祖母の住む町に降り立つたびに、駅前の風景が少しずつ削がれていくのを実感します。商店街のアーケードはかつての賑わいが嘘のように静まり返り、シャッターを下ろしたままの店舗が軒を連ねています。八百屋の跡地は雑草に覆われ、写真屋の看板は色褪せて読み取れません。十年前まではここに行列ができていたという話が、もはや遠い昔話のように響くのです。
Every time I step off the train in my grandmother's town, I feel the scenery around the station being pared away a little further. The shopping arcade, once so lively the memory now feels like a lie, sits in a hush, with rows of storefronts whose shutters never go up. The lot where the greengrocer once stood is choked with weeds, and the sign above the old photo studio has faded past reading. Stories of a queue snaking out from this very spot ten years ago already sound like distant folktales.
駅から祖母の家までの道のりは、徒歩で十五分ほどです。途中ですれ違うのは、決まって杖をついた高齢者か、買い物袋を提げた中年の方ばかりで、子どもの声を耳にすることはほとんどありません。小学校の校庭からは、かつて聞こえていた歓声が消えて久しく、近隣の三校が統合されたとの貼り紙が役場の前に出ていました。地方の現実を目の当たりにすると、統計の数字がにわかに生々しい肌触りを帯びてきます。
It takes about fifteen minutes on foot from the station to my grandmother's house. The people I pass along the way are invariably elderly walkers leaning on canes or middle-aged shoppers carrying bags; I almost never hear a child's voice. The cheers that used to ring out from the elementary school yard have been gone for years, and a notice posted in front of the town office announced that three neighboring schools had been merged. Seeing the reality of a rural town up close gives the statistics a sudden, vivid texture.
祖母は今年で八十七歳になります。朝五時には起き出して仏壇に手を合わせ、庭の野菜に水をやってからラジオ体操に出かけるのが日課です。同じ集落に住む同年代の友人たちと公民館の前で落ち合い、十分ほど体を動かしてから世間話に花を咲かせる――この時間こそが何にも代えがたい生きがいなのだと、祖母は繰り返し口にします。健康であってこその日常だと、当人が誰よりも自覚しているのです。
My grandmother turns eighty-seven this year. Her daily routine is to rise at five, place her hands together before the family altar, water the vegetables in the garden, and then head out for radio calisthenics. She meets her age-mates in front of the community center, moves her body for about ten minutes, and lets the small talk bloom afterward — and this, she repeats again and again, is the one source of meaning in her life she would not trade for anything. No one is more aware than she is that ordinary daily life rests on staying healthy.
ところが、その輪も年々小さくなっているといいます。去年は三人が施設に移り、ひとりは静かに息を引き取りました。残された者にとって、隣家の灯りが消えていくことの寂しさは、外から眺める者には推し量るべくもないでしょう。それでも祖母は、明日の予定を語るときばかりは、少女のような笑顔を見せるのです。
But that circle is shrinking year by year, she says. Last year three of them moved into care facilities and one quietly passed away. The loneliness of watching the lights go out in a neighbor's house, one by one, is something an outsider has no way to fully grasp. Even so, when she talks about her plans for tomorrow, my grandmother still breaks into a smile like a young girl's.
買い物の不便さは年々深刻さを増しています。徒歩圏内のスーパーが昨年閉店し、最寄りの店まではバスを乗り継いで片道四十分を要します。週に二度、移動販売の軽トラックが集落を巡回してくれるおかげで、辛うじて新鮮な野菜や魚を手に入れることができている状況です。この販売車が廃止されようものなら、ここでの暮らしは立ち行かなくなりかねません。
The inconvenience of shopping grows worse every year. The supermarket within walking distance closed last year, and the nearest store now takes a forty-minute one-way trip by transferring buses. Twice a week a small mobile-vendor truck circles the hamlets, and thanks to it residents can just barely get hold of fresh vegetables and fish. If that vendor were ever discontinued, life out here might no longer be tenable.
医療の事情も似たり寄ったりです。診療所の医師は七十代後半で、後継者がいまだ見つからないと聞きました。月に一度の通院ですら、家族の付き添いなくしては成り立たない高齢者が増えており、隣町の総合病院までタクシーを使う日には、年金の大半が一日で消えてしまうそうです。地方の医療を支える仕組みは、もはや個々人の善意に頼るだけでは限界に達しています。
Medical access is much the same. The doctor at the local clinic is in his late seventies, and I'm told no successor has yet been found. Even a single monthly visit increasingly requires a family member to accompany the patient, and on days when an elderly person has to take a taxi to the general hospital in the next town, most of their pension can vanish in a single day. The systems that hold up rural medicine are well past what individual goodwill alone can sustain.