Then again, there were two springs in the snowy country in Japan, which caused people's emotions to get mixed up early on. A calendar compiled in a city with much shorter winters in the south was sent to them as well, and they, too, could not forget the spring of that calendar until they had emigrated for several generations. Overall, it was not really natural to try to unify the calendar on a long north-south and mountainous island like Japan. The way the night of the full moon was easy to calculate allowed them to keep memories of just a few years ago. Therefore, the new calendar law has carried about a month's worth of days from last year to this year without taking into account the realities of the colder climate. If they had been able to think of the New Year as winter, as Westerners do, there would have been no inconvenience, but because they did not try to coerce them into believing that the custom of their ancestors would naturally disappear with a change in legislation, they finally believed firmly that the New Year's Day was spring, even in such a snowy country, and remained the same.

mix up......混同させる、混乱させる

compile......（動）編集する

emigrate......（動）移住する

overall......（副）概して

unify......（動）統一する

mountainous......（形）山の多い

inconvenience......（名）不便さ

coerce......（動）強制して～させる

legislation......（名）法律

Even in Tokyo, some people think it's a lonely way to celebrate the Doll Festival, looking for the peach blossoms that bloom in a greenhouse in March. You can't eat a kashiwa rice cake* at the Tango Festival** without salting last year's daimyo oak leaves. Since September is in the middle of the summer vacation when chrysanthemums cannot be seen yet, many villages have already stopped celebrating the Choyo Festival***. Bon and Tanabata**** will be held as usual, but by moving them back a month, they will be welcoming their ancestor's spirits in the unfamiliar dark night. But on New Year's, they had to welcome even more important guests by trudging through the snow. They were Shogatsu-sama or Toshitoku-jin or Fuku-no-kami, the gods people named and promised a year of good luck. There were several rituals that had to be performed on the full moon day of the first month of the older calendar. As [many] people know, there was not one of these New Year's events that was not related to agriculture. They decided that winter would end in December, and once the year was over, they tried to devote thirty days from the first month to spiritual preparation, which was far more important than the seed paddy and farm tools, which means that the root of the decision that the month of the Tiger***** was New Year's Day was still the same in the past, forcing the inhabitants of cold climates to have the same experience of people in warm countries. Many excellent Japanese firmly adhered to the calendar law, and even the snowy lands were introduced to it. Though there was no sign of spring in the vast white fields, the gods did not doubt that they would descend at the appointed time, according to the old covenant, and people waited with gladness for the illusory spring, pushing open the gates of their winter-locked gates.

greenhouse......（名）温室

daimyo oak......カシワ

chrysanthemum......（名）キク

trudge......（動）重い足取りで歩く

devote......（動）捧げる

covenant......（名）約束

illusory......（形）幻影の

If they had invented [a new calendar] for themselves, they probably would not have accepted such unnaturalness and incongruity. When the residents of the countryside cease to interact with outside society, there is no need to keep up appearances with those with whom they are on good terms, and there are those who neglect their beards and wear furry clothes, and who sometimes try to forget that they are brothers who were binned off long ago when they see them take on some rough appearance. But when they are so faithful to the old beliefs of their people, when they know that the world is already in spring, and they do not consider the severe cold of their own homes and do not wait for someone else to approach them severely, there is no sign that they have come in from another line of people who are preparing for the year's agriculture in the winter.

unnaturalness......（名）不自然さ

incongruity......（名）不調和

interact......（動）交流する

beard......（名）顎髭

furry......（形）毛皮の

bin off......関係を断つ

faithful......（形）信頼できる、忠実な

Or perhaps from the present point of view, it was not necessary for them to rebel against the nature of the climate and adhere so stubbornly to their original way of life, but the same crops and the same house structure, adapted only to the southern islands, they were at any rate introduced to this northern extremity, and after pains to finally bring it into harmony with the new environment, but also to introduce it, if possible, to Siberia, Kamchatka, and to the fields and mountains of North America, which is a very ridiculous habit of this people. Is it the complacency with which they once settled in the central warmth of Japan, where they rejoiced that no other way of life could be so well harmonized, or is it the result of cultivating in vain a self-importance? In any case, going back to the starting point of spring in the calendar, it seems as if it were only yesterday that many peasant customs still take place in the same way at the same time, with little or no change, from the edge of the sea in Tsukushi****** in the west to the shades of Nambu******* and Tsugaru******** Mountains in the east, and yet people in the neighboring prefectures seem to be ignorant of the same customs as each other, unless this means that these customs have been linked from time immemorial in something other than a book.

rebel......（動）反抗する

adhere......（動）粘着する、固執する

stubbornly......（副）頑固に

complacency......（名）自己満足

rejoice......（動）喜ぶ

in vain......無駄に

self-importance......（名）尊大さ

be ignorant of......～を知らない

immemorial......（形）遠い昔の

*kashiwa rice cake: A rice cake wrapped in daimyo oak leaves, eaten on the occasion of the Tango Festival on May 5.

**the Tango Festival: The custom of celebrating the health and growth of boys on May 5. On this day, people decorate Japanese helmet dolls and koi-nobori (carp streamers) and put sweet flag leaves in the bath. Originally, this was a day to celebrate women at the time of rice planting.

***Choyo Festival: This event takes place on September 9. On this day, people decorate chrysanthemum flowers and drink chrysanthemums in sake to pray for long life.

****Tanabata: This event takes place on July 7. On this day, people set up a bamboo pole in front of their houses and hang a note with their wishes written on it. This event is held before the Bon Festival.

*****Tiger: The third of the twelve signs of the zodiac.

******Tsukushi: The southern and western parts of present-day Fukuoka Prefecture.

*******Nambu: The present-day eastern part of Aomori, central and northern Iwate, and northeastern part of Akita Prefecture.

********Tsugaru: Present-day western part of Aomori Prefecture.