消えゆく剣山の村々Vanishing Villages of Mt. Tsurugi

Today I traveled from Takamatsu to Mt. Tsurugi, then back to Takamatsu, and finally to Tokushima. Once again, I felt strongly that the differences in folk character become strikingly apparent simply by crossing a single mountain, and I believe Shikoku is the place where one can most vividly sense this fact. Because regions like Shikoku, separated from Honshu by the sea throughout long history, have been isolated, these tendencies are especially pronounced. Even today, when three great bridges—linking Hyogo to Tokushima, Okayama to Kagawa, and Hiroshima to Ehime—have made it possible to drive freely between Honshu and Shikoku, the folk character that had been historically closed off cannot be erased in just thirty or forty years.

In Takamatsu, Kagawa, where people are blessed by the gentle climate of the Seto Inland Sea, residents appear cheerful and lively, and the city still has its share of gatherings of people. However, crossing just one mountain into Tokushima, I sense an atmosphere tinged with an indescribable quiet heaviness, one I have not yet found a way to meet.

At the end of May I also visited the Tokushima area and entered the sacred Mt. Tsurugi. On that occasion I took the western route from Sadamitsu and investigated the traces of ancient clans, but this time I entered from the eastern side via Mima and conducted my research there. Mima City itself is a relatively new municipality, created through a series of mergers, but originally the mountain settlements of Mt. Tsurugi were not part of the Mima basin communities, which is why the character of the mountain people remains strikingly different from those of the village below. The settlement I visited this time was at an altitude of around 500 meters, but to be honest, what remains of it today is in near collapse.

Looking at this from the perspective of Japan’s “cities at risk of disappearing,” which I have discussed several times before, the situation is convincing. Each time I visit, I cannot help but think the government’s announced projections are still too optimistic. The northeastern Tohoku region, which I often visit personally, is already known as the leading area at risk of disappearance, but Tokushima and its neighbor Kochi are no exceptions. Their villages are sparsely populated, with only the elderly remaining, and most of them are weary. Young people who once left for the cities never return, and since the residents themselves understand this reality, there is an atmosphere of resignation. Interestingly, such an atmosphere did not exist before the pandemic. Although declining birthrates and aging populations have been recognized as issues for the past thirty years, up until the pandemic people seemed to retain a certain optimism that things would somehow work out. Yet after the pandemic ended, people’s attitudes seemed to undergo a major shift, as if their optimism vanished and was replaced by bewilderment at the fact that everything might be lost. After all, once the elderly who live in these vulnerable villages pass away, everything there truly will vanish.

Indeed, according to a nearly ninety-year-old man I spoke with today, there were over 6,500 people in the area in the 1950s, but now only about 400 remain, almost all elderly. With no successors, as the younger generations have gone to the cities and never returned, he spoke with sadness that maintaining the settlement is likely no longer possible. Considering their ages, by the time 2030 arrives, countless unsustainable villages across Japan will likely disappear. Furthermore, natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis must always be considered as decisive factors shaping the future. Another reality that cannot be ignored is that many municipalities across Japan are effectively bankrupt. This is not limited to remote rural areas—major municipalities that support large metropolitan areas, such as Osaka City and Kyoto City, are also affected, with the finances required to sustain the urban regions already in a critical state. Realistically, the Japanese government will inevitably prioritize partial rescue measures for major economic zones, and as a result, many rural areas will be abandoned.

In this scenario, the vast infrastructure built nationwide during the period of rapid economic growth will soon reach the end of its lifespan all at once, and remote rural settlements will face severe obstacles in daily life. For example, on the route I took into Mt. Tsurugi, the Sadamitsu side is still manageable, but the Mima side consists of long stretches of narrow roads that barely allow a single car to pass. If even one problem arises, residents could be cut off from the villages below. The two people I interviewed today, both close to ninety, remain very robust, no doubt because they have lived in such a harsh mountain environment year-round. But once the time comes when they can no longer live independently and must move into nursing homes, their culture will disappear in an instant.

This culture is also reflected in the landscape. As one travels around Mt. Tsurugi, one encounters scenes of small settlements clinging to the mountainsides in the midst of harsh terrain, which is truly astonishing. Today, again and again, I was struck by the feeling of wandering into the world of a dungeon. One cannot help but wonder: why did the ancestors of this region choose to live hidden away in such remote, inaccessible places, invisible from the basin below?

Various theories exist, but the most famous associated with Mt. Tsurugi is the legend of the fallen Heike warriors. Yet in fact, Heike refugees spread not only to Mt. Tsurugi but across the nation, hiding in remote places to escape the pursuit of the Genji and managing to survive. As a result, Heike’s unique culture, which overthrew the aristocratic regime for the first time in Japanese history and established a warrior government, spread nationwide, leaving behind regions with strange cultural similarities. This is believed to be due to the defeated Heike scattering in all directions, disseminating a common cultural sphere. Even around Mt. Tsurugi, numerous legends and tales of fallen Heike warriors remain, and many of the people there are surely descendants of these refugees.

However, this concerns only the relatively recent period of the late twelfth century. If we trace back further into antiquity, the vast Yoshino River basin that runs from Mt. Tsurugi to the plains was a region where groups of so many different origins overlapped that it could be called a zone where people who had crossed the sea came and went. Why some people chose to live deep in these mountains remains unclear, but even today descendants of ancient clans, indispensable to Japanese history, continue to live here.

Once closely tied to the Yamato court, these ancient clans were later defeated in power struggles and disappeared from recorded history, leaving only their stories. History, as they say, is written by the victors, but the truth is that there are aspects of ancient Japan that cannot be explained solely by the history created by the winners of Yamato.