School Study Guides

elderly persons who previously had only the choice be-

tween relying on a special nursing home or being cared

for at home by family members. 

The hope of spending one’s old age in the comfort of

home and to die in familiar surroundings is perhaps uni-

versal. Musashino has focused on this aspiration. Instead

of trying to place in a nursing home every elderly person

living alone, it offers a wide array of services people can

take advantage of living right at home. They can have

meals delivered, cleaning and laborious jobs done, and

even receive 24-hour nursing care (i.e., home care even

after they become bedridden). Assistance for living ex-

penses is available up to ¥80,000 per person or ¥160,000

per couple a month. Livelihood-assistance funds provided

under this system allow even those whose pensions are

extremely small to live respectably. 

Also epochal among the corporation’s services is the

set-up for loaning funds against dwellings or property of

individuals up to the amount of their estimated value for

several years. (See also my book Nagaraeshi toki [Long

Lives Lived], Bungei Shunjû, 1984, a collection of previ-

ously written essays.)

The next work of fiction to draw attention to the prob-

lems of old age was Fukazawa Shichirô’s “Narayama-

bushi kô” [tr., The Songs of Oak Mountain, 1961],

published in the November 1956 issue of Chûô Kôron as

the winner of the First Chûô Kôron Prize for New Writers

(Shinchô bunko edition, 1987). Fukazawa was guitar ac-

companist for strip shows performed at the Nichigeki

Music Hall when he wrote this, his first novel, based on a

legend passed down in his native Yamanashi prefecture,

about a man who took his aged mother to the mountains

to abandon her to die. He submitted the story to the Chûô

Kôron Prize for New Writers’ screening committee, com-

posed of novelists Itô Sei, Takeda Taijun, and Mishima

Yukio, and was awarded first prize.

All three of the screening committee members, despite

their completely different character as writers, chose

Fukazawa’s work, and even the sharp-tongued Masamune

Hakuchô (1879–1962) had nothing but praise for the

work, which he called “the most memorable event of the

year” and “the book I shall remember until I die.”

Critic Hinuma Rintarô explains the story as follows: 

Narayamabushi kô is based on the theme of the legends

of old women abandoned in the mountains (ubasute)

that are part of Japanese folklore, and the protagonist is

an old woman named Rin. Quite unlike the image ordi-

narily associated with the ubasute legend, of an old

woman being left to die against her curses and protests,

Rin asks on her own volition to be taken away and left

to die. She is moved to this request by the famine that

has struck the village and household she lives in, and

she even hastens the day she will be taken away by

breaking her front teeth with a stone. Her son, Tatsuhei,

though well aware of the village’s rule that old women

must be taken to Narayama to die, says nothing about

it. He and his wife both want to keep his mother with

them as long as she lives. Rin herself is fully aware of

how much her son and his wife care for her. But then,

when Tatsuhei’s son Kesakichi falls in love with the

daughter of the house next door and the girl becomes

pregnant, [meaning there will be one more mouth to

feed], Tatsuhei is forced to do something. Filled with

anguish and despair, Tatsuhei carries Rin to Narayama

to face the will of the gods. The curious blend of the

cruelty of the act that is performed and the profoundly

moving love and affection between mother and son fills

the work with images suspended between profound

sorrow and happiness.

Until the early twentieth-century, the greatest difficulty

in old age had to do with how to get enough to eat. Food

was always in short supply, and particularly in rural areas

where families were large, elderly persons no longer able

to work often found themselves in the weakest position

within the family. But the average lifespan was short, at

around fifty. The problem of caring for elderly persons

bedridden because of age was not an issue.

From Fiction to Nonfiction

The year 1972 marked a turning point in the history of

aging in Japan. When more than 7 percent of the popula-

tion is over 65, the society is said to be “aging.” In 1970,

the percentage of people over 65 had risen to the 7 percent

mark. In June 1972 Ariyoshi Sawako’s novel Kôkotsu no

hito [lit., “The Enraptured”; tr., The Twilight Years, Ko-

dansha International, 1984] was published and sold a mil-

lion copies within the first year.

Kôkotsu no hito is neither a suspenseful detective story

nor a romance full of excitement and high emotions. It is

simply a chronicle of a woman’s devoted care for her hus-

4

Japanese Book News

Number 17

Sources: UN, The Sex and Age Distribution of World Population 1994.

Figures for Japan from Management and Coordination Agency and

Health and Welfare Ministry surveys on population projections as of

January 1997. 

* Includes both former East and West Germany.

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

%

United Kingdom

Sweden

Italy

Germany*

France

U.S.A.

Japan

China

Republic of Korea

2050

2030

2010

1990

1970

1950

Proportion of Population 65 Years and Over in Selected Nations 

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