There is an art of living well and aging well in Japan. The author invites us to discover it in Ogura, a small village nestled in the hollow of a valley at the foot of the mountains around Kyoto. Hubert Delahaye spent his professional life at the Collège de France in the field of sinology. He was attached to the Chair of Social and Intellectual History of China by Jacques Gernet and then to the Institutes of the Far East as a lecturer. It is natural that he was also interested in Japanese neighbors, those islanders so close to the Chinese and at the same time so different. For years, Hubert Delahaye has regularly immersed himself in this miniature world where, despite the passage of the seasons and a world in full mutation, time seems suspended. Borrowing the gaze and voice of one of his inhabitants, an old lady with confounding benevolence and wisdom, he brought back these letters, an impressionist painting of an intimate Japan. The evocation of a nature overflowing with life where men and beasts coexist in a delicate harmony is accompanied, in a subtle counterpoint, by reflections on the relations between generations, respect for religious traditions, social assistance, the abandonment of the countryside, but also the memory of a painful past, the upheaval of climate or cracks in family ties, all stakes for contemporary Japanese society. The old lady seems to be telling us: "I was born, so I'm here, and no matter how bad the world is, it's good to live, grow old and even die in Ogura."