenery of a bountiful village.
"Kanagi shows spirit," I said to no one in particular.
"It does?" asked the son-in-law, who looked a little tired and sounded weary. Caught off balance I said, "No, well, I don't know much, but the Kanagi of ten years ago didn't feel like this. I remember a village in decline, not like it is now. The village felt like it was making a comeback."
At home, I told my oldest brother, the scenery of Kanagi was wonderful and had given me a renewed outlook. He said, "As you get older, you may come to find the landscape of the place where you were born and raised is better than Kyoto and Nara."
The next day, my oldest brother and his wife joined the previous day's party on an outing to Kanoko River Pond about six miles southeast of Kanagi. When we were about to leave, guests appeared at my brother's home, so we left without him. We went out dressed in monpe work pants and wearing white tabi socks and zori sandals. After walking a long way, close to five miles, this may have been the first time my sister-in-law has been to Kanagi since marrying. The weather was fair that day, too, but hotter. Guided by Aya, we plodded along the logging railway track by the Kanagi River. The distance between railroad ties on the track was narrower than one step but wider than half a step. This was exasperating and made walking complicated. I tired, soon stopped talking, and only wiped off sweat. When the weather is too good, the traveler becomes exhausted and discouraged.
"This area is a remnant of a great flood," Aya stopped to explain. Huge stumps and logs scattered over several hectares of fields near the river reminded me of traces of a battlefield. The previous year, Kanagi was hit by a huge flood unlike anything the eighty-eight-year
-old grandmother in our family had ever seen.
"All the trees flowed here from the mountains," said a mournful Aya.
"This is terrible," I said while wiping off my sweat, "It looks like the ocean came."
"Yes, like the ocean."
We left the Kanagi River and climbed for a while along the Kanoko River and finally left the track of the logging railway. Where we turned a little to the right, there was a large pond more than a mile around. A lone bird chirped. The surface of the blue water filling the lake was still. The area was a deep ravine called Souemon-sawa. Kanoko River at the bottom of the ravine recently dammed creating this large pond in Showa year 16 (1941).
A large stone monument near the pond was inscribed with the name of my oldest brother. The red earth of the cliff left by construction around the pond was still freshly exposed. The so-called natural glory was missing. But the strength of the village called Kanagi could be felt. This sort of personal success must produce a pleasant landscape. The careless travel critic stops to smoke a cigarette and organize his haphazard impressions while looking all around. The confident me led the group on a walk around the pond.
"This is nice. This area is nice," I said and sat in the shade of a tree on the promontory of the lake, "Aya, please tell me, is this a sumac tree?"
I would continue with this trip even if I broke out in a rash although racked with melancholy. He said it wasn't a sumac tree.
"Uh, that tree…what is it? It looks suspicious. Please find out," I said. Everyone laughed but I was serious. He said that wasn't sumac either. Thoroughly relieved, I decided to open my bento box there. I drank beer and conversed cheerfully. I excitedly talked about the time in second or third grade when I went on a school trip to a placed called Takayama on the west coast about seven miles from Kanagi and saw the sea for the first time.
The teacher who led the excursion had been excited for some time, lined us up in two lines facing the sea, and made us sing the song Ware wa Umi no Ko (I am a Child of the Sea).