Whether rivers or hills, sea or land, the scenery we had already looked upon had been magnificent. Now my heart urged me to look at Kisa Bay. We walked northeast from the port of Sakata, crossing mountains, limping along rocky shores, swishing across sandy beaches, and covering well over twenty miles, and that just at the last the sun was sinking brightly to the west, as the strong onshore breeze stirred up the sand, and as the rain threw into a dim haze the islands, the sea, and Mount Chokai. The rain cast a darkness over the scenery, and I felt as though I were groping in shadows. But it is "a landscape also of special beauty when veiled by the rain," and we could hope for another surpassing view when the veil of rain had lifted. With such thoughts we barely squeezed into "a fisherman's reed hut / On Kisa Bay."

The next morning the sky was very clear and, just as the sun was shining its brightest, we set our boat upon the bay. We headed for Noin Isle, where we inquired after some sign of the place where Priest Noin had lived so peacefully for three years. Then we crossed back to the shore of the mainland to the place famous for the cherry tree of Priest Saigyo's poem, and saw an aged tree, a keepsake of Saigyo. By the coast there is an imperial mausoleum, which is said to be that of Empress Jingu. The temple of the area is Kanmanju. I had never heard before that Empress Jingu had visited the area. What is one to make of the story? Seated in the banquet room of this temple, with the reed lattice rolled up, we could see a wide panorama lying before us. To the south, islands, the sea, and Mount Chokai looming up to support the heavens and reflected below in the waters of Kisa Bay. To the west, the Muyamuya Barrier cuts across the road, and to the east there runs an embankment and far beyond it, dim in the distance, the road to Akita. Again, off to the north, where the surf seems to draw the sea back and forth, is a place called Shiogoshi. Kisa Bay extends more than two miles each way. It reminds me of Matsushima, but with this difference: Matsushima carried an air of people smiling; Kisa Bay suggests rather the gloom of a frown. It is not just that it is melancholy - more than that, there is an impression of pain, and the effect is that of a beautiful woman whose heart is sorely troubled.

Pink flowering silk-trees,
Dimmed in the rain like the beauty of Hsi Shih,
The Bay of Kisa.

At Shiogoshi Inlet:
Cranes wetting spindly legs in the shallows,
The sea breathing coolness.

Sora wrote some verses at the time of the summer festival there.

The Bay of Kisa --
What special food can be eaten
On festival day?

Teiji, a merchant from Mino Province wrote:

The fisher huts --
Their rain shutters taken off for benches
In the cool of the evening.

And Sora wrote upon seeing two ospreys nesting on a rock,

Waves will not wash it:
There is the fond bond of husband and wife
In the nest of the osprey.