Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [105]
After recovering from its defeat in World War II, Japan set out to lead the world as a great industrial power. Pure poverty did not fit into this scenario; gigantic construction did. With industry and construction as the sole national goals, Japan turned on her own land, attacking the mountains and valleys with bulldozers, sweeping away old cities, filling in the harbors-essentially turning the nation into one large industrial battleship. Nobody can slow her as she steams full speed ahead toward a colossal shipwreck.
Another factor that prevents Japan from coming to its senses is the effect of the damage already done. Gavan McCormack has written, «The real and growing need is for imaginative projects designed to undo some of the damage to the environment: begin de-concreting the rivers and coast, demolishing some of the dams, restoring some of the rivers to their natural course.» Such a process has in fact begun in the United States, but in Japan it is nearly inconceivable. Consciousness of environmental issues is so low and heedless development has already so damaged Japan's urban and rural settings that what it would take to repair them beggars the imagination. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: as the texture of city life and the natural environment deteriorates, there are fewer and fewer places in which people can enjoy the quiet, meditative lifestyle of «pure poverty,» and fewer and fewer people who can appreciate what it ever meant.
A child brought up in Japan today may have a chance to travel to Shikoku'sTokushima Prefecture, but the closest he will come to enjoying its native culture is to see robots dancing in ASTY Tokushima's Yu-ing Hall. When he goes on family or school outings, bus tours will carry him not to famous waterfalls or lovely beaches but to see cement being poured at Atsui Dam. As Japan flattens its rivers and shoreline, and sheathes every surface with polished stone and steel, it is turning the nation into one huge artificial environment – a Starship Enterprise, though not nearly so benign. A Death Star. Aboard the Death Star, every megalomaniac sci-fi fantasy is a possibility.
At the deepest level we find ourselves face-to-face with what McCormack calls the «Promethean energy» of the Japanese people. With a thousand years of military culture behind them, a mighty energy propels the Japanese forward – to go forth, to do battle, to vanquish all obstacles. This is Japan's vaunted Bushido, the way of the warrior. During the centuries of seclusion before Japan opened up in 1868, this energy lay coiled within like a powerful spring. Once opened, Japan leaped forth upon the world with a voracious hunger to conquer and subdue – as Korea, China, and Southeast Asia learned in the 1930s and 1940s. And, despite the defeat of World War II, Japan has still not come to terms with its demon.
Economic analysts have seen the Bushido mentality in positive terms, as the motive force behind the long hours workers spend in overtime at their offices, taking few vacations, and devoting their lives to their companies. But Japan's unlimited energy to go forth and conquer is like a giant blowtorch-one has to be careful which direction the flame is pointing. In the past half century, Japan has turned the force of the flame upon its own mountains, valleys, and cities. McCormack writes:
One of the more philosophically minded of Japan's postwar corporate leaders, Matsushita Konosuke of National/ Panasonic, once advocated a 200-year national project for the construction of a new island that would involve leveling 20 percent, or 75,000 square kilometers, of Japan's mountains and dumping them in the sea to create a fifth island about the size of Shikoku. He argued that only the containment and focusing of Japan's energies in some such gigantic project at home could create the sort of national unity and sense of purpose that formerly had come from war.
This is why Yokota had to build the Orochi Loop, Kyoto had to build the New Station,