I saw this Japanese movie "Narayama Festival Exam" about three years ago. At that time, I felt a little shocked. It was hard to imagine that Japan, which was poor in the past, had such a custom of abandoning the old. Later, I searched the Internet and found that not only in Japan, but all over the world, especially some poor countries have had such "immoral" customs. In the ninth issue of China National Geographic magazine in 2009, he wrote an article about abandoning the old. The author personally went to some mountainous areas in Hubei Province to investigate and saw many local people called "death kilns" and "self-death kilns". , "Old Man's Cave" and other abandoned old sites. Most of these "abandoned old caves" like caves are built on the stone cliffs by the river. When the river rises, the bones in the caves will be washed away with the river.
The picture comes from the 09th issue of China National Geographic in 2009 / Huang Shaojian
I haven't seen the era of Luyou starvation with my own eyes. According to the elders' descriptions of the famine era, this kind of poverty really exists. This is not as simple as having one more person or one less person to eat, but the kind of hardship that oftentimes there is no food to eat and the weeds are plucked up for food. The old man in the movie "Narayama Festival Exam" considers the continuation of the next generation, the family has a new population (the son married a wife), and there are horrified children (perhaps more than one), but the food is extremely scarce, the old man decides to let his son carry him up the mountain , and then, like a gregarious animal about to die, choose to live in isolation and starve to death alone. This custom was passed on from generation to generation, until it finally seemed to be a duty and self-sacrifice that the elderly had to perform. However, compared with the more affluent era we live in, the practical problems that can be considered go far beyond these basic needs of survival, and the moral standards will be different, but poverty will weaken far more than morality. This is a tragedy of the times. Although this custom of abandoning old age has disappeared, it does not mean that poverty has disappeared.
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The Ballad of Narayama reviews
