Countless are the beauties of land and sea that I have already seen, but now my heart quickened at the prospect of seeing isakata, the celebrated lagoon about twenty-four miles northeast of Sakata Harbor. We made our way over hills and along beaches, trudging through sand dunes, and we reached our destination just as the sun was setting.

A wind had blown up from the sea, filling the air with sand and driving rain, and we could not even see Mount Chokai. There was a curious fascination about groping our way in the dark merely imagining the beauties that lay before us, and the rain gave promise of an even finer view than usual on clearing. We squeezed into a fisherman's shed roofed over with rushes and waited there for the rain to cease.

Next morning the sky was cloudless, and when the sun had risen and was shining brilliantly, we went out upon the lagoon in a boat.

After visiting Noin's Isle to see where the poet-priest Noin had spent his three-year retreat, we landed on the shore of an island just beyond. There we found an ancient cherry tree. It was the very one whose reflections in the water Saigyo referred to when he wrote:

Sculling over cherry blossoms,
Go the fishermen in boats.

The tree was a living monument to the poet.

On the edge of the lagoon was an imperial tomb said to be the burial place of the Empress Jingu [regent, 201-269]. The temple there was called Kanmanju-ji. I had not heard that the empress had visited this place. I wondered why she was buried here.

We sat down in the abbot's chambers of the temple, and when the finely woven bamboo-and-brocade curtains were rolled up, the whole panorama of Kisa Lagoon lay before us.

To the south, Mount Chokai looked as if it were propping up the heavens and its image was relfected in the lagoon. Westward the road was barred by the Uyamuya Barrier, but to the east an embankment carred the road off into the far distance towards Akita. The sea lay to the north, and the place where it entered tha lagoon was called Shiogoshi, or "Tideway."

Though the lagoon called Kisakata was little more than two miles long and two miles wide, it reminded me of Matsushima. But in some ways it was quite different. While Matsushima had a gay, laughing beauty, Kisakata's face was full of bitterness and rue. There was a sense of the desolate lonliness and sorrow of a tormented soul.

In Kisakata's rain,
Mimosas droop, like fair Hsi-shih
Who languished with love's pain.

Cool seascape with cranes
Wading long-legged in the pools
Mid the Tideway dunes.

I wonder what they eat
At Shiogoshi's Festival.
What's their special treat?
--Sora

[Moved by the sight of a poor family who had laid a wooden shutter on the ground to sit upon - their humble dwelling having no veranda:]

How humbly fishers dwell,
With but a board laid on the sand
To savor evening's cool.
--Teiji. A merchant from Mino Province

On seeing a pair of ospreys nesting on a rock near the sea:

With your nest on a rock,
Have you a truce with the ocean waves,
O trusting sea hawk?
--Sora