Kason the Mountain Man

Peering ahead into tomorrow’s Japan:

The year: 2037. Seven years after the crash.

On the outskirts of Iga - Dressed in antelopeskin and a raccoon dog cap, leading a pair of donkeys loaded with a hunting rifle, a bedroll and his supplies, Kason nodded his head to locals in passing rice-powered cars and yet cursed their environmentally damaging innovations, their concrete and their modern lives. Kason, hailing from Oregon, is a rare gaijin mountain man: living off, or rather with, the Suzuka Mountains. All his possessions are stored in wooden boxes and leather pouches slung over the backs of his three closest companions - donkeys Trooper Tarou and Laughing Knees and his bear dog, Bo.

Kason is leaving Iga after spending the week there at the iga ”rendezvous” – a bi-annual trade fair/camp out , held by farmers and hunters who get together to grow their beards long, sing and dance, trade wares and perishables, discuss hunting, silviculture and agriculture, and to eat and campout together under the trees. Unlike Kason, however, most camp attendees had driven in their rice-powered automobiles and donkey-drawn farm utility wagons to the events’ closet parking lot, and they spend their weekdays living in houses down in the satoyama and low-lands.

Kason’s way of life in the Suzukas is a mix of walking, sleeping out of caves, trapping and hunting the fury and the feathered and gathering mountain veg, mushrooms, nuts and berries, as well as being pastoral nomadic - planting forest gardens up and down valley sides along the old misty border regions of Shiga and Mie prefectures and utilizing fresh spring water and narrow pasture lands up and down the contiguous elongated block of largely untrammeled Suzuka Mountain terrain for his small herd of goats.

With the onset of spring he prepares to migrate with his donkeys, dog and herd of goats to high Suzuka pasture lands, known as Suzuka no bokusouchi. The journey is through the middle altitude region along narrow river valleys; and kason’s migration, is seasonal between fixed sites, through fixed routes and according to a more or less fixed time table. Generally, he spends May to October in summer camps, in high altitude pastures, and November to April in winter camps, in Midori Valley at the base of Mt. Gozaishou’s northern slope. The outward and inward journeys take three to four days.

Kason’s relationship with wildlife is unique; he hunts to live, and has fled civilization to fulfill his need for freedom and aliveness. Since the crash of 2030, Kason toyed with the idea of becoming a donkey breeder – being that petrol powered automobiles were no longer being used and donkeys were really in demand. But he had decided that the mountains were where his heart was; Kason grew to maturity and entered upon his far-stretched career of withdrawing into solitude, hunting bears and deer, observing wildlife, preserving independence of body and mind, and cultivating eccentricities.

This is the story of Kason the Mountain Man.

To be continued…