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19 — BOOKS
Further Reading
Books for getting to know Aomori's history and people more deeply: Dazai Osamu's travelogue novel of a journey through his home region, a mountain novel set in the snows of Hakkoda, the autobiography of a world-famous printmaker, the memoir of a boy who went from Aizu to Shimokita, and introductions to the Jomon. For before your trip, and after it.
Reading Tsugaru
Return to Tsugaru (Tsugaru)
A travelogue novel of Dazai's 1944 journey around the Tsugaru Peninsula, his home region: Kanita, Tappi, Kanagi, and finally his reunion in Kodomari with Take, the nursemaid who raised him. If you are travelling in Tsugaru, start with this book (the Arts room).
Tsugaru Jongara-bushi
A work portraying the land and people of Tsugaru by a Naoki Prize-winning author from Hirosaki. Like the sound of the Tsugaru shamisen, it conveys the deep passions of the region.
Blue Mountains (Aoi Sanmyaku)
A coming-of-age novel by a writer from Hirosaki, portraying with warmth the young people of a new era in a post-war provincial town. The film and its theme song were also huge hits.
Records of snow and the strait
Death March on Mount Hakkoda (Hakkodasan Shi no Hoko)
A mountain novel based on the disaster of the 1902 snow march. It is fiction based on historical fact, and the names of the characters and other details have been changed. It is the original story of the film Mount Hakkoda (the Remembrance room).
Remembering Aizu: The Testament of Shiba Goro (Aru Meijijin no Kiroku)
The memoir of a boy born to a samurai of the Aizu domain, who endured hunger and cold in the Tonami domain and later wrote it down after becoming an army general (the Shimokita room).
The Jomon and the arts
The Sannai-Maruyama Site: A Great Jomon Settlement of Tohoku Restored (Sannai-Maruyama Iseki)
An archaeologist who long led the excavations at Sannai-Maruyama explains the site as a whole and what it has revealed about the lives of the Jomon people (the Sannai-Maruyama room).
The Way of the Woodblock (Hangokudo)
The autobiography of the printmaker who vowed "Wa da ba Gohho ni naru" ("I'm going to be Van Gogh"). In his own distinctive voice, he recounts his life from his boyhood in Aomori to becoming the world's "Munakata".
The Forged Tsugaru Sotosangunshi Affair (Gisho "Tsugaru Sotosangunshi" Jiken)
A work of non-fiction in which a local newspaper reporter pursues the truth behind the forgery affair of the century. It shows clearly how "manufactured history" spreads (the Legends room).
* Publishers and editions listed are representative. Availability may change if titles go out of print or new editions are released.