Home to Tsugaru Read online

  Home to Tsugaru

  Osamu Dazai, Shelley Marshall (Translator)

  Copyright (c) 2018 Shelley Marshall

  First Printing: 2018

  Published by Shelley Marshall

  For maps and pictures related to this book, take a look at the photo album Tsugaru by Osamu Dazai.

  For more translations by Shelley Marshall

  www.jpopbooks.com

  Introduction

  * * *

  Introduction

  The Snows of Tsugaru

  Powdered snow

  Grainy snow

  Cottony snow

  Wet snow

  Packed snow

  Crystalline snow

  Icy snow

  (from The Eastern Ou Almanac)

  For the first time in my life, I spent three weeks one spring touring the Tsugaru Peninsula at the northern end of Honshu. It was the most important event of my thirty plus years of life. I was born and raised my first twenty years in Tsugaru. I was only familiar with the towns of Kanagi, Goshogawara, Aomori, Hirosaki, Asamushi, and Owani, and knew next to nothing about the other towns and villages.

  I was born in the town of Kanagi. It is located almost in the center of the Tsugaru Plain and has a population of five or six thousand. This town boasts of no special features but puts on airs as if it were a city. On the good side, it is plain and simple like water. On the bad side, the town is shallow and conceited. A little over seven miles to the south along the Iwaki River lies Goshogawara. As the distribution center of local products, its population surpasses ten thousand. With the exception of the two cities of Aomori and Hirosaki, no other towns in the area have a population over ten thousand. On the good side, those towns are bustling. On the bad side, they are noisy. They lack the smells of farming towns, but the dreadful loneliness, a characteristic of cities, is already creeping into these small towns. I admit the comparison may be a bit exaggerated, but Kanagi could be likened to the scenic Koishikawa in Tokyo and Goshogawara to the entertainment district of Asakusa.

  My aunt lives in Goshogawara. As a child, I was more attached to this aunt than to my birth mother. In fact, I often stayed at my aunt's home. Until my middle school days, you could say I was ignorant about any town in Tsugaru other than Goshogawara and Kanagi. When I traveled to Aomori to take the entrance exam for middle school, the trip lasted a mere three or four hours but felt like an expedition to me. I chronicled the drama of my excitement at that time in a novel. That depiction was not necessarily true and filled with fictional buffoonery, but, for the most part, my feelings were as written.

  My lonely chic known only to me grew richer in design year by year. When I graduated from the village grammar school, I rode in a swaying horse-drawn carriage board a train to the small city of the prefectural capital in order to take the middle school entrance exam. My boys' clothes at that time were eccentric. My white flannel shirt was, by far, the most pleasing article to me. Of course, I wore it. The large collar attached to this shirt resembled the wings of a butterfly. The shirt collar stuck out far enough to cover the collar of my kimono in the way the collar of an open-neck summer shirt covers the collar of a suit jacket. It may have looked like a bib. But the youthful me was pathetically nervous and my custom was to think I favored a young nobleman.

  I wore short hakama trousers made from a white-striped Kurume-kasuri fabric, long socks, and shiny black, high-laced shoes. I also wore a cloak. My father was already dead, and my mother was sick. As a result, this youth was cocooned in the compassion of my older brother's kind wife. The youth took advantage of this sister-in-law and forced his shirt collar to be larger. She smiled but was actually angry. The youth's grief nearly brought him to tears because no one understood his sense of beauty.

  "Chic. Elegance." The aesthetics of the youth were exhausted. No, every living thing, the entire purpose of life was exhausted. I didn't button my cloak on purpose and wore it so that it slid off my narrow shoulders. I believed that was stylish. Where did I learn that? I had no model to follow and may have naturally developed this instinct for style.

  The reason I presented my tasteful appearance for once in my life was my debut at a real city for the first time in my life. The moment I arrived in this small city on the northern edge of Honshu in a state of overexcitement, the drastic change left my young self speechless. I taught myself to speak the Tokyo dialect from boys' magazines. But when I went to the inn and heard the maids speak, they spoke in the Tsugaru dialect, exactly as they did in my hometown. The experience was a little anticlimactic. Twenty miles separated the town where I was born and that small city.

  This small coastal city was Aomori. Here are some facts you may not know. As the premier seaport in Tsugaru, the Sotogahama magistrate began administration of this port in the first year of the Kan'ei era (1624), roughly three hundred and twenty years ago. In those days, one thousand houses already existed. The most successful ports were located in Sotogahama. Departing boats traveled to places like Omi, Echizen, Echigo, Kaga, Noto, and Wakasa, and its prosperity steadily grew. Aomori Prefecture was established by the order abolishing feudal domains and creating prefectures in Meiji year 4 (1871). The city of Aomori became the prefectural capital, now protects the northern gate to Honshu, and has a railway ferry service to Hakodate in Hokkaido.

  Today, Aomori boasts more than twenty thousand households and a population exceeding one hundred thousand. Probably, no traveler finds this town friendly. The houses are unavoidably shabby because of frequent fires. The traveler hasn't the slightest clue about the location of the city center. Bizarrely sooty, expressionless houses line the streets and do not welcome the traveler who, feeling uneasy, dashes through town. However, I lived in Aomori for four years. I am writing about those pivotal years of my life in what will become a novel about my early years to be titled Omoide (Memories).

  My grades weren't good, but that spring, I passed the entrance exam to middle school. I dressed in new hakama trousers, black socks, and lace-up shoes. I replaced the blanket I had been using with a cloak stylishly left unbuttoned and open in front to travel to the small city on the sea. I took off my traveling clothes at a dry goods shop in town as a guest of distant relatives. At that shop with the old noren curtain falling off at the entrance, they took good care of me.

  By nature, I easily become enthusiastic about anything. After I started school, I'd put on my school cap and hakama trousers to go to the public bath. When I saw my reflection in the window glass along the way, I smiled and gave myself a slight bow.

  However, school wasn't the least bit interesting. The school campus was at the edge of town, and the buildings were painted white. Right behind the school was a flat park facing the strait. I could hear the sounds of the waves and the rustling pine trees during class. The halls were wide, and the classroom ceilings were high. All of that made me feel good, but the teachers persecuted me.

  Beginning the day of the school entrance ceremony, I was belted by some phys ed teacher. He said I was a smart-aleck. This teacher was in charge of my oral exam when I took the entrance exam. He was kind to me and said I probably hadn't been able to study well because my father had died. I only hung my head. My heart hurt because he was the lone compassionate teacher. Later, I was smacked by various teachers. They'd punish me for a variety of reasons, among them were grinning and yawning. I was told the teachers concluded in the staff room that I yawned too much during class. I found it strange they discussed such nonsense in the staff room.

  One day, another student who came from the same town called me over to the shadows of the sand dunes on campus. He warned me that my attitude came off as cocky and would result without fail in beatings. I was astonished. After classes were dismissed that day, I rushed home along the shor
e and sighed as I walked while waves licked the soles of my shoes. As I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my Western-style uniform, a surprisingly large gray sail passed unsteadily before my eyes.

  This middle school is on the eastern end of Aomori today, unchanged from the past. That flat park is Gappo Park. It was close enough to the middle school to be considered its backyard. Except during winter blizzards, I cut through this park on the way to and from school and walked along the beach. This backstreet was used by few students and energized me. Mornings in the early summer were the best. The dry goods shop where I stayed was owned by the Toyoda family of Tera-machi and had a long-established, preeminent store in Aomori for close to twenty generations. The father died a few years ago. I was more precious to this man than his own children. I'll never forget that. I visited Aomori two or three times over the past few years, visited his grave each time, and always stayed with the Toyoda family.

  One spring morning when I was a third-year student, on the way to school, I felt lightheaded for a short time and grabbed onto the cylindrical handrail stained red. A river wide like the Sumida River slowly flowed under the bridge. I never had the experience of feeling dizzy in the past. I felt like I was being watched from behind and struck certain poses for some time. To each of my actions, he was bewildered and stared at his hands or watched while scratching the back of his ear but soon concocted an explanation. He was not convinced my actions were spontaneous or instinctive. After my senses returned on the bridge, I was unsettled by loneliness. When I had those feelings, I thought about my past and my future. Stumbling over the bridge, I remembered various events and dreamed. In the end, I sighed and thought, Maybe, I'll be a great man.

  …

  I had intimidating thoughts like, You must surpass the masses, but, in fact, I studied. After entering my third year, I was always at the top of my class. It was hard to be first in class without being called a grade grubber. I did not accept this ridicule and learned techniques to tame my classmates. Even the captain of the judo team, nicknamed Octopus, obeyed me. A large pot for wastepaper stood in the corner of the classroom. Occasionally, if I pointed to it and said, "Octopus, can you get in the pot?" Octopus stuck his head inside and laughed. His laughter echoed to produce bizarre sounds. The good-looking boys in class hung around me, too.

  I stuck spots of adhesive plaster cut into the shapes of triangles, hexagons, and flowers on the pimples on my face, but nobody laughed. These pimples plagued me. Their number kept growing. When I opened my eyes each morning, I checked the state of my face by patting with the palm of my hand. I bought different medicines and dabbed them on my face, but they had no effect. When I went to buy medicine at the drugstore, I wrote the name of the medicine on a slip of paper and pretended I was asking if they sold that medicine for someone else. I thought pimples were a sign of sexual desire and was so ashamed everything before my eyes went black. I even thought about dying. The bad reputation of my face reached a peak among my family. My oldest sister who lived in another house warned no woman would become my bride. I diligently applied the medicines.

  My younger brother worried about my pimples, too, and often went to buy the medicine in my place. This brother and I hadn't gotten along since we were small. When he took the entrance exam for middle school, I hoped he would fail. But being far from home, I gradually discovered his nice disposition. As my brother got older, he became bashful and quiet. Once in a while, he and I published short literary works in our fanzine, but they were all timid compositions. Unlike me, he constantly fretted over his bad grades. And my sympathy only put him in a bad mood. He was annoyed by a growth the shape of Mt. Fuji swelling on his face into a part of a woman's physique. He was convinced he wasn't smart because his forehead was narrow. I forgave this brother anything and everything. In those days, I either hid everything from people or confessed everything to them. That brother and I confided everything to each other.

  One moonless night at the beginning of fall, we went out to the pier of the harbor and commented on a fluttering red thread in the breeze blowing across the strait toward us. A Japanese language teacher at school once told this story in class. An invisible red thread was tied to the little toe of your right foot. The string smoothly stretched with one end tied to the same toe of a girl. No matter how far the two of us were separated, the thread would never break. No matter how close we were, even if we met on the street, that thread would never become entangled. This determined the girl who would become your bride. When I first heard this story, I got very excited and immediately told my brother when I returned home. That night, we talked as we listened to the sounds of waves and the calls of seagulls. When I asked my brother what is your wife doing now, after shaking the handrail along the pier a few times with both hands, he awkwardly said, "Walking in the garden." I thought the young woman wearing large garden geta clogs, holding a fan, and gazing at the primrose seemed perfect for my little brother. It was my turn, but looking off at the black sea, I only said, "Her obi sash is red." A ferryboat crossing the strait floated out unsteadily from the horizon and looked like a huge inn with its many rooms lit by yellow lights.

  Two or three years later, my little brother died. At that time, we enjoyed going to the pier. On snowy nights in the winter, we carried umbrellas and went to the pier. In the sea of a deep harbor, the silent falling snow was spectacular. Lately, Aomori Port has become congested with ships. This pier is buried under ships and no longer a scenic location. Tsutsumi River, a wide river like the Sumida River, flowed on the eastern side of Aomori and into Aomori Bay. The river flowed slowly like a reverse flow at a spot right before pouring into the sea. I gazed absent-mindedly at that sluggish flow. If I were a pretentious man, I'd liken my youth to that point immediately before the river flowed into the sea. Those four years in Aomori were times I found hard to forget. For the most part, those were my memories of Aomori. Another unforgettable place is the seaside Asamushi Hot Springs, nearly seven miles east of Aomori. The following paragraph appears in Memories:

  Autumn came, and I left the city with my brother to go by train to the hot springs on the coast about thirty minutes away. After my mother fell ill, my youngest sister rented a house there to take the hot-spring cure. I stayed there the whole time and continued to study for my entrance exam. My troublesome reputation of being a prodigy required me to display it from my fourth year in middle school until entering high school. During that time, I came to hate school. It was horrible, but as a person being pursued by something, I studied with single-minded determination. I took the train from there to school. Every Sunday, my friends came to pass the time. I always had a picnic with them. On flat rocks at the shore, we enjoyed meat stew and drank wine. My brother had a nice voice and knew many new songs. He taught us these songs, and we all sang together. We wore ourselves out fooling around and fell asleep on the rocks. When we woke up, the tide had come in. The rock, which should have been part of the shore, was an island. We felt as though we had not awakened from our dreams.

  In the end, my joke is my youth was poured into the sea. The sea around Asamushi was cool and clear and not too bad. However, the inn could not be said to be good. The charm of a desolate fishing village in Tohoku was to be expected and not a flaw. Was I just a little arrogant like the frog in a well who knew nothing about the big ocean and was confused? I am bold and scoff at the hot springs in my hometown but am not bothered by the anxiety I felt when in the countryside far away. I haven't stayed at any hot springs in this area recently. Fortunately, the costs of staying at the inns have not become exorbitant. Clearly, I'm saying too much, but I haven't stayed here recently and gazed through the train window at the houses of the hot spring towns. These are only the words of the shallow intuition of a poor artist and have no foundation. However, I don't want to force my intuition on the reader. Rather, the reader may prefer not to believe my intuition. I believe Asamushi is starting over as a humble town for convalescence. For some time, the passionate, stylish
crowd of Aomori City was electrified by this chilly hot springs area and became the proprietresses of inns to become like those in Atami and Yugawara. A fleeting suspicion crossed my mind that I may be intoxicated by an unwise illusion from my thatched cottage. The story tells of a warped, poor man of letters on a journey who never leaves the train but journeys back and forth by the hot-springs area of his memories.

  The most famous hot springs in Tsugaru are Asamushi Hot Springs, perhaps, followed by Owani Hot Springs. Owani is close to the southern edge of Tsugaru and close to the prefectural boundary with Akita. More than hot springs, Tsugaru is known throughout Japan for its ski resorts. The hot springs are in the foothills of the mountains where the faint scent of the history of the Tsugaru clan lingers. My immediate family often came to this hot springs region to take the hot-spring cure. Although I also played there as a child, no memories as clear as those of Asamushi remain. I have many vivid memories of Asamushi but, at the same time, can't easily convey those memories. Nevertheless, my recollections of Owani are dear to me despite being hazy. Is it the difference between the sea and the mountains? I have not seen Owani Hot Springs for close to twenty years. Looking at it now, does it feel like a town ashamed of being given the leftovers of a city like Asamushi. I cannot give up on that town. Compared to Asamushi, traveling from Tokyo to Owani is a pain.

  First of all, Owani is my last hope. The closest town to this hot springs is Ikarigaseki. It was a checkpoint between Tsugaru and Akita in the age of the former fief. Thus, this area has many historic landmarks. The way of life of the people of Tsugaru remains, has deep roots, and will not be easily brushed aside by city ways. Furthermore, the great last hope is Hirosaki Castle, which is seven miles north of here, and, even now, the castle tower remains. It is surrounded by cherry blossoms every spring and boasts of excellent health. I'd like to believe that as long as Hirosaki Castle remains, Owani Hot Springs will not sip the drippings of a city and descend into a drunken frenzy.