JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 30 из 270Intended to address urgent needs for water and electric power, some of these programs were not wholly beneficial, although it had been claimed that they would be. After a certain point, however, Americans reconsidered these projects. In other East Asian nations, environmental destruction, serious as it is, slows down when it ceases to be profitable. Not so in Japan. It is tempting to blame this on an evil Western influence, but that does not explain Japan's rampant and escalating assault on its rivers, mountains, and coasts, which is so at variance with anything to be found in the West.
In this, Japan teaches us a lesson about a cultural problem that every modern state faces: how to rise above antiquated cultural attitudes that have dangerous consequences for modern life. Another case in point is the «frontier mentality» that still makes so many Americans cherish the right to possess firearms. The right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment made sense for poorly protected frontier communities, but in modern America it leads to the slaughter of thousands of people every year. No other advanced nation would tolerate this. Yet Americans still find it impossible to legislate gun control. From this we may see that Japan is very unlikely to rethink its environmental policies, for the very reason that channeling small streams into concrete chutes is something learned not from the West but from Japans own tradition. As with other stubborn cultural problems, change will come when enough people become aware of them and demand solutions. Unfortunately, as we will see throughout this book, change is the very process that Japan's complex systems work to prevent at all costs.
In Kamo no Chomei's time, changes caused by nature seemed to be irrevocable acts of karma. There was simply no alternative but to submit to impermanence. With the help of modern technology, however, it seems possible to banish impermanence once and for all, and thus the concept of impermanence has mutated into a relentless war on nature. The self-pitying perception that Japan, punished viciously by the elements, is «a hard place to live in» features in the media and in school curricula, and serves as the official reason that Japan cannot afford the luxury of leaving nature alone.
A 1996 editorial in the major daily newspaper Mainichi Shimbun says it well: «This country is an archipelago of disasters, prone to earthquakes, typhoons, torrential rains, floods, mudslides, landslides, and, at times, to volcanic eruptions. There are 70,000 zones prone to mudslides, 10,000 to landslides and 80,000 dangerous slopes, according to data compiled by the Construction Ministry.
In this, Japan teaches us a lesson about a cultural problem that every modern state faces: how to rise above antiquated cultural attitudes that have dangerous consequences for modern life. Another case in point is the «frontier mentality» that still makes so many Americans cherish the right to possess firearms. The right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment made sense for poorly protected frontier communities, but in modern America it leads to the slaughter of thousands of people every year. No other advanced nation would tolerate this. Yet Americans still find it impossible to legislate gun control. From this we may see that Japan is very unlikely to rethink its environmental policies, for the very reason that channeling small streams into concrete chutes is something learned not from the West but from Japans own tradition. As with other stubborn cultural problems, change will come when enough people become aware of them and demand solutions. Unfortunately, as we will see throughout this book, change is the very process that Japan's complex systems work to prevent at all costs.
In Kamo no Chomei's time, changes caused by nature seemed to be irrevocable acts of karma. There was simply no alternative but to submit to impermanence. With the help of modern technology, however, it seems possible to banish impermanence once and for all, and thus the concept of impermanence has mutated into a relentless war on nature. The self-pitying perception that Japan, punished viciously by the elements, is «a hard place to live in» features in the media and in school curricula, and serves as the official reason that Japan cannot afford the luxury of leaving nature alone.
A 1996 editorial in the major daily newspaper Mainichi Shimbun says it well: «This country is an archipelago of disasters, prone to earthquakes, typhoons, torrential rains, floods, mudslides, landslides, and, at times, to volcanic eruptions. There are 70,000 zones prone to mudslides, 10,000 to landslides and 80,000 dangerous slopes, according to data compiled by the Construction Ministry.