The Southern Country is a Beautiful Country ①

Morning "Hittsumi"

It is past 6:00 AM at the west exit of Morioka Station. Since Morioka is known as a city of coffee, I would have liked to have a morning cup, but as expected, neither the shops inside the station nor those nearby are open.
However, I know something.

Morioka has a morning market!

After a 10-minute taxi ride, I arrive at the Mikoda Morning Market, which has been open since 5:00 AM. This wonderful market, held about 300 days a year, offers not only local vegetables and fruits, but also bread, tempura, ramen, and coffee for breakfast.

My wife and I share some rolled omelet, kushikatsu, oyster croquettes, and "hittsumi" among other things. I was so hungry I gobbled it up, so I don't have any photos, but everything was delicious!
In particular, hittsumi consists of thin, stretched-out dough dumplings in a soy-based soup containing vegetables like burdock, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms. (It seems it's called "hittsumi" because you "hittsumamu"—pinch off—the dough.)
It is surprising to find wheat flour in a rice-growing region, but although this area is a rice-producing zone, there was a possibility that rice crops could fail completely due to cold weather damage caused by the "yamase" wind. It is said that alternative crops like wheat and buckwheat were necessary as a risk hedge.

Is the warm soup with crunchy vegetables and hittsumi, combined with a slightly sweet broth, the same flavor loved by Kanichiro Yoshimura, the protagonist of "Mibu Gishi Den"...?
I can picture Kiichi Nakai eating it.
However, before I knew it, the shops were already starting to close. It was only 7:30 AM, and the coffee shop I had targeted for after my meal had also closed without me noticing.

With my stomach full and time to spare before the city started to stir, I decided to take a leisurely walk to the center of town. On the way, I came out to an old streetscape called Nataya-cho.

Why Morioka is somewhat stylish

I thought Nataya-cho was a name with some meaning, so I looked it up and found it seems to be a town created by a merchant named Nataya who was called by the feudal lord from Kyoto. By the way, this place was a key point on the Oshu Kaido road as well as the roads heading to Miyako and Tono, and it was the terminal point for river transport on the Kitakami River. It has been bustling since long ago, and besides the Nataya family, the Kizuya store, founded in 1638 (the 15th year of the Kanei era), moved here from Kizu in Kyoto and continues to do business today, connecting the past and the present.

That can be felt in daily life, and it is also conveyed by the two communal wells in this area called Daiji-shimizu and Seiryu-sui.

The wells, which are still very much in active use, are protected by a water utility association formed by the neighbors. At Seiryu-sui, a neighbor who happened to be there to draw water invited me, saying, "Would you like to try some?" and when I drank it, it was very soft and delicious. Perhaps the ability to speak to tourists like that is a sign of the composure cultivated over a long period of time.

Incidentally, this Daiji-shimizu is drawn from the spring water of the nearby Daiji-ji Temple. Daiji-ji is a temple of the Obaku school, a minority sect within Zen Buddhism, and is a branch temple of Manpuku-ji in Uji, Kyoto. It is said to have been founded in 1673 (the 13th year of the Kanbun era).

1673 was only 19 years after Ingen, known for the kidney bean that bears his name and the founder of the Obaku school, came to Japan, and only 12 years after the founding of the head temple, Manpuku-ji. Morioka invited such a stylish and, for the time, quite cool culture.
Personally, I had just visited Manpuku-ji recently because I had business at Kyoto University's Uji campus, so I feel a bit happy that they are connected.

By the way, the Zen monk named Tokushin Doku, who founded this cool Daiji-ji Temple, does not seem to be from Morioka either, and among the people related to the streets and culture of Morioka, including the Nataya and Kizuya families of Nataya-cho, there are not a few people from other provinces. That is likely because Morioka is a city that was built in the early modern period.

The plan to move the Southern base to the small settlement originally called Kozukata was made during the era of Nobunao, the ancestor of the Nanbu domain, at the end of the Warring States period. Until then, the base of the Nanbu clan was Sannohe, which is over 70 kilometers to the north. It was not until the generation of Shigenao, Nobunao's grandson, that a new castle town was built so far away and Morioka Castle was completed.

Perhaps because it is a young city (though it has been over 400 years...), there is a somewhat modern scent every time I walk through the streets. The New York Times must have caught that scent.

I was thinking about this while eating a cafe au lait and an Angel Cream donut at the Mister Donut in the Sakana-cho shopping district.

Even so, it is still 9:00 AM. However, it feels like it is past noon.