Under the Sendai Domain, fish were delivered to the castle town via the Teizan Canal built by Date Masamune.
This article records the unique culture of Yuriage, largely lost in the 2011 tsunami, and the effort to preserve its traditions.

Yuriage’s culture was shaped by the Teizan Canal built under Date Masamune.
Though the town was lost to the 2011 tsunami, its memories and traditions continue to live on.

2017-07-08

Under the rule of the Sendai Domain, fish were delivered to the castle town via the Teizan Canal, the longest canal in Japan, dug under the orders of Date Masamune.
Yesterday, after reading my essay in which I wrote about my hometown lost to the tsunami, prompted by the devastating torrential rains that struck Kyushu, a friend asked me whether I had read the large article published in the cultural section of the Nikkei newspaper.
At first, I did not understand what he meant, but to my surprise, the article was about my hometown, Yuriage.
The Yuriage district of Natori City in Miyagi Prefecture had prospered as a fishing village since before the Edo period.
Under the Sendai Domain, fish were transported to the castle town through the Teizan Canal, and as a domain-controlled port, the area nurtured a distinctive culture.
However, this historic district was swept away by the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, and the town itself was lost.
Reading about efforts to preserve the culture and customs handed down in Yuriage deeply moved me.
Born in 1939, the author of the article spent most of his life in this district, where seasonal events expressing gratitude to ancestors and nature still remained during his childhood.
As both a fishing village and an agricultural area on the Sendai Plain, the region developed a unique mix of fishermen’s concise, practical speech and farmers’ more polite language.
Fearing that these traditions would be completely severed by the disaster, he decided to self-publish a book recording annual events and local dialects.
The “Akatsuki-mōde and Matsu-okuri” ceremony on January 15, and the phrase children used when visiting homes—“We have come for chaségo.”
With that single line, the long-lost scene faintly returned to my own memory.