The old woman of Lake Jusco. I think the author wanted to depict a woman who never gave up, no matter how hard things got, and lived resolutely even after losing her children. But it turned out to be exactly the kind of story that leaves you with a lingering sense of unease, a heartbreaking night where you can't find rest, anxiety, and a crawling sensation all over your skin. I'm not good at writing, so I'm sorry if I can't convey it well.
The narrator of the story, "the old woman," is currently 80 years old. At the beginning of the Taisho era, when she was 20, she married into a cold village by Lake Jusco. From then on, she gave birth almost every other year, eventually having six boys and five girls. However, only three of them survived until they were old enough to get married; all the other children passed away before her, and her husband also died young. Aside from one son who was drafted and killed in the war, and one daughter who went missing while working away from home, the other six children all died due to the poverty of the farming village.
First child... A 2-year-old girl. During the busy rice-planting season, she fell into an irrigation ditch and died the moment her mother looked away. Second child... A 12-year-old girl. She had a fever and was feeling unwell, but her grandfather and father dismissed it as laziness and forced her out to the rice fields, where her condition worsened and she died. Third child... A 14-year-old boy. Overcome by sleepiness and fatigue while operating a waterwheel in the middle of the night, he fell off, and his father, who was paired with him, didn't notice. He was dragged under the waterwheel and drowned. Fourth child... A 7-year-old boy. During a year of poor harvest, driven by hunger and taunted by a friend who said, "If you eat it, I'll give you a steamed potato," he ate toxic berries and died. Fifth child... A 24-year-old man, the eldest son. In a rare year of a good harvest, a heavy rain caused the levee to collapse, and he drowned while trying to protect the harvested rice. Sixth child... A 1-year-old girl. It was a year of bad harvest, and there was no money to see a doctor. She died of an illness that could be easily cured nowadays, with nothing anyone could do.
Every single one of these deaths is unimaginable in this day and age, yet considering the historical background, no one can really be blamed, leaving you with a heavy, unsettled feeling. Beyond the harsh farm work, in the old days there were taxes paid in rice, requisitioned rice during wartime, exploitation by landowners after the war, and later, forced production cuts. It makes me sad to think this must have been a common sight anywhere in Japan. In her later years, the old woman asked an *itako* medium to let her meet her deceased children, and they told her, "We don't resent you, Mom, and we're glad to see you're doing well." Perhaps the saving grace is that her remaining three children grew up, got married, and she got to see the faces of her grandchildren.
Considering the era, that kind of thing happened in every farming village. You could even argue they were in a slightly better situation because they didn't actively get rid of them or sell them off to human traffickers. The increase in average life expectancy is largely due to the disappearance of these kinds of hardships.
There is a short story by Sakyo Komatsu about a culture where parents conveniently cause the deaths of their children and then make a big show of grieving afterward, which I thought was a very sharp perspective.
From a modern perspective, *itako* are probably viewed as con artists or frauds. But among them, there are people like the old woman who are saved by the words of the *itako* (a kind lie), so you can't simply dismiss them as entirely evil. However, I remember reading a summary of a thread where someone said, "We tricked and messed with an *itako* for fun," where they pretended their still-living grandmother was deceased, had an *itako* at Mt. Osore channel her spirit, and mocked the medium. That was pretty sickening.
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