Cut off by the Ou Mountains to the south and far removed from any center of power, Aomori Prefecture¡¯s remote Tsugaru Peninsula was largely left to its own devices until the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1573-1603).
In the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), different factions of the Tsugaru clan swore allegiance to either side to ensure the clan¡¯s survival. Clan-head Tsugaru Nobuhira, who sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu, went on to marry Ieyasu¡¯s niece Mate-hime. Centuries later, the Tsugaru clan backed the imperial government in the Boshin War, securing its peerage in the ensuing Meiji Era (1868-1912). This blend of geographic destiny and opportunistic leadership has allowed Tsugaru to develop distinctive folk arts, customs and characteristics through the centuries. To this day, the Tsugaru dialect has a reputation for being impenetrable even to people from other parts of Aomori.
During World War II, throughout which Tsugaru enjoyed relative peace and quiet, Oyama Publishing Company commissioned a special volume in its New Fudoki travel series on the region, and hired native son Osamu Dazai to deliver it. Best known in the West for his later novels, ¡°The Setting Sun¡± (1947) and ¡°No Longer Human¡± (1948), Dazai based his travelogue on just over three weeks in the area in 1944, and includes a visit to his hometown of Kanagi on the dinky Tsugaru Railway Line. Translated by James Westerhoven and released in English as ¡°Return to Tsugaru: Travels of a Purple Tramp¡± in 1985, the book portrays Tsugaru in a frank way, meditates upon its history, and swells with a fondness for its people.
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