Introducing his own local mountain, Fukada Kyūya wrote that “A mountain watches over the home village of most Japanese people. Tall or short, near or far, some mountain watches over our native village like a tutelary deity … And however much our lives may change, the mountain will always be there, just as it always has been, to welcome us back to our home village.”
As it happened, the Hyakumeizan author studied French literature during his student days. Thus, he could not have been acquainted with the works of Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868). Yet this passage, from a short story by the Austrian author, makes perfect sense to anyone who has a familiar mountain or “meizan” on their horizon:
"South of the village you see a snowy mountain with dazzling horn-shaped peaks, rising, as it seems, from the house-tops themselves, but actually quite far away. All year round, summer and winter, there it is with its jutting crags and white expanses, looking down upon the valley.
As the most prominent feature of the landscape and ever before the eyes of the villagers, the mountain has been the inspiration of many a tale. There is not a man, young or old, in the village who has not something to tell about its peaks and crags, its caves and crevasses, its streams and torrents – either something that has happened to himself or that he has heard about from others.
This mountain is the pride of the village, as though the people had made it themselves, and with due respect to their honesty we can't swear to it that once in a while they would not fib for the honour and glory of their mountain.
Besides being notable in itself, the mountain is actually profitable, since on the arrival of a party of mountain-climbers to make the ascent from the valley, the villagers serve as guides; and to have been a guide, had this or that experience, known this or that spot is a distinction which affords anyone great satisfaction. When they sit together in the common room at the inn, they are always talking about their feats and strange adventures, never failing to mention what this or that traveller said and how much he had given them for their labours.
The mountain also sends down from its snowy flanks streams that feed a lake in the forest, from which a brook emerges and flows merrily through the valley, driving the saw-mill, the grist-mill, and small machinery of various kinds, providing cleanliness for the village and watering the cattle. The forest tracts afford timber and also break the force of the avalanches.
Through subterranean channels and loose soil at these altitudes water filters and, coursing vein-like through the valley, comes to the surface in little fountains and springs from which the people drink. And as time and again they offer strangers this unrivalled, much extolled water, they never stop to think how useful it is, accepting it simply as something that has always been there."
Reference
From Rock crystal: a Christmas tale by Adalbert Stifter, translated by Elizabeth Mayer, Pantheon Books, 1945
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