A Journey to Sayama and Other Essays

Ōmachi Keigetsu takes the road with an eye for scenery and a ready appetite for sake. In these fourteen essays, he explores Sayama and the Tama River, visits Shirakawa’s lake and old barrier, considers Ishida Mitsunari’s embankment, walks across Usui Pass, and climbs Mount Akagi.

The journeys bring more than beautiful views. Friends trade poems and conversation; a railway fare defeats an experienced traveler’s budget; children remain unmoved by the attractions their father carefully chooses. An account of prayer at Hakone Shrine records the anxious days of Emperor Meiji’s final illness. A campaign against a troublesome cat exposes a harsher side of the author’s domestic world.

A poet and travel writer of the Meiji and Taishō eras, Keigetsu combines lyrical observation with humor, historical argument, and outspoken judgments. This complete translation preserves the supplied poems, quotations, and concluding dates, with notes on historical references, uncertain readings, and textual problems. The mountain scenery and changing countryside emerge alongside the people whose work and pleasure shape them. AI-assisted translation.