The Mountain of Narayama

In a small village in Japan, people lived a hard life. The winters were long and cold, and having another mouth to feed often meant the difference between life and death. There was never enough food.

Nobody remembers how and when the custom started. Nobody questioned it anymore. What once might have been just a solution was now a tradition the village lived by, and everybody accepted it.

When the elderly in the village turned seventy, their families were expected to carry them up Mount Narayman, where they would leave them to die.

The elders had lived their lives; now it was time to make room for the young. It was their duty, their sacrifice for their family. It was considered a necessary sacrifice. The elderly could no longer contribute enough to justify the food they consumed, and the younger generations needed every grain of rice to survive.

Orin was sixty-nine, and her time was coming.

She lived with her widowed son, Tatsuhei, and his family. Despite her age, she remained strong, capable, and remarkably healthy. Her teeth were still intact, something that embarrassed her because it suggested she was too healthy to deserve the customary journey to the mountain.

That bothered her more than anything. In a village where old people were supposed to be worn out and ready to die, a woman approaching seventy with a mouth full of healthy teeth was almost an embarrassment.

People noticed. People talked.

So one day, Orin took a stone and knocked out her front teeth. She wasn’t going to give anyone a reason to say she was too healthy to go to Narayama.

Her son, Tatsuhei, was furious with her. He loved his mother, and he knew perfectly well she was not a burden. She helped around the house, looked after the children, and knew more about surviving a hard winter than anyone else in the family. He argued with her behind closed doors.

But Orin had made up her mind. She did not rebel against the tradition. She would die as she was supposed to die.

She arranged for another woman to become her son’s wife, ensuring someone would help care for the household after she was gone. She passed along her knowledge, settled family matters, and tried to leave everything in order.

Then winter came. Her 70th birthday.

Orin told her son it was time.

Tatsuhei did not want to take his mother to the mountain. He loved her. The thought of carrying her away and leaving her to starve or freeze was unbearable.

Orin, however, believed that refusing the journey would bring shame upon the family. She was determined to fulfill what she regarded as her duty. They left the village behind and began the long walk up the mountain. Neither one of them spoke. There was nothing left to say.

The path was steep and narrow. Trees grew thinner as they climbed higher. It got colder quickly. Orin held on to her son’s shoulders and remembered when he had been a little boy, how she had held him in her arms. Now he was carrying her.

They passed places where other sons had brought their mothers and fathers. Bones lay among the rocks. Nobody had buried them. Nobody was expected to.

At last, they reached the place where Orin was supposed to stay. Tatsuhei lowered her carefully to the ground.

He didn’t know what to say. What could he possibly say? Orin looked at him and told him to go home. Tatsuhei hesitated. She told him again. Finally, he turned away from his mother and slowly began walking down the mountain. He had been instructed not to look back, but after a while, he noticed something.

Snow. The first snow of winter was falling. He turned around and hurried back toward his mother.

“Mother! It’s snowing!”

Orin looked up at the sky. Snow on Narayama was considered a good omen. Perhaps it made her feel that everything had happened as it should. She waved him away. “Go home,” she told him. “Don’t worry about me.”

And this time, he went.

Orin stayed where he had left her, sitting among the rocks as the snow slowly covered the mountain.

Back in the village, life went on. Her family would eat the food she no longer needed.

Somewhere high above the village, an old woman who had worked her entire life to keep that family alive was sitting alone in the snow, waiting to die.

…to be continued tomorrow.