Just throw that anywhere
When does garbage become artifact?
I took the photo above at a place called sawa-do-touge 沢度峠, a small clearing located on a ridge that runs between Otaki and Mitake villages in Nagano’s Kiso Valley.
Sawa-do-touge was used for many years as a stop for pilgrims on their way to Mt. Ontake (御嶽山). The small clearing offered an amazing view of the sacred mountain, and a small hut serving food and beverages once stood there, along with a shrine gate (torii 鳥居) framed Mt. Ontake.
Apparently those visiting Mt. Ontake in the past had little concern about keeping the environment clean. On the hillside behind where the hut once stood is a scatter of beer bottles, bowls for serving rice, and a variety of other “artifacts”.
Most of the mountain huts in Japan today use helicopters to haul their garbage away, so I can’t really blame these folks for not wanting to carry several hundreds of peoples’ waste out on their backs. It must have been hell enough carrying the beer and such up in the first place.
Today we might call it a debris scatter, but really it’s just a pile of trash I suppose.
Contributor Bio: I am a doctoral student of environmental anthropology currently living and conducting research in a mountain village in Nagano. In my research I explore modernity as it is expressed in a rural mountain community. Specifically I look at national management structures, as well as social discourses, related to forests and probe the impacts these have on local human communities. I have lived and worked in Japan for 5 years. My interests also include Buddhism, literature, music, and mountaineering. Read more at my personal blog: In the Pines.
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