Three Days on the Dewa Roads in Spring Snow and Other Essays

Snow buries roads and fields alike as historian Kita Sadakichi travels through Dewa, riding in box sleds, visiting households and shrines, and listening to local accounts of festivals, dependent cultivators and forgotten settlements. His three-day journey brings together everyday observations, regional songs and questions about how social differences were made and remembered.

Two further essays broaden the inquiry. One asks why thieves, rebels and formidable warriors could be described in language that later ages understood differently. The other traces the author’s investigation of the Emishi in Honshu, following chronicles, genealogies, settlement records and oral traditions toward his argument that they became part of the Japanese population.

First published between 1919 and 1928, these complete writings reveal a historian combining close observation with bold interpretation. His opposition to discrimination coexists with imperial and assimilationist ideas of his time. This English edition preserves the songs, quotations, uncertainties and concluding appeal for further evidence, with explanatory notes for historical terms and textual discrepancies. AI-assisted translation.