The sight of wiping away the snow has inspired elegant scenes mentioned in various songs--picture brushing off the lightly gathered snow and watching it flutter down just like fallen petals. But in places like my hometown, where the snow falls thick and heavy, you’ll find no such grace.
Once the snow starts falling, you have to remove it right away or else it could pile up and exceed 3 meters. This is called “snow digging” in the local language. Far from elegantly “wiping” it away, it's closer to digging soil. There is no way around it, because if you don’t “snow dig” there is no way in or out of your house. Even a well-built house is at risk of being crushed by the weight of snow.
A tool called “kosuki,” which is a snow plow made by mountain residents and sold to villagers, is used to clear the snow. It's made from the wood of Japanese birch trees, making them tenacious and unbreakable. The shape is similar to a normal plow, but the blade is extra wide. This is the most important tool to have handy during snowfall.
The collected snow is piled up like small mountains in a vacant lot and kept out of the way. This process is called “Horiage.” The rich use their many young servants to dig the snow, and if that isn't enough, they hire even more diggers to help them. It’s important to move the snow as soon as possible, because if it snows again in the middle of Horiage, the piles may become too heavy to move with human strength alone.
The poor don’t have servants and cannot hire anyone, so every man and woman in these regions must work together to dig themselves out of the snow. At times, we spend all our energy and resources to dig the snow that fell during the day, only for it to snow on us again at night. In times like these, when all the labor seems pointless, everyone, rich or poor, hangs their head and lets out a big sigh. In the Snow Country, we count the snow falls by the digs, “First Dig” for the first snowfall, “Second Dig” for the second, and so on.