Cameron has already made one trip to Yuzawa, Niigata and found that there were too many people willing to do interviews and too much to learn for it to be done in a single trip. Therefore, we are seeking your help to defray the costs of transportation, food, and accommodations for two more trips to Yuzawa to meet more people who were raised in Snow Country. Because Cameron is already living in Japan, trips to Yuzawa are much less expensive than they would be if we had to travel from the United States.

The winter trip is more expensive because hotels and car rental costs are higher during this busy winter season in Snow Country which relies heavily upon winter tourism to fuel the economy.

Because we reached 100% funding earlier than expected, stretch goals have been added. We would like an extra hard drive for local backup and we have promised to take, print and send a photograph to each participant as a thank-you.

New goal: another trip to Yuzawa! Thank you for all your support!

Additional Information

“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky.” Thus begins Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata's famous novel "Snow Country", set in the Yuzawa, Niigata, Japan.

From mid-2014 to late 2017, Cameron Hilker lived in Yuzawa, Niigata, Japan, working in a small English school. During that time, he came to love the people of Snow Country, and formed friendships with people in the region as he worked among them. Having read "Snow Country" in English and Japanese, he also became interested in the history of the region and its cycles of economic prosperity and depression. Currently in a period of contraction, dilapidated remnants of a once-booming tourism industry still remain across the entire town.

Since moving to a different region of Japan and noticing the differences in culture and lifestyle, Cameron became intrigued by the idea of researching the uniquely beautiful Snow Country region and recording people's stories of eras long gone, before they are lost and forgotten. We plan to use these stories to evaluate the effects of modernization on this small pocket of Japan.

He already has contacts with the local government, the local history museum, and many potential interviewees, and has already performed some interviews.

Cameron felt particularly motivated to focus on the personal stories of people in this rural region of Japan because of an experience he had in a class as an undergrad student. During a class discussion about Japanese culture, its growth, and changes in Kyoto, he asked "We know so much about Kyoto, Osaka, Kamakura, and other cultural centers at their peaks, but what about the culture of all the people outside of these major cities? The food had to come from somewhere, right? What were those people doing?" The professor's answer could be summarized as: "Historians don't really care about the farmers, and they weren't doing much culturally significant stuff."

Cameron doesn't believe those people are insignificant and is confident that everyone has important stories and a cultural identity, no matter where they live. This project seeks to unearth those stories and understand that identity for the people in Snow Country.

We hope to preserve aspects of the unique culture and history of this region and contribute to the literature about the modernization of Japan by developing a thick description of living inhabitants' experiences over the past 50+ years, based on oral histories.

Japan is rapidly becoming an aging society, so recording these stories, experiences, and data immediately—before they are lost to the march of time—is vital.