【青森から松前へ、海上はるかに岩木山遠望】

　一昨日は夜に函館にフェリーで到着。で、観桜ツアーとして昨日は道南・松前に移動。
　なんですが、わたし的には道中から海上に遠望されていた山影に見入っていた。そうなんです、これまでもたぶん気付いてはいたハズだけれど、津軽海峡はるかに「岩木山」が見えていたのです。写真はiPhone撮影でおぼろげですが・・・。
　昔人は現代人よりもはるかに「遠望視力」が優れていた。このように岩木山が見えることとこの地に本州津軽地域での内戦敗残の結果、逃れてきた武装勢力である「安東氏勢力」にとって、父祖の地の象徴である岩木山が辛うじて遠望できることをどのように受け止めていたか。そういう心象について、はじめて気付かされていた。
　津軽半島西端の十三湊という北方アジア世界との交易拠点を長く支配してきた勢力・安東氏。
　この士族の栄枯盛衰の推移は北海道人としては、北海道に残る数少ない明治期以前の日本史との接点として関心はあった。そしてそれなりに道南の故地を探訪したりもしてきたのだけれど、このように岩木山の山影が海上はるかに見える場所がこの松前なのだと今更ながら気付いて、はじめてかれらの心象風景が覚醒。まさに点が線として繋がった気がしていた。
　北海道人としてはなぜかれらが北海道のもっと広闊な地域に展開せずに、ひたすら本州を見晴るかす「さいはて」の地にこだわり続けていたのか、不思議だった。そういう安東氏一統のこころにはこの岩木山が大きく存在したことがわかったのですね。
　かつて父祖が支配していた失地を遠く望みつつ、そのノスタルジーが強く沈殿し続けていたのだろうか。そういう「後ろ髪」引かれる心情のまま、数百年の永きを生きてきていたのか、と。北海道の大地は、かの時代の本州人にとって酷寒の地。農業立国はその志のかけらも見いだせず、ただただ現地のアイヌ民族との「交易」だけが自分たちとの生存基盤だと思い定めていたのだろう。
　明治国家はその国際的存亡を掛けて「北門の鎖鑰」意識を持ち続け、殖産移民を国策として継続し続けてきたことで、ようやく今日、北海道は500万人を超える人口を有している。たかが道南の局地支配権程度の経済力では、北海道開拓という事業は夢想だに出来なかったのだろう。
　わたしは岩木山が大好きです。そしてこの遠望の光景は日本人としてかすかにDNAに残置されたなにごとかの証明なのかも知れませんね。


English version⬇

Aomori to Matsumae, with a distant view of Mount Iwaki far out to sea.
What the distant view of Mount Iwaki tells us. The difference in mentality between the immigrants and the Matsumae samurai who have been stationed in the southern part of Hokkaido since the Meiji era, even though they are all Hokkaido people. ...

　The day before yesterday, they arrived by ferry in Hakodate at night. And yesterday we moved to Matsumae in southern Hokkaido as part of a cherry blossom viewing tour.
　I had been looking at the mountains in the distance on the way to Matsumae, but I had not noticed them before. Yes, I probably would have noticed it before, but I could see Mount Iwaki in the distance across the Tsugaru Strait. The photo was taken with an iPhone, so it's a bit fuzzy...
　People in the past had far better “far-sightedness” than people today. How did the Ando clan, the armed forces who fled to this area as a result of the defeat in the civil war in the Tsugaru region of Honshu, perceive the fact that they could barely see Mt Iwaki, the symbol of the land of their fathers, in the distance? I was made aware of these mental images for the first time.
　The Ando clan, a power that has long controlled the trading post of Tosaminato on the western edge of the Tsugaru Peninsula, a trading post with the northern Asian world.
　As a Hokkaido resident, I was interested in the rise and fall of this samurai clan as one of the few remaining points of contact with Japanese history in Hokkaido prior to the Meiji period. I have also visited the former places in southern Hokkaido, but it was only now that I realised that Matsumae was the place where the shadow of Mount Iwaki could be seen far out to sea, that my mental image of these people was awakened. It was as if the dots were connected as a line.
　As a Hokkaido resident, I wondered why they did not expand into the wider area of Hokkaido, but instead continued to stick to the land of ‘Saihate’, where they could look out over Honshu. It turned out that Mt Iwaki was a major part of the Ando clan's heart.
　Did they continue to have strong nostalgia for the lost lands of their fathers, which they had once ruled over, while looking far away? Had they lived for hundreds of years with that kind of ‘backward’ feeling? The land of Hokkaido was a land of bitter cold for the people of Honshu in those days. They probably did not have any aspirations to become an agricultural nation, and had decided that trade with the local Ainu people was the only basis for their own survival.
　The Meiji State, with its international survival at stake, has maintained a “key to the northern gate” and has continued to pursue colonisation and immigration as a national policy, so that today Hokkaido finally has a population of more than five million. The economic power of the local government in the southern part of Hokkaido could not have dreamt up the development of Hokkaido.
　I love Mount Iwaki. And this distant view may be proof of something faintly left in our DNA as Japanese people.