igoo] Aomori Industries 



and totlings who sat on the floor thus early at meat, 

 or rather at raw fish, rice, and pickles. On the street 

 I hailed a kuruma, but found the market quite empty. 

 It transpired that the fishermen were all very busy Vagram 

 appeasing the spirits of their ancestors, supposed to -^""^^ 

 be abroad in the air for the whole of a sacred week 

 during which no good Buddhist dared kill any back- 

 boned thing for fear some reincarnated forebear 

 might be thus caught and discommoded. The 

 ceremonial rites came at last to an end with a long 

 procession escorting vagrant souls back to the grave- 

 yard. This duty happily accomplished, the men 

 were at our service. But the great salmon catch ^ 

 being over, we had to content ourselves with dried 

 and salted specimens of the three native species,^ 

 all inferior to the noble salmon of our Pacific Coast. 

 At the museum, however, the naturalist, Sotaro 

 Saito, divided his rich ichthyological spoils with 

 cheerful willingness, thus furnishing me with speci- 

 mens of much value. 



Aomori's manufactured specialty is tsugaru-nuri, "Foot 

 a handsome, variegated green, black, and red lacquer, '""!"'"'" 

 also called baka-nuri, "fool lacquer," because it takes 

 so much pains to prepare it. But the town looks 



' Aomori is the center of the Japanese salmon trade. 



^ The shake or sake, identical with the calico salmon of the eastern Pacific — 

 Oncorhynchus keta — the masu or Japanese Silver Salmon — Oncorhynchus 

 masou — and the yesosake or black salmon — Oncorhynchus yessoensis. The 

 shake, the largest and most important commercially, is of inferior quality as food. 

 The masu is widely distributed, its young — yamame — being found in all 

 northern streams, and having the habit of a trout, although adults of all three 

 species die after spawning. Everywhere about Aomori and northward abound 

 the iuiana — Sahelinus pluvius — a near relative of the Dolly Varden as also of 

 our Eastern Brook Trout. Around Aomori is also found the rare and peculiar 

 trout known as ito — Hucho perryi — a long, slim, pike-like fish with black 

 spots, its only relative being the singular Huchen — Hucho hucho — of the 

 Danube. No black-spotted true trout of the genus Salmo occurs in Japan, but 

 a large species — Salmo mykiss — • lives in Kamchatka. 



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