Spring in a Snowy Country

第2話

According to "On the Road to Ina*" in the first volume of the Dialogue, in his travels up to the spring of 1783, a boat at one of the passing places was overturned and drifted away.

passing......（名）渡し場

overturn......（動）転覆する

drift away......漂って離れていく

It is said that he celebrated the New Year's Day 1784 near Suwa, Shinano**. It is said that there was a one-volume travelogue called " The Sea in Suwa", but this has not yet been found anywhere. In June of that year he set out from Seba***, and at the end of July he visited Togakushi****, and at the end of July he headed north to Shinano, as detailed in the book " The Bridge of Kumeji*****". Then he passed through Echigo, and by September he was already in the Nezugaseki, Uzen******, where he had no home to sit down and rest. "Camping in Akita" is his diary from September onwards. He climbed the three mountains of Haguro******* and left for Sakata********, seeing Fukuura********* and Kisagata**********, and then went to Yajima***********, where the northern foothills of Mt. Chokai************ were experiencing terrible wind and snow, even though it was still early October. He then traveled over the mountains to the Nishimonai village in Okachi county*************, and the following month he was kept at Mr. Kusanagi's house in Yanagida village to spend the winter. Men and women walking down the street, with me-sudare（eye curtain） to protect their eyes from being damaged by [the light reflected off] the snow, he wrote.

set out......出発する

foothill......（名）山麓の丘

The first record of the snowy new year began in the Yanagida, Okachi County. The name of the diary is " The Country of Ono". Compared to his home village on the Tōkaidō, there are a number of different customs that are strikingly different. Awabo-inaho（Ears of Millet and Rice） is different from Shinano, the ones here made their shapes with rice cakes. It is a local custom in Ohu to call them oka rice cakes（oka-no-mochi）, which were made in the shape of a gourd with the inside concave, and then flattened out to offer to the gods as many boys as there were in the family. It was a practice to burn the roots of the okera plant（Atractylodes japonica） on a New Year's shelf and put the smoke into clothes to remove bad diseases. On the 7th, a day of congee, children from all over the village came to congratulate each other and receive something. It is written that the people named them yaseuma（skinny horses） and pierced the pine needles with a bit of pierced coin and gave them, saying, "This horse is skinny". On the night of the 14th, they called it "another New Year's Eve" and broke and inserted a willow branch into the snow in front of each gate. Torioi（chasing birds） the next morning was the same in other regions, where they called the flowers made from the rice cakes "torioi-gashi（chasing birds goody）" and put the rice cakes colored in various shapes such as dogs, cats, flowers, and maple leaves in a stacked box and gave them to each other as gifts. In the evening, they did that 12-month fortune telling. One of the methods [of fortune-telling] practiced in this area was called "Tamusubi," in which twelve straws were grasped and the middle of the straws were hidden and the ends were tied together two by two. It is written that they rejoiced in the fact that the straw was connected for a long time as an omen of a good harvest that year, as the fields were wide. Baking rice cakes would have originally been a annual fortune-telling activity, but they have already been applying it to the game of matchmaking since this time. It is written that they cut the cakes into small pieces and decided which one was the man or the woman, and laid them out beside the hearth, and the girls laughed and groaned when the man came to her or when the woman hit on him as they burned and swelled up and approached. I'm sure that the old game is the source of the idiom "to bake rice cakes" which means to be jealous.

gourd......（名）ヒョウタン

concave......（名）へこみ

congee......（名）粥

skinny......（形）やせこけた

goody......（名）菓子

stacked......（形）積み重ねられた

matchmaking......（名）出会いの仲介

swell up......膨らむ

idiom......（名）慣用句

*Ina: The area in the southern part of Nagano Prefecture now.

**Suwa: The current area around Suwa City, Nagano Prefecture. Suwa Lake is located there.

***Seba: A village in Higashikuma County, Nagano Prefecture.

****Togakushi: A village in Kamiminochi County, Nagano Prefecture.

*****The bridge of Kumeji: A bridge over the Sai River, which runs through central Nagano Prefecture.

******Nezugaseki: The name of a place in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture.

*******Haguro: Mountains in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture. Mountain beliefs are prevalent in the mountains.

********Fukuura: The name of a place in Yusa Town, Akumi County, Yamagata Prefecture.

*********kisagata: The name of a place in Nikaho City, Akita Prefecture. There used to be a lagoon in the city.

**********Yajima: A town in southern Akita Prefecture.

***********Mt. Chokai: An active volcano located on the border of Yamagata and Akita prefectures.

************Nishimonai: The name of a place in Ugo Town, Ogatsu County, Akita Prefecture.