At Oishida, we awaited fair weather with a view to descending the Mogami River by boat. In that spot where the seeds of the old haikai had fallen, some people still cherished the memory of the flowers. With heart's softened by poetry's civilizing touch, those onetime blowers of shrill reed flutes had been groping for the correct way of practicing the art, so they told me, but had found it difficult to choose between the old styles and the new with no one to guide them. I felt myself under an obligation to leave them a sequence. Such was one result of this journey in pursuit of my art.