Spring in a Snowy Country

第9話

Masumi's diary of spring in the snow country does not seem to have been transmitted, as far as I know, other than the eleven articles about the New Year. During the next seventeen or eighteen years, he spent his time mainly on making a geography of the Akita territory, and in addition, it is likely that he stopped writing his unusual diary because of the business of poetry in the meantime. I have included a description of New Year's customs as an example to illustrate the merit of his enterprise for future studies of Northeast culture, but of course there is much more special material unrelated to this that cannot be found elsewhere. Then, the question is why only Masumi Sugae's works are still recognized as valuable even after a hundred years alone, and it has to do with the great power of scholarship and writing from the beginning. But if that was all there was to it, there are plenty of others who are better than him. What we should prized is primarily his circumstances and character. His destiny was one that could not arise in so many travelers, as he had to abandon his home for nearly fifty years and bury that impressionable Waka feeling in the solitude of the snow.

geography......（名）地誌

unusual......（形）稀な

plenty of......沢山の

abandon......（動）見捨てる

impressionable......（形）感受性の強い

solitude......（名）孤独

He consistently never had a friend of the sort who was honored in the world in his lifetime. As a scholar, he was friends with Shigetoshi Mounai and Norifusa Saito father and son in Hirosaki, as well as Michihiro Naka in Kubota, and in his later years Naoe Ohtomo in Hiroshima gradually acknowledged his poems and writings, but of course they were not unreservedly close. The first and foremost thing that stands out in the travel diaries of these genteel people is the language of the countrymen and the travels of the unfamiliar, distant guests who stood and talked freely to them without any consideration. In the Tohoku countryside at this time, there was a modest disposition not to treat travellers poorly in the same way that there was an excessive amount of eye gesture to those who wore Western clothes at the end of the Meiji era, and Masumi was also a man who paid special attention to the words and actions of servants, women and children in houses.

consistently......（副）一貫して

unreservedly......（副）遠慮なく

foremost......（形）一番最初の

stand out......目立つ

genteel......（形）優雅な

countryman......（名）田舎者

consideration......（名）思いやり、心遣い

modest......（形）謙虚な、控えめな

disposition......（名）気質

poorly......（副）不十分に

excessive......（形）過度な

pay attention to......に注意する、注目する