JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 31 из 270» In the numbers quoted at the end of the editorial, the reader may experience a true Lovecraftian «thrill of ghastliness»: these official figures tell us that the Construction Ministry has already earmarked tens of thousands of additional sites to be covered in concrete in the near future.
Everywhere in Japan, one encounters propaganda about the rivers being the enemy. Typical of the genre is a series of advertisements written in the guise of articles called «The Men Who Battled the Rivers,» which ran every month from 1998 to 1999 in the influential opinion journal Shincho 45. Each article features antique maps and paintings or photographs of the tombstones of romantic personalities in history, such as the sixteenth-century warrior Takeda Shingen, who subdued dangerous rivers. The message was that fighting against rivers is traditional and noble.
Agencies with names like the River Environmental Management Foundation, whose money comes from the construction industry and whose staff have descended from the River Bureau, pay for «nature as the enemy» ads, and cultural figures happily lend their names to these ads. In the West, we are so accustomed to seeing and hearing «save the earth» preachments in magazines and on television that it may be hard to believe that the media in Japan are following a different tack, but it is indeed different. Here is an example of what the Japanese public reads every day in popular magazines and newspapers: a long-running river-works series printed in Shukan Shincho magazine was called «Speaking of Japan's Rivers.» The September 9, 1999, issue features a color spread of the award-winning writer Mitsuoka Akashi standing proudly on a stone embankment along the Shirakawa River in Kyushu. In the first few paragraphs, Mitsuoka reminisces about his childhood memories of swimming in the river; then the article gets to the point:
It was in 1953 that this Shirakawa River showed nature's awesome power and unsheathed its sword. It was on June 26, 1953. That natural disaster is known as the June 26 River Disaster. At the time, our house was near Tatsutaguchi Station near the riverbank. At about eight o'clock at night there was a loud rumble. The steel bridge had been washed away. We rushed to the station platforms but the water level kept rising, so we took refuge at Tatsuyama hill just behind. I could hear people in the houses along the riverbank screaming «Help!» and before my eyes I saw one house and then another washed away. But there was nothing we could do.
Mitsuoka concludes: «For me, Shirakawa River has much nostalgia, for [I remember] the surface of the water sparkling when I was a little boy.
Everywhere in Japan, one encounters propaganda about the rivers being the enemy. Typical of the genre is a series of advertisements written in the guise of articles called «The Men Who Battled the Rivers,» which ran every month from 1998 to 1999 in the influential opinion journal Shincho 45. Each article features antique maps and paintings or photographs of the tombstones of romantic personalities in history, such as the sixteenth-century warrior Takeda Shingen, who subdued dangerous rivers. The message was that fighting against rivers is traditional and noble.
Agencies with names like the River Environmental Management Foundation, whose money comes from the construction industry and whose staff have descended from the River Bureau, pay for «nature as the enemy» ads, and cultural figures happily lend their names to these ads. In the West, we are so accustomed to seeing and hearing «save the earth» preachments in magazines and on television that it may be hard to believe that the media in Japan are following a different tack, but it is indeed different. Here is an example of what the Japanese public reads every day in popular magazines and newspapers: a long-running river-works series printed in Shukan Shincho magazine was called «Speaking of Japan's Rivers.» The September 9, 1999, issue features a color spread of the award-winning writer Mitsuoka Akashi standing proudly on a stone embankment along the Shirakawa River in Kyushu. In the first few paragraphs, Mitsuoka reminisces about his childhood memories of swimming in the river; then the article gets to the point:
It was in 1953 that this Shirakawa River showed nature's awesome power and unsheathed its sword. It was on June 26, 1953. That natural disaster is known as the June 26 River Disaster. At the time, our house was near Tatsutaguchi Station near the riverbank. At about eight o'clock at night there was a loud rumble. The steel bridge had been washed away. We rushed to the station platforms but the water level kept rising, so we took refuge at Tatsuyama hill just behind. I could hear people in the houses along the riverbank screaming «Help!» and before my eyes I saw one house and then another washed away. But there was nothing we could do.
Mitsuoka concludes: «For me, Shirakawa River has much nostalgia, for [I remember] the surface of the water sparkling when I was a little boy.