I confess that I was born near the sea in the Chugoku, where the spring is long and the winter is warm, and that I was one of those people who felt quite at home in this rather small Japanese climate. I once thought that as long as I read the books, I would gradually gain the experience of being a nation. I had spent a long time not knowing, having never had the opportunity to compare them with each other, that in the old days, glimpsed through the mists of my memory, it had been another world, with endless strands of flowers and green foliage that bore little resemblance to the colors of the fields and mountains to which the dwellers of the snowy villages were unrestfully sent and received. The image that is often painted in our minds as "Spring in the Homeland" is in my own cases, the color of the red clay hills where the sun hits first and the color of the azaleas mixed with the small pines, the shimmer of the wheat field where the skylark raises its young, the dandelions and violets that grow on the stone walls of the village, the purple of the great wisteria entwined with the trees of the divine forest, the scenes where the border between today and tomorrow is blurred and before you know it, the flowers become pale and the trees become more shadowy, but this feeling of springtime dusk, which should be called rest or boredom, was probably not experienced by the northerners by merely traveling.

glimpse......（動）ちらっと見る

foliage......（名）葉

dweller......（名）居住者、住民

unrestfully......（副）心休まらず

azalea......（名）ツツジ

shimmer......（名）熱による揺らめき

skylark......（名）ヒバリ

wisteria......（名）フジ

entwine......（動）絡まる

divine......（形）神の、神聖な

blur......（動）不鮮明にする

dusk......（名）夕暮れ

boredom......（名）退屈

Kyoto is the northern limit, if not the northern country. And only a few miles away, in the shadow of the so-called Mt. Hiei, there are already huts in snowy valleys. Then beyond those peaks, in the land a little across the lake, there were many villages that had to be holed up for the winter.

hut......（名）小屋

Bring them to me in the light snow,

before the snow doesn't pile up in the snow country in Tamba*.

There is also a Bon dance** song like this one. I can still imagine the silence and loneliness in the winter mountains when I hear it. In the lowlands that belong to the waters of the Sea of Japan, the snow makes traffic difficult in the area. The story of the Doi and Tokuda Families, who had become accustomed to living in Iyo***, and who met a tragic end on the mountain path of the Kinome Pass in an attempt to escape to Echizen****, seems to have been long remembered by those who have read the Taihei-ki*****. On the whole, those who traveled through the north tried to find a shelter for their bodies while the winter was still not severe enough to allow them to spend a season there in peace. This is how they longed for the arrival of spring. Such temporary families were not unusual for the families of grand farmers in the Echigo******. Sugae Masumi*******, whom we all remember fondly, left his hometown near the warm waters of Mikawa******** when he was 29 or 28 years old. And for nearly fifty years, he traveled from Akita to Tsugaru********, from Sotonambu********* to Matsumae********** in Ezo, traveling from one place to the next, celebrating New Year's each winter with a different master. I think this would have been a much more lonely life for him than going alone on the mountain roads and wilderness trails because of the length of time.

lowland......（名）低地

tragic......（形）悲劇的な

fondly......（副）愛情をこめて

penetrate......（動）貫く

Among the countries with trains running in every direction, it would be rare to find a country with so much snowfall as Japan. They run up deep valleys everywhere and penetrate the mountain.

In the twilight, alone again in the snow, a person travels.

As in this haiku, sometimes they were often standing in the street, and staring at it. Sometimes a family from a warm country lived at the station. Some stories say that young people and others, tired of living in the snow, for no purpose at all, swung a hoe and tried to dig out the snow in front of their gardens to see the color of the soil. The birds were starving and could be caught in an easy way. Exposing a few feet square of black dirt in the morning after a few days of snow will bring down bulbuls and thrushes without any bait or decoys. Birds that used to flock together and chirp with each other in the forests of the mountains of the Osumi Peninsula**********, Cape Sata***********, and Cape Muroto in Tosa************, and other thick capes, would come to this kind of country if they flew only a few feet above.

hoe......（名）鍬

starve......（動）飢えに苦しむ

expose......（動）露出する

bulbul......（名）ヒヨドリ

thrush......（名）ツグミ

bait......（名）餌

decoy......（名）囮

flock......（動）群がる

peninsula......（名）半島

When our ancestors, once living on the southern edge of the sea, with a surplus of population or fed up with the struggles of life and looking for a more secure place to live, with a casual determination to find a more secure place to live, because they were connected with the land, they must not have expected that one island would have such a different length of winter when they first came down the river, over the hills, and gradually down to the plains of the north and east. Fortunately the land there was abundantly fertile, the income was superior to that of the original place with less labor, and the pleasures of the mountains and fields were greater in summer than at their home, and the thought of returning to the cramped former herd again would not have arisen if they had been with their wives, children, and relatives, but the rush of autumn and the late arrival of spring would surely have annoyed them greatly for some time. When I visited Towada************* at the end of May, only a single wild cherry tree had broken through the snow and was about to bloom. In the primeval forests of Mt. Kurobe and Hakamakoshi Pass in Etchu**************, on a rainy day in early June, there was a pile of dusty snow that hadn't yet melted and piled up on the roadside. On the occasion of the Doll Festival*************** in the third month of the lunar calendar, when the mud in the rice paddies was exposed, even though there were no peach blossoms, the country villagers came there and envied it. There is a story in Minami-uonuma**************, Echigo, about a visit to the grave on the Higan*************** in the spring, making a small hollow in which flowers are offered, except for the snow, and returning home. It would be lonely for those who had gone to the other world and lived there, but relatives and friends in this world would usually postpone their visits to each other until the middle of the spring, and it was natural that those who had travelled to other countries would not return, and even if they were close enough to each other to see each other's lights, they seldom asked each other as long as they were sure that they were living safely. It seems to be even more unbearable than in the countryside which are normal it that the lodgings at the foot of both passes are closed for business due to snow and the money is lost. So each house tried to live in the warmest possible light. If parents and children or siblings do not get along with each other, they will not be able to carry out their winter retreat in March and April, so everyone cherishes the peace in their little world and quietly waits for the spring that will surely come one day. Such a life was almost a quarter of life in many villages in the cold country. There is no reason why this should not have a great impact on the personalities of men and women, hobbies and habits, but it has passed until now without being understood at all by those who go out of their gates to view the mountains, calling it "snow viewing" when it snows, or who try to write haiku about the scenery of withered willows.

surplus......（名）余剰

abundantly......（副）豊かに

fertile......（形）肥えた

cramped......（形）窮屈な

primeval forest......（名）原生林

hollow......（名）くぼみ

unbearable......（形）我慢できない

sibling......（名）兄弟姉妹

willow......（名）ヤナギ

*Tamba: Part of what is now Kyoto and Hyogo Prefecture.

**Bon dance: A dance performed during the Obon season to make a memorial service for the dead.

***Iyo: Current Ehime Prefecture.

****Echizen: Current Fukui Prefecture.

*****Taihei-ki: Written in the 14th century, this historical story describes the events of the last 50 years, from the fall of the Kamakura shogunate to the birth of the Muromachi shogunate.

******Echigo: Current Niigata Prefecture.

*******Sugae Masumi: （1754 - 1859）A traveler and naturalist of the late Edo period. He recorded the manners and customs of various places and composed waka poems.

********Mikawa: The eastern part of Aichi Prefecture at present.

*********Tsugaru: The western part of Aomori Prefecture at present.

**********Sotonambu: The name of a place in Iwate Prefecture.

***********Matsumae: Name of a place in the southwestern part of the Oshima Peninsula in southern Hokkaido.

************Ezo: Current Hokkaido Prefecture.

*************Osumi Peninsula: A peninsula in the eastern part of Kagoshima Bay, Kagoshima Prefecture.

**************Cape Sata: A peninsula in the western part of Ehime Prefecture.

***************Cape Muroto in Tosa: A cape located in southeast Kochi Prefecture. Tosa is now Kochi Prefecture.

****************Towada: The city is located in the southern part of Aomori Prefecture and borders Akita Prefecture. Towada Lake is located on the border with Akita Prefecture.

*****************Etchu: Current Toyama Prefecture.

******************the Doll Festival: This annual event is held on March 3rd. It is also called "Momo no Sekku" (Peach Festival), and on this day, Hina dolls are decorated.

*******************Minami-uonuma: The city is located in central Niigata Prefecture.

********************Higan: It is a period of seven days before and after the spring and autumnal equinoxes, on which people give thanks to their ancestors.