Spring in a Snowy Country

第4話

Tokuoka is not on my map, but it was the name of a small section of the village near Maezawa. It is prized that the 140-year-old New Year's Day in these villages was transmitted in visible detail. On the morning of the 2nd, when the children greeted the new year, people would give them a small branch of pine with a coin inserted in called a skinny horse, which was also given to a villages in Ota county in Dewa, where they played with it on their horses. Aki-no-kata was the direction in which the God of Thunder had brought the New Year's Eve, which allowed the village elders to predict whether the rice paddy harvest would be good or bad. His New Year's Eve is thought to be in the direction of last winter's thunderclap, but the rugged names of early modern calendar Hasho-jin gods* are also thought to have come from these old folk practices. The 3rd was Monkey Day, so they pulled out the horses from the houses and let them play. The festival of the horse god was not neglected since the land is dominated by the belief in Mt. Komagata**. On the 6th, Setsubun, a ash fortune-telling session with the burned beans was held beside the fireplace. The bean-throwing was the same as in other parts of the country, but this is how they chant in this area.

Flowers in the sky, fruit on the ground

Fortune goes inward, demons go outward

transmit......（動）伝える

insert......（動）挿入する

skinny......（形）痩せた

thunderclap......（名）雷鳴

rugged......（形）厳しい、たくましい

neglect......（動）怠る

dominate......（動）支配する、優位に立つ

I don't know if there are old people who still do that. It would be interesting if you asked them. On the morning of the 7th, the region ate white porridge with beans, and growing seven kinds of herbs meant placing various dishes on a cutting board and beating them with a mortar. There was no way to get the young greens in the snow village. The 11th was called Hadate, the first day of work. They made ridges in the snow and inserted ears of maiden silvergrass and straw like early seedlings, joking, "Oh, I'm tired," and saying, "What's the matter with planting early seedlings?" while they played with the children, singing and drinking. The so-called kasegidori came after the morning of the 12th in this village.

porridge......（名）粥

mortar......（名）すりこぎ

ridge......（名）畝

ear......（名）穂

maiden silvergrass......ススキ

seedling......（名）苗

Many people thought they were chickens from their straw cloaks and shades that they called Kendai, and the people clucked as they ran away, or when they met a crowd of people from another village on their way home, they first asked them if they were hens or roosters, and if they answered roosters, they grabbed each other, saying they would kick each other, and if they answered hens, they would take the eggs and compete for the rice cakes they were given. Only in the house where the master was hated, a young Kasegidori came into the house and rampaged, and told him to lie down in a wooden tub in front of the stables and thrust the bottom of it with his cane and tell him to suwakue-suwakue. The meaning of the word is no longer known, but even now the old men, seeing that these visitors were dressed much like scarecrows, and that the clapper, gongs, horse bells, and trumpet-like instruments named kigai they wore were the same as the equipment used in the rice fields to scare away birds and deer in the autumn, seem to have imagined that this was a figure of the god of the rice fields and that suwakute was a kind of incantation. This role was usually reserved for young men to work for a wish or spell. For example, it is common for people who are seriously ill to go to the village shrine to pray Kasegidori, saying that if they are fortunate enough to recover, they will play a role next year, and it is written that sometimes thirty or forty people join this group of people to get cakes. On the 15th, it was customary to pound millet cakes, called Golden Cakes. It was customary for some families to plant rice on the snow on this morning, Mono-Hadate that was to be done on the 11th. In some places, a tall pillar was set up in the snow in a mountain field, a stake was driven into one side and a rope was set up between the pillars, and a spool of linen thread called Hisaguwaku or a gourd was hung in between the pillars. It is said that some old sandals and straw shoes were tied to the heads of the stakes.

cluck......（動）鶏が鳴く

hen......（名）雌鶏

rooster......（名）雄鶏

compete......（動）競争する

rampage......（動）暴れまわる

tub......（名）桶

stable......（名）厩舎

thrust......（動）強く押す

cane......（名）杖

clapper......（名）鳴子

scare away......追い払う

incantation......（名）呪文

millet......（名）粟

spool......（名）糸巻き

gourd......（名）ヒョウタン

*Hasho-jin gods: The gods of good fortune and bad fortune of directions in the Onmyoudou.

**Mt. Komagata: A mountain in Kitakami City, Iwate Prefecture.