Homecoming in Obon

I always realize it is a season of Obon when all the grass in the edge of the paddies and gardens, roadside and paths are cut in the heat of the mid-summer. Old people in the villages like to keep their house, gardens and paddies tidy. And especially before the Obon season, they want them cozier than ever. It is because this is the season when their ancestors visit them from the world after. Obon is more or less like Halloween in the western culture. On the first day of Obon, people will go to graveyard to welcome the spirits of their ancestors, and they will send them back after several days staying together in their home. Naturally, they want their home tidy to welcome the spirits.
But there is another reason. In Obon season, many office are closed, and their sons and daughters now living in the city will come home with their children. The old people in the villages want to welcome their descendant more than their ancestors, even if they deny. Older people always love to see their grandchildren anywhere in the world.
Bon dancing will be held in the middle of the village. In many case, the population of the villages are too small to make a dancing circle, and there are no dancing in those villages. In other cases, the festivities of the Bon-Odori are just as the same in the old days, with children coming from the cities.

I know how those children feels, because I was one of them many years ago. They don't have a good time because they don't feel at home in their grandparents' village. They might be interested in some strange things in a strange place. There are old wares they will never see in the city. They might be thrilled pushing a one-wheeled cart around or cut weeds with their sticks. But soon they will be lost, frightened. They will seek their parents who drink beer and talk something they don't understand. Even the language they use sounds strange. They want their daily life back, don't want the festivity of the Bon-Odori.

Still, the slim chance of survival of the mountain villages in Japan lies in these homecoming in Obon season. If the sons and daughters in the city will never bring their children back in the place where their parents live, eventually, there will be no one in the city who knows there still exist such a place as a mountain village. They surely will think it vanished long ago, with nursing stories they heard when they were babies.
There is still a hope that someday those children will return to their ancestors' place to save the mountain villages. I think it is not likely to happen, but there are people hoping it will be.
At least, the old people in the villages will always welcome their grandchildren back.

Sons and Daughters of the Dying People

The villages in the rural part of Japan are now dying with decreasing population. It may sound as if these people are like endangered species in the mountains, or minority ethnic group on the verge of an ethnocide. But it is not true. Those villages are dying because the people living in there are dying for the aging. There are only small number of young families to support them. The function and tradition passed on from generation to generation had to be stopped, and some village had been closed down. But they haven't lost their sons and daughters. Only, they are now living in the cities, and living their lives in totally different ways.
You may wonder that it should be an ethnocide to force people move away from their homeland and abandon their traditional lifestyle. In a way, yes. When you visit a deserted village in the mountain, stand in the middle of the street, you feel sadness and anger for the things lost. The people once lived there were all long gone. You only see ruined houses, some are two or three hundred years old, and summer weeds to cover. The economical structure that once supported some hundred of people is now completely destructed. No future, no hope, and no one is there.
Yet, looking back history, you cannot call it an ethnoside. It sure was sad and miserable for the people to leave the old life they were living, but it was them who decided to move, abandon their tradition for good. Many of them were deceived to leave, but they were the partner in the crime. They consciously became victims of the economical growth, which they believed, and still believes is the only way to the bright future. In a way, they were right, in another, wrong.

Fifty years ago, young families in those villages intentionally sent their sons and daughters to the city for their education. They believed that it will make their children rich, and eventually bring them a fortune. They had sensed that the structure of the economy and society had dramatically changed, and there would be no scope for the villages to prosper. They thought that next generation would only be able to survive in the city, not in the village. They wanted to pass their tradition to their sons and daughters, and to pass it, their children must survive. So, they chose city life for their next generation.
In this way, they were right. Their children had built an invincible economic empire, and became rich enough to send them money. Their own life gets harder and harder in the countryside, but they could support themselves well with the money from the city. And their children kept on coming back for the ceremonies for their ancestors and in need of the parents. They still could handle spade and hoe, and move agricultural machines. The tradition was passed safely.

But it was not as it had been. The tradition became superficial because it lacked the lifestyle and economical structure to support it. The sons and daughters only came back for the sake of their parents, or nostalgia for their childhood. When their life in the city got busy, or when their parents die, they no longer came back to the village. And they couldn't pass the tradition to their own sons and daughters because they have nothing to do with the life in the mountain village.
So, now the people in the city simply ignore the existence of the people left in the mountain villages, and let them die. It is tragic, because they are dying for their decision half a century ago. Worse, they still believe it, and feel joy when they hear the news of their children or grandchildren made success in the city. They don't want to see the fact that the very success keeps people away from the village, and eventually put an end to the tradition and life they have been holding on.

Still they are the sons and daughters. An old woman once told me in her cracked shack in a abandoned village where she was staying for the summer, that she is glad that her son is now a successful doctor and the world became a better place with prosperous Japan. I couldn't say a word. How could I?