ABSTRACT
I initially wrote this essay in response to an invitation to make a pilgrimage to the Tohoku region of Japan to attend a conference in August 2015. 1 It takes the “return to Tohoku” enacted by this conference as the starting point to question some of the many returns performed in and around Hijikata Tatsumi’s oeuvre. As I was preparing to make my first trip to the area to participate in this event, I wanted to engage specifically with my own resistance to the conventional reading of Hijikata’s body of work through his personal history with Tohoku.
