Spring in a Snowy Country

第6話

It would be difficult for me to enumerate them all New Year's events, but there is, for example, a kind of magic to drive away from various birds and beasts that try to destroy the fields on the full moon day of the New Year, when the power of the divine spirit is strongest. The lyrics of the song to scare the birds away were later slightly increased or decreased, but the sound of the hammer startling the moles, the creak of the fertilizer vat, and the word for menace tacked on to these are as simple as in the North and the South. However, the only difference between the lyrics and those of the southwest region is that in Ou and Echigo, the only difference is that they walk on frozen snow. On this day, it is customary for them to feed adzuki bean porridge to the fruit trees, and then hold a sickle or a machete in one hand and ask them whether the fruit will be produced or not with two forces of compassion and severity. The only characteristic of the snow country in this is that the snow piles up so high on the roots that the machete cuts of the trees they give porridge to in the spring are too high to reach. Walnuts, horse chestnuts, chestnuts, and soybeans are used in the year-long divination with fire, which is attempted by the hearth, and the tubes used in the divination with porridge are also bamboo and reeds, merely using what is handy. It was the same, from the archaic spell of foxtail millet and Japanese millet ears to the manner in which furniture and farming tools were made to age. A game of tug of war was also played for the year's fortune-telling. Two types of incompatible interests in the land left the decision of superiority and inferiority to nature, and this was interpreted as the will of god, but if there was a biased wish for one, the other was set up to lose in the end. In addition to the many towns in the snowy country that hold this ceremony on New Year's Day 15, the Korean peninsula also has this ceremony on the same day, and the Yaeyama Islands, Okinawa to the south have exactly the same game, though on a different date.

enumerate......（動）列挙する

drive away......追い払う

divine......（形）神の

startle......（動）びっくりさせる

mole......（名）モグラ

creak......（名）きしむ音

fertilizer......（名）肥料

vat......（名）桶

menace......（名）脅迫

tack......（動）付け加える

porridge......（名）粥

sickle......（名）鎌

machete......（名）鉈

compassion......（名）思いやり

severity......（名）厳格さ

horse chestnut......トチの実

divination......（名）占い

hearth......（名）囲炉裏

reed......（名）アシ

handy......（形）手近な

archaic......（形）古風の

foxtail millet......アワ

Japanese millet......ヒエ

ear......（名）穂

tug of war......綱引き

incompatible......（形）両立しない

will......（名）意思

Or on the same day of a grain festival, there also was a custom on an isolated island in the far south where two young men dressed up as gods and visited houses in villages. In many prefectures on the mainland, the ritual has become a bit simpler and is now becoming more like child's play, but it is also held on the evening before the full moon day of the New Year. It is also called Tabi-tabi, Tobi-tobi, Hoto-hoto, or Koto-koto, with the only difference being that it is named after the sound of knocking on the door, but it has the same purpose of bringing the divine celebration to the houses. In Fukushima and Miyagi, it is also called Kasadori or Chasenko. In the northern regions, on the contrary, an archaic custom exists, which is similar to that near the end of the southern sea, where pious young men come to preach the word of god, wearing masks and costumes of straw. They especially hate and try to punish those who are lazy and hedonistic, and they are called Namahagi, Nagomitakuri, or Hikatatakuri. It is the nostalgia of our god-fearing countrymen, who have replaced the rough foreigner-inhabited country on the Oga peninsula in Hei county, where they have long ago built villages and served the gods of the year by going out and repeating the old rituals every time the calendar of the Ise Shrine announces spring, without regard to the fullness of the wind and snow.

archaic......（形）古風な

pious......（形）敬虔な

preach......（動）説教する、伝道する

hedonistic......（形）快楽主義の

peninsula......（名）半島

fullness......（名）充満

One of the more conspicuous features of the early spring festival was the custom of decorating and setting up the tree of the gods in the same way as the foreign Christmases, which was also widely common across the country. The original use of rice cakes and dumplings is thought to have been primarily for the decoration of this wood. Rather than decorate them, it was to try to prep them for the year's abundance with the fruits of that plant, a kind of magic of fortune sharing. Today they have inherited the pleasure of decorating this tree so beautifully, without knowing the original reason. The spring in the house flourishes around this tree, but furthermore, they go out and set up a young tree at the gate as well, and then they go to the paddy fields and insert the branches of the tree that are overgrown again to celebrate. They prayed that these branches would grow thickly so that the summer and autumn crops would be plentiful, and it was customary in the snowy country to imitate the planting of rice by dividing the ridges into spacious garden areas and using the pine needles as seedling beds. Rice is originally grass native to the tropics. The importation of this plant into Japan was already a great force of will. Of course, even in the deep snow that reached the eaves, they were still praying for its maturity. That's why in the new era, even on the shores of the Heilongjiang River in the north, there were people growing rice. For us, it is the most inspirational example of how belief has affected the destiny of a people.

conspicuous......（形）人目に付く

set up......立てる

rice dumpling......団子

prep......（名）予習

abundance......（名）豊富さ、豊かさ

plentiful......（形）豊富な、豊作の

ridge......（名）畝

spacious......（形）広々とした

pine needle......松葉

seedling......（名）苗

tropics......（名）熱帯

maturity......（名）成熟

the Heilongjiang River......黒龍江

inspirational......（形）感情を揺さぶる

Of all the trees that grow in the mountains, pine needles are the most similar to rice seedlings. Naturally, the people of the Tohoku region in old times loved and prized the color of those greens that were not afraid of snow, but the evidence that they were not a new invention, even to this small point, is proof that the practice of putting up pines at New Year's festivals was not confined to this region. They called it the Rat Day and the play of going out into the field to pull out small pines and transplant them was adopted by the imperial family. Those who served the imperial family were not well versed in agriculture, however, so neither in waka nor poetry do they say a little about the purpose of pulling out small pines and planting them, but there were probably farmers living on the outskirts of the capital city of Yamashiro who used this as a form of agricultural witchcraft. The brethren in northern Japan just went northward and northward with their habits.

confine......（動）限定する

witchcraft......（名）魔法

However, in the snow country's calendar, New Year's was not much fun to be had outdoors, even though the moon was shining. People struggled with the cold to some extent with the help of crowds and booze, but later they had nothing better to do than retreat to the back of the house and laugh around the trees used for the monozukuri. And so the completion of each one of these events and the return to the loneliness of mid-winter again would have been hard to endure until after they had become accustomed to it, but fortunately, there was a bright hearth fire in the house, and around the fire, there were stories and reminiscences also. I think their great activity on a day of nothing was probably primarily a narrative of the extraordinary impressions and excitement of the past and would have been a commentary on them. In other words, old and beautiful emotions were preserved and cultivated in the winter-holed houses, and they contributed to the peace and intimacy of the next generation. Will that tradition eventually die out? Or whether they will continue as permanent, unspeakable happiness will ultimately be determined by the academic trends of young women in the snow country, and the way their emotions flow will determine this. The world has become a world where men have to think about a land that is increasingly far away from them. The serenity and beauty of the snowy spring have long been entrusted to its management by their sisters.

to some extent......ある程度

booze......（名）酒

retreat......（動）籠る

completion......（名）完了

hearth......（名）囲炉裏

reminiscence......（名）回想、追想

extraordinary......（形）異常な

excitement......（名）興奮

commentary......（名）解説、解釈

intimacy......（名）親密さ

unspeakable.......（形）言葉では表せない

determine......（動）決定する

serenity......（名）静穏、平静

entrust......（動）委託する