Visited by Asaka-no-miya-sama, August of Showa year 10 (1935)
Visited by Takamatsu-no-miya-sama, September of Showa year 10
Visited by Chichibu-no-miya and Doko-no-miya-sama, October of Showa year 10
Visited again by Chichibu-no-miya, August of Showa year 13
The people of Kanagi are right to be proud of the experimental farm. Not only Kanagi, this should be the eternal pride of the Tsugaru Plain. The training lands of crop fields, orchards, and rice paddies behind the buildings were created by model rural youth selected from each hamlet in Tsugaru and were developed to be truly beautiful. The son-in-law walked around and inspected the cultivated fields.
"This is very important," he said and sighed. As a landowner, he understood much more than I.
"Ah! Fuji is great!" I shouted. It was not the Mount Fuji, but the 1,625-meter-high Mount Iwaki, also called Tsugaru Fuji, rising gently where the paddy fields stretching as far as the eye can see came to an end. It actually seemed to be rising. The skirt of the ceremonial dress of a lady of the court, more feminine than Mount Fuji, appeared to drip a pale white. Scattered gingko leaves were opened as if standing upside-down. The mountain had perfect left-right symmetry and floated in the quiet blue skies. The mountain is not tall but is an attractive woman of nearly translucent beauty.
"Kanagi isn't so bad," I said in a hurried tone and then pouting said, "Not bad at all."
"It is nice," calmly said the son-in-law.
I saw Tsugaru Fuji from various sides on this trip. From Hirosaki, it is massive and ponderous. On the one hand, I thought Mount Iwaki may be a part of Hirosaki but was unable to forget the fragile form on the side of Mount Iwaki seen from Kanagi, Goshogawara, and Kizukuri on the Tsugaru Plain. The profile of the mountain viewed from the western sea coast is awful. It has collapsed and looks nothing like a beautiful woman. In lands where Mount Iwaki looks stunning, the legend is rice ripens well and beautiful women abound. Rice aside, this mountain looks beautiful in northern Tsugaru, but I was dissatisfied by the beautiful women I saw, which may reflect the shallowness of my observations.
"I wonder what happened to Aya and Yoko," I said worried and in a huff, "Maybe they didn't follow right after us."
As worried as I was about them, we admired the facilities and landscape of the experimental farm. We returned to the road and looked all around. Aya unexpectedly popped out of a path in a side field and smiled as he told us they had split up to search for us. Aya searched a nearby field, and Yoko followed behind on a path leading to Takanagare.
"That's awful. Yoko has probably gone quite far. Hey Yoko!" I yelled, but there was no response.
"Let's go," said Aya while hiking up the load on his back, "Well, there's only one road."
Skylarks chirped in the sky. It has probably been twenty years since I walked in the fields of my home in the springtime. Thick growths of low shrubs and bushes were scattered on the grass. There was a small marsh. The ground gently undulated. Long ago, people from the city might have praised it as a splendid golf course.
"Look there, hoes dig in to steadily reclaim this uncultivated field. The roofs of people's homes were dazzling. Those hamlets have been restored and separated from neighboring villages," Aya explained.
While listening, I keenly felt Kanagi has also progressed and livened up. We would soon be approaching the slope but had still not seen Yoko.
"What could have happened to her?" I asked, having inherited the habit of worrying too much from my mother.
"Where could she be?" asked her new husband looking embarrassed.
"Well, let's ask," I said and approached a farmer working in the field beside the road. I removed my cloth hat, bowed, and asked, "Has a young lady dressed in Western clothes passed by on the road?"
He answered yes and said she seemed to be in a hurry. I imagined my niece running down the country road in the spring after her new husband and didn't think that was bad. We were soon climbing the mountain. In the shadow of a line of large trees, my smiling niece stood. She concluded we were behind her because she chased after us this far. While waiting she had gathered bracken fern fronds from the area. She didn't look tired. The area resembled a treasure house of bracken, ginseng, thistle, and bamboo shoots. In the fall, mushrooms like hatsudake, earth covering, and nameko grow in abundance, "like a blanket" in Aya's description. He said people come to gather them from as far away as Goshogawara and Kizukuri.
"Yoko is famous for collecting mushrooms," he added. While climbing the mountain, I said, "The imperial prince has been to Kanagi."
Aya replied yes in a changed tone.
"That's wonderful."
"Yes," he said nervously.
"He came to a place like Kanagi."
"Yes."
"Did he come by car?"
"Yes, he did."
"You bowed to him, too, Aya."
"Yes, I did."
"That made you happy, Aya."
"Yes," he answered and used the towel wrapped around his neck to wipe the sweat off his face.
Bush warblers were singing. Violets, dandelions, wild chrysanthemums, azaleas, snow flowers, akebi, and other flowers unfamiliar to me bloomed brightly on the grass on both sides of the mountain road. Short willow and oak trees were sprouting. As we climbed the mountain, the bamboo grass thickened. Despite this small mountain being less than two hundred meters high, the view was spectacular. I wanted to say the entire Tsugaru Plain could be seen from corner to corner. We stopped and looked down at the plain. I listened to Aya's description and walked a little then stopped to look with pride at Tsugaru Fuji. We soon reached the peak of this small mountain.
"Is this the peak?" I asked Aya a little blankly.
"Yes, it is."
Although I said, "What is this?" I was fascinated by the scenery of the Tsugaru Plain in the spring
