“I Will Go to Hakodate to Die”

Ōmorihama, immortalized in a tanka in Takuboku’s A Handful of Sand, reading: “On the white sands of a small island in the eastern seas, my face wet with tears, I play with the crabs.”

Today home to Tea Salon Hishii, this building once housed a pawn shop said to have been frequented by Takuboku’s wife, Setsuko.

The Ishikawa family gravestone. The inscription is from a letter to Miyazaki Ikuu, who offered the family both moral and practical support, in which Takuboku expresses his wish to end his days in Hakodate.