JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 27 из 270As Donald Richie, the dean of Japanologists in Tokyo, points out, «What's the difference between torturing a bonsai and torturing the landscape?»
In 1995, the citizens of Kamakura woke one day to find that the municipality was felling more than a hundred of the city's famed cherry trees – Kamakura's official symbol – in order to build a concrete support barrier on a hillside. The reason? Some residents had complained of rocks rolling down the slopes, and officials had condemned the hill, which was within temple grounds, as an «earthquake hazard.» In modern Japan, it requires a surprisingly small threat from nature to elicit this «sledgehammer to a mosquito» reaction. Every bucket of sand that might wash away in a typhoon, every rock that might fall from a hilltop is a threat the government must deal with – using lots of concrete.
Quietly, almost invisibly, a strong ideology grew up during the past fifty years to support the idea that total control over every inch of hillside and seashore is necessary. This ideology holds that nature is Japan's special enemy, that nature is exceptionally harsh here, and that the Japanese suffer more from natural calamities than do other people. One can taste the flavor of this attitude in the following excerpt from a publication of the Construction Ministry's River Bureau:
Earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and droughts have periodically wreaked havoc on Japan. For as long as Japanese history has been recorded, it has been a history of the fight against natural factors... Although Japan is famous for its earthquakes, it is perhaps water-related problems which have been the true bane of Japanese life. In the Japanese islands, where the seasons are punctuated by extremes, extremes which have required people to take vigilant precautions in order to assure survival, water is a constant issue.
The idea that the nation's history is one of a «fight against natural factors» goes back a thousand years, and the tradition is that the main work of government was Chisan Chisui, «control of rivers and mountains.» An extensive literature bemoans the damage done by natural and man-made disasters, typified by the Record of the Ten-Foot-Square Hut by Kamo no Chomei (1153-1216), a classic of Japanese philosophical literature. In his Record, Kamo no Chomei dolefully relates a series of disasters ranging from fires, wars, and whirlwinds to famines and earthquakes. His point is that life is impermanent, that «the world as a whole is a hard place to live in, and both we and our dwellings are precarious and uncertain things.»
As a matter of historical fact, Japan has suffered far less from wars, famines, and floods than China, for example, where these disasters have resulted in the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of much of China's perishable physical heritage.
In 1995, the citizens of Kamakura woke one day to find that the municipality was felling more than a hundred of the city's famed cherry trees – Kamakura's official symbol – in order to build a concrete support barrier on a hillside. The reason? Some residents had complained of rocks rolling down the slopes, and officials had condemned the hill, which was within temple grounds, as an «earthquake hazard.» In modern Japan, it requires a surprisingly small threat from nature to elicit this «sledgehammer to a mosquito» reaction. Every bucket of sand that might wash away in a typhoon, every rock that might fall from a hilltop is a threat the government must deal with – using lots of concrete.
Quietly, almost invisibly, a strong ideology grew up during the past fifty years to support the idea that total control over every inch of hillside and seashore is necessary. This ideology holds that nature is Japan's special enemy, that nature is exceptionally harsh here, and that the Japanese suffer more from natural calamities than do other people. One can taste the flavor of this attitude in the following excerpt from a publication of the Construction Ministry's River Bureau:
Earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and droughts have periodically wreaked havoc on Japan. For as long as Japanese history has been recorded, it has been a history of the fight against natural factors... Although Japan is famous for its earthquakes, it is perhaps water-related problems which have been the true bane of Japanese life. In the Japanese islands, where the seasons are punctuated by extremes, extremes which have required people to take vigilant precautions in order to assure survival, water is a constant issue.
The idea that the nation's history is one of a «fight against natural factors» goes back a thousand years, and the tradition is that the main work of government was Chisan Chisui, «control of rivers and mountains.» An extensive literature bemoans the damage done by natural and man-made disasters, typified by the Record of the Ten-Foot-Square Hut by Kamo no Chomei (1153-1216), a classic of Japanese philosophical literature. In his Record, Kamo no Chomei dolefully relates a series of disasters ranging from fires, wars, and whirlwinds to famines and earthquakes. His point is that life is impermanent, that «the world as a whole is a hard place to live in, and both we and our dwellings are precarious and uncertain things.»
As a matter of historical fact, Japan has suffered far less from wars, famines, and floods than China, for example, where these disasters have resulted in the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of much of China's perishable physical heritage.