In Nibu, all of the working hands have already gone off to work by November, and though I was invited, there was a home with only one elderly housewife. There were once about fifty Buraku homes, but that has decreased by two-thirds, and even now the trend is not being stopped. And the young people leave. When I was invited to a home with a master (man), we talked together for about five or six hours. He seemed to be a "farmer who does not talk much" at first, but as we were chatting away for a long time underneath the kotatsu heater, he became quite talkative. He "seemed to really open up." The fifty year old farmer said, "When my son receives a bride, it does not matter how big the rooms are or if it is his home, he will leave the Buraku to have a new family in the heart of a town (Subarafukin) or in Nagaoka. All homes are like that. Recently, there is not one instance of a new family here. This is a terrible thing. The elderly are just going to be left behind. It is becoming the scene of the Buraku trashing the older people. Our son is also twenty-three years old and he is leaving to work for Suhara's Forestry Association bracken processing, but this bracken is imported cheaply from China. No matter how many bracken are on this mountain, it is not probable that there is enough for all the local people. My son has also surely thrown away the Buraku. He has thrown us away."

This horrible feeling. He said, "The city and the Japanese people at face value just absolutely will not understand." As it turns out, the "absolutely not understood" people are those whose lifestyle in May is shut down because of heavy snow. The snowfall is from four to five meters deep. A terrible time is when it is seven meters deep. Around homes, snow fell from the roofs and piled up higher than the houses. It is not "snow to be plowed away" anymore. It is called a "snow moat." The Tsuda region's literary character, Bakushi Suzuki, wrote a masterpiece in the mid-Edo period called "Hokuetsu Seppu." Close to the beginning, he first states his grudge on the snow.

"...More than the past, this year the good snow of a good country did not fall. Then, I saw the people of the country who came from warm places at the first snow and could not dream of the fun that it must be for them. This year, if you ask again what the snow is, I better say that the snow is sadness and the lack of luck born from the surroundings of a cold country. I watch the snow and I envy the good weather of fun people who are in a warm place like Hankuwa." (compilation of the beginning and end of the aforementioned book, chapter on "the first snow")

The people of the town dragged on talking about the snow that kept falling limitlessly and pressured their lives. An example of a recent, terrible big snow occurred in 1963 (Showa 38). In Nibu and Fukuyama, the towns were completely isolated, and the phones were also cut so all ways to get in touch were stopped. In order to rescue their homes, the young people who left the town for work made a chilling homecoming, and the Japanese Self Defense Forces' helicopter proceeded with airlift rescues. A sixty year old housewife spoke as she reminisced about that winter.

"The snow was piled higher than that when it deeply covered seven meters and the "snow moats" heaped up above the houses. We had to, then, first clear off the snow in the distance. We can then move to the next open area on the snow covered hills, and after that work three or four times at transferring to the next snow covered hills again, and turn to reach the promised snow around the house will finally come."

"If the mountain becomes an avalanche it will be terrible, so even at night we prepare snowshoes and a straw coat. Without going to bed, I slept in the kotatsu heater. My comings and goings were on the second floor, but even if I call out to my next door neighbor, nobody can hear. If my electricity is also cut, all I have are candles.

In fact, in the 1930s (Showa 8-9), because of an avalanche, a pillar in a Japanese-style room in the back of her house was broken. In July of the following year (1965), Nibu's Nishi River attacked with raging flood waters. There was also damage because of the Shin-Nigata earthquake. In the Tsuoa Region's adjoining town of Touka, the next phrase of the city's Kannouto Temple guidelines for proper etiquette is, the Buraku of Nibu must have it (disaster and lack of luck) in their hearts. (Nigata Topographical Studies Manual Document "Nigata Prefecture's Snow, from Science and Lifestyle")

Snow hell. If it is my father's land, I will continue living there - Abeko Day. page 221-224 Going Off To Work The farmer and poet, Kyoshi Okabu's relationship with his elementary school is just how he reflects on his life in this area. Kyoshi, the eldest son with seven siblings, had the elementary school as a place to babysit kids. In the winter, parents were in the home, so they went to class. But, starting with sweeping the silkworms and taking the mulberry trees because it is in the early June, they finished harvesting the rice before the middle of November. Since Kyoshi was a third year student, he had been taking his little brother and sister to school. He carried one on his back and took one in his hand. Until he became a sixth year student, about thirty total all came. It was a duplex class with one classroom and one teacher. Because the babies cried and Kyoshi did not receive any support, he went to the playground. On a rainy day it was a gymnasium. That kind of "student babysitter" always has two or three others, so they are never lonely. It is rather fun if you get along. When Kyoshi himself and the one year younger, eldest daughter started walking to school, the parents asked the kids from the neighborhood if they would like to be taken and babysat on the way to school too, so Kyoshi's brothers and sisters have always been "going to school" since they were two or three years old.

But, what was hard for Kyoshi were the other students at the school who said to him, "You smell like piss." Then, he could not get diapers and a rubber cover for carrying babies. The baby's urine was from diapers, so sometimes Kyoshi's kimono (A yukata called a hadako. In the winter, there is a place in the hadako called a nonko, which is for storing cotton.) got wet. Of course, he changed the diapers, but he could not just use a bunch of his kimonos. This is when he came to smell like urine. But, when they bullied him by saying, "You smell like piss," without the other "student babysitters" saying anything about their relationship, the solidary group stood up in his defense.

But in the winter, there is nothing more important than just to go to class. To go to a higher elementary school, you have to commute about ten kilometers out to Toujou Higher Elementary School. Parents became dependant on the labor work contribution of one person, so from the May rice planting to about November, Kyoshi was busy with the charcoal burner and farming and could not commute to school. Besides, from December to March, heavy snows fall and you come to not be able to commute anyway. Two years at the higher elementary school were like this, with finishing after only attending scheduled class three months from the middle of April (in one year, a month and a half).

As I was asking about Kyoshi's younger age in this way, I was thinking about my hometown, Shinshu, Inadani, as a deep mountain region, and came to remember and compare it. The fact is that Kyoshi and I were the same year in elementary school. My town, Inadani, and the neighboring village of Kuse in the back of the mountain were so rural. Like Kyoshi's schooling, I took two kids and was a "student babysitter," but there were not always a number of kids on the playground. At the same time, it is just hard to imagine about a region where almost all of the town, in two years, just went to higher elementary school for three months.

In the summer of that year, he left the higher elementary school and Kyoshi went off to work for the first time. It was as a civil engineer for the "Shirosawa Group," a subcontractor of "Shietsu Chemistry Industry," which is located in the prefecture along the Shingyou River. It was about forty days before the Japanese Bon Festival. Four people left from Nibu. It was their intention to find labor recruitment through a building subcontractor in Joujou who is known in Nibu, but afterwards the circumstances of their earnest going off to work were pretty different. Soon after the war, there was a food shortage even in the farm villages, so more than "income," the negative sense of "reducing the number of mouths to feed" was big. When coming back home, if you bought salt with your wages, you could get about ten or twelve liters. It was a time of salt shortages, so miso and Japanese pickles were extremely useful. Kyoshi's father then spoke of remembering this time as they sat at the fireplace.

Moreover, the three or four years before and after he was twenty years old, he worked for two months in the winter on the shores of Enoshima. According the the same subcontractor, two people from Nibu got introduced. They made a breakwater from near the Katase shore's Kaiku Public Bath Wharf to Kamakura. But, also during this time the "reducing the number of mouths to feed" element was strong, and there was a curiosity of the Japanese people at face value and the city. When he went home, he bought a jacket and a suit with his wages, and then had a little bit of the cash left. He tried on the jacket on the night steam train and it was pretty much too big. At the same time, the jacket was really wanted by young people. There was a side of him that went out to work because he wanted a jacket. Kyoshi, who deboarded the train at the station in his hometown early in the morning, asked if he could exchange his jacket for a smaller one at a store there, but he was refused. There was nothing he could do, so he bought the small jacket with all of his remaining cash. In the end, the result of two months of civil engineering was two jackets and a suit. The big jacket was, later, taken back by the seller.

But, reducing the number of mouths to feed and "want for a jacket" idyllic going off to work period was not so long. Based on the 1954 (Showa 29) MSA Agreement's first turning point, and from the United State's so-called "Surplus Agricultural Products" large amount of imports, the "Cheaper Agricultural Administration" started operating. The 1960 (Showa 35) Ikeda Cabinet's "Economic Growth Policy" started the following year's basic agricultural law, and as the plan for oppressed farmers' migrant workers to receive their salary from the city and factories continued, Kyoshi's going off to work and all of today's "migrant workers" have become a model. In 1964 (Showa 39), the percentage of young people going off to work in the town of Mougen reached seventy-three percent. Also, the workers duration increased from five months to nine months, and the identity of the people were those from thirty years old to fifty years old. There were many civil engineers, and the daily wages were almost all in the $10 class.

From the bellowing winter lifestyle with heavy snow, and the time of that kind of young man which was being robbed from going off to work, the town was pretty much "just waiting for death."