is a Japanese short story by Shichirō Fukazawa about old age, first published in 1956. Several films have been based on it. The work is based on a folk legend about abandoning elderly people on a mountain and was the literary debut of the then 42-year-old Fukazawa, making a strong impression on the leading writers and severe critics of the period and receiving an enthusiastic reception from them.
The story depicts a community living in a poor mountain village and governed by a strict code of conduct, culminating in the custom of carrying seventy-year-old elderly people to the titular Mount Narayama, where they await death. The work tells the story of a son who, in accordance with the custom prevailing in the settlement, carries his elderly mother on his back to wintry Narayama in order to leave her there. The unspoken affection between the mother, who voluntarily hastens the day of the "pilgrimage to Narayama", and her gentle and devoted son is presented in contrast with the harshness and tragedy of their act.
History Shichirō Fukazawa heard the story about abandoning old people from an elderly resident of a farm in Ōgurozaka in Sakaigawa, Yamanashi Prefecture (present-day Ōgurozaka in Sakaigawa-chō, Fuefuki), and then combined it with the memory of the dramatic death of his mother Satoji, who suffered from liver cancer and who "of her own will was heading toward death, trying to starve herself". In this way he created the characters of the elderly mother Orin and her son Tatsuhei. Although the work is set in Shinshū, Fukazawa explained that the human relationships and terrain described in it were taken from Ōgurozaka in Yamanashi Prefecture. Reprinted in: and
The Ballad of Narayama was first published in the November 1956 issue of the magazine Chūō Kōron. The work won first prize in the inaugural edition of the magazine's literary competition for young writers, the . A year later it was published in book form. It was Shichirō Fukazawa's literary debut and was very well received by Japanese critics.
The story was translated into many languages. An English translation appeared as early as the same year, translated by John Bester, as The Oak Mountain Song, published in Japan Quarterly in 1957 (several years later a translation by Donald Keene, The Songs of Oak Mountain, was published in 1961). In Poland, the story appeared in 1986 in the collection Ballada o Narayamie. Opowieści niesamowite z prozy japońskiej.
Plot The work is set in a poor mountain village in the Shinshū region. According to local custom, every resident who reaches the age of seventy should go to Mount Narayama, where they remain awaiting death. Sixty-nine-year-old Orin humbly prepares to fulfill this obligation. She has long had her equipment ready for the final journey and is also pleased that her widowed son Tatsuhei has found a new wife. In order not to appear too strong and capable of continuing to sustain herself, she breaks her healthy teeth with a stone, since in the village a full set of teeth in an elderly person is considered a source of shame.
Orin believes that snow falling on the day of her departure for Narayama will be a fortunate sign. Tatsuhei, meanwhile, cannot reconcile himself to the necessity of parting from his mother and intends to postpone the journey until the following year. However, when his son Kesakichi and his wife Matsu are expecting a child and the shortage of food becomes increasingly severe, Orin herself decides to leave before the birth of her great-grandchild so as not to burden the family.
Three days before New Year's Day, Tatsuhei, in accordance with the demands of custom, carries his mother on his back to the summit of Narayama. Along the way they pass numerous human remains and crows feeding on the dead. After leaving Orin on the mountain, Tatsuhei sees snow beginning to fall. Moved, he breaks the prohibition against speaking and looking back, calling out to his mother that her wish has come true.
On his way back to the village, Tatsuhei witnesses a son from a neighbouring family throwing his seventy-year-old father Matayan into a ravine rather than carrying him all the way to the summit. Only then does he understand the meaning of advice he had heard earlier that some people end the journey before reaching Narayama. Upon returning home, he sees that family life continues—the pregnant Matsu wears a sash that once belonged to Orin, while Kesakichi has put on her padded jacket. Tatsuhei imagines that if his mother is still alive, she is now sitting alone on the mountain, being covered by snow.
Reception Publishing success At the time of its publication, The Ballad of Narayama attracted widespread attention among writers and critics. It was both Fukazawa's debut and the work through which he achieved fame in the Japanese literary world.
Critical opinions The critic Hakuchō Masamune, known for his severe judgments, wrote that "of the numerous works of this year, the one that moved me most was The Ballad of Narayama by the new writer Shichirō Fukazawa". Text printed on the book's obi; an excerpt was also reprinted in the 1987 edition, p. 187, and in the work by Ōki and Dahlström from 2003, p. 70. An excerpt was reprinted in the work by Ōki and Dahlström from 2003, p. 70. He added: "I even think that it might have been enough for the author to write this one work alone. I did not read it for fun or entertainment. I read it with my heart as one of the eternal books about life". likewise wrote: "If I were told to choose only one work from thirty years of postwar Japanese literature, I would without hesitation choose The Ballad of Narayama". An excerpt was reprinted in the work by Ōki and Dahlström from 2003, p. 70.
Taijun Takeda, one of the judges of the Chūō Kōron Prize for New Writers, wrote in the jury's choice justification that "regardless of how cruel, unhappy, or tragic the events become, the more terrible they are, the more strongly a beauty resembling the heroine's resistance without resistance permeates them". Sei Itō judged that the work contained something Japan had forgotten since the Meiji era while assimilating "the European way of thinking about human beings", and that reading it produced the impression: "ah, here is a true Japanese". He added that "there is in it a way of life that we Japanese have practised for thousands of years. It is natural that when we read it, our blood begins to boil". He also mentioned that the work reminded him of The Book of the Dead by Shinobu Orikuchi. Reprinted in:
Yukio Mishima described the impression of reading it as a feeling "as if my entire body had been drenched with water". He considered the farewell feast scene the most terrifying, stating that the fear it evoked appealed to "very dark, unpleasant memories inherited from their ancestors by poor Japanese people" and to "strange, almost unbearable in this temporal world, animal existential relationships". He also said that he experienced an effect similar to that of reading other texts that plunged him into ever deeper depression. In the portrayal of people subjected to fate, he additionally perceived a similarity to the psychology of the mother in John Millington Synge's drama Riders to the Sea. Mishima also identified Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End as a masterpiece opposite to The Ballad of Narayama, yet producing a similar impression after reading. Reprinted in: and
In a later essay, Mishima compared the state of mind of a judge reading works by debut authors to the feelings of the elders of a local community who year after year complain that young people are becoming worse at carrying the mikoshi during a festival, while secretly awaiting the appearance of a debut author about whom it will be possible to say "here is a novel", and before whom one could "fall at one's feet before the jewel of genius". He recalled that only once had he experienced such a "piercing shudder"—when he read the manuscript of The Ballad of Narayama. He wrote that at first the development of events seemed sluggish to him and he read the text without great expectations, but after five or ten pages he began to sense that he was dealing with something extraordinary. After reaching, without a moment's respite, "that terrible climax", he experienced an unconditional feeling that he had discovered a masterpiece.
In Poland, the story appeared in the collection Ballada o Narayamie. Opowieści niesamowite z prozy japońskiej (1986, the Seria Grozy series of PIW). The collection was reviewed by Maciej Parowski for Fantastyka. Writing about Fukazawa's story, Parowski regarded The Ballad of Narayama as a work allowing Polish readers to better understand Japanese culture and the philosophical foundations of contemporary Japanese literature. According to the reviewer, the work simultaneously depicts the cruelty and dignity of this custom as well as the strong solidarity of the community. In Parowski's view, the book makes it possible to better understand Polish speculative-fiction creators' fascination with the cultures of the Far East, pointing to a different way of perceiving the human being and their relationship with nature and the community.
Interpretations Philosophy of the fictional world wrote of the impression produced by The Ballad of Narayama that the "cruel action" of the son who, with a "heart ready to break", goes to abandon his mother, and the contradictory "beautiful love between the closest relatives", are "strangely intermingled", saturating the whole with an image that cannot be described as either gloomy or cheerful. Explaining why the world of images created by Fukazawa is regarded as so powerful, he stated that this is because "all materials are treated like things", or because it is based on "conceiving existence as a thing, the ability to penetrate existence, or metaphysics".
Character of Orin Tōkichi Kimura stated that "Orin has been destined for death and devotes all her energy to making her own death perfect". Discussing her behaviour and way of life—breaking her own teeth and passing all her knowledge on to her family so that they will not find themselves in a difficult situation after her death—he observed that "there is not the slightest attempt in her to pursue her instinctive desires; she proudly follows the path of self-sacrifice". Kimura also drew attention to the relationship in which "everything is mutually understood": Tatsuhei secretly cries, wordlessly sensing Orin's attitude, while Orin likewise knows without words that he is crying. He argued that "Orin's way of life and pride conform to the value system of the local community", and because all this is understood without words by both Tatsuhei and the villagers, Orin can consistently follow her own path without falling into loneliness; despite her self-sacrifice, she therefore remains fully happy.
Kimura also believed that this powerful "image of Orin" overlaps with the image of Fukazawa's own mother. Fukazawa remembered his mother, who died of liver cancer, as a "proud woman". Reprinted in: Of the rain that began to fall on the evening of the day of her funeral, he said—in a scene reminiscent of the snow in The Ballad of Narayama—"rain had never seemed so beautiful to me before". Reprinted in: Taking into account also that Fukazawa habitually spoke of his ideal of dying of liver cancer like his mother, Kimura concluded that "Orin's fundamental way of life can be regarded as a direct reflection of the author's own ideal. In other words, Orin is both an idealised image of the author's mother and a character to whom he entrusted his own dream".
Fukazawa himself also said that, in creating the character of Orin, he combined in her features of both Christ and Buddha. Reprinted in: