Mount Osore

    In reading Discourses of the Vanishing, I was so intrigued to think about the process by which Mount Osore got it’s fame. As we see it now, Mount Osore is a beautiful physical representation of the Japanese fascination with death. Ivy explains how the mountain’s physical appearance of its daunting nature and volcanic history correlate to death as well as the more literal connection as an actual place of burial. But what I wonder, is how did the emotional aspect of this relationship emerge? Did it spring from a fear of the mountain and its daunting characteristics and therefore Mount Osore came to be associated with death? And although chapter five speaks some to the history of Mount Osore prior to the sixteenth century, this still leaves us with the question of at what point in time did this relationship develop?

    It is also interesting to consider the potentially symbolic actions of the Japanese people through their five-day festival. Although Ivy indicates that this festival is designed with the purpose of memorializing the dead through offerings, prayers, and recitations of scripture, is it perhaps true that the act of climbing the mountain over the course of a five day festival more indicative of a celebration of a conquering of death? Does this in a more subliminal way indicate a more intricate relationship of the Japanese people with death? And for that matter, how did the practice of this festival begin? It seems slightly ironic that to celebrate the revered concept of death, the Japanese people would climb the very thing that was a daunting representation of it.