Dogs and Demons   ::   Керр Алекс

Once it has been set on a particular path, Japan tends to continue on that path until it reaches excesses that would be unthinkable in most other nations.

Led by bureaucracies on automatic pilot, the nation has carried certain policies-notably construction-to extremes that would be comical were they not also at times terrifying. In recent years, manga (comics) and anime (animated films) have come to dominate major portions of Japan's publishing and cinematic industries. The popularity of manga and anime derive from their wildly imaginative drawings, depicting topsy-turvy visions of the future, with cities and countryside transformed into apocalyptic fantasies. One might say that the weight of manga and anime in modern Japanese culture – far out of proportion to comics or animation in any other nation – rests on the fact that they reflect reality: only manga could do justice to the more bizarre extremes of modern Japan. When every river and stream has been re-formed into a concrete chute, you are indeed entering the realm of sci-fi fable.

Extreme situations are interesting. Physicists learn the most from accelerated particles colliding at high energy levels not usually found in nature. What happens when bureaucrats control financial markets? One could do no better than study Japan, where one may view firsthand the crash at the end of the road for the most elaborate vehicle of financial control ever devised. What happens to cultural heritage when citizens have been taught in school not to take responsibility for their surroundings? Although temples and historical sites have been preserved, the destruction of traditional neighborhoods in all of Japan's old cities makes a good test case.

Destruction of all old cities? The words come easily, but the fact that such a thing is occurring strikes at the very heart of everything Japan once stood for. «Cultural crisis» is not, in fact, the best description of Japan's problems, for «crisis» implies a moment of truth, when issues come to a head and are resolved, whereas what is taking place in Japan is far more chronic and long-term. «Cultural malaise» is closer to the truth, a malaise that came about because of a severe mismatch between Japan's bureaucratic systems and the realities of modern life. This book is the story of that mismatch, and of how Japan wandered so far off on a lonely side road, removed not only from the world at large but from her own true self.



1. The Land



The Construction State



Our country, as a special mark of favor from the heavenly gods, was begotten by them, and there is thus so immense a difference between Japan and all the other countries of the world as to defy comparison. Ours is a splendid and blessed country, the Land of the Gods beyond any doubt.

– Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843)



Writers on Japan today mostly concern themselves with its banks and export manufacturing. But in the greater scheme of things, for a wealthy nation does it really matter so much if its GNP drops a few percentage points or the banks falter for a few years? The Tang dynasty poet Du Fu wrote, «Though the nation perishes, the mountains and rivers remain.» Long before Japan had banks, there existed a green archipelago of a thousand islands, where clear mountain springs tumbled over mossy stones and waves crashed along coves and peninsulas lined with fantastic rocks. Such were the themes treasured in haiku, bonsai and flower arrangements, screen paintings, tea ceremony, and Zen – that is, everything that defined Japan's traditional culture. Reverence for the land lies at the very core of Shintoism, the native religion, which holds that Japan's mountains, rivers, and trees are sacred, the dwelling place of gods. So in taking stock of where Japan is today, it is good to set economics aside for a moment and take a look at the land itself.

When we do, we see this: Japan has become arguably the world's ugliest country. To readers who know Japan from tourist brochures that feature Kyoto's temples and Mount Fuji, that may seem a surprising, even preposterous assertion. But those who live or travel here see the reality: the native forest cover has been clear-cut and replaced by industrial cedar, rivers are dammed and the seashore lined with cement, hills have been leveled to provide gravel fill for bays and harbors, mountains are honeycombed with destructive and useless roads, and rural villages have been submerged in a sea of industrial waste.

Similar observations can be made about many other modern nations, of course. But what is happening in Japan far surpasses anything attempted in the rest of the world. We are seeing something genuinely different here. The nation prospers, but the mountains and rivers are in mortal danger, and in their fate lies a story-one that heretofore has been almost entirely passed over by the foreign media.

H. P. Lovecraft, describing a creepy New England hamlet doomed to be the setting for one of his horror stories, would say, «On viewing such a scene, who can resist an unutterable thrill of ghastliness?» For a modern traveler seeking something of that Lovecraftian thrill, nothing would do better than a trip to Japan's countryside.

During the past fifty-five years of its great economic growth, Japan has drastically altered its natural environment in ways that are almost unimaginable to someone who has not traveled here. In the spring of 1996, the Japan Society invited Robert MacNeil, the retired co-anchor of The MacNeil/Lehrer News-Hour, for a month's stay in Japan. Later, in a speech presented at the Japan Society in New York, MacNeil said that he was «confused» about what he saw, «dismayed by the unrelieved banality of the [800-kilometer] stretch from Hiroshima to Tokyo, the formless, brutal, utilitarian jumble, unplanned, with tunnels easier on the eyes.»

Across the nation, men and women are at work reshaping the landscape. Work crews transform tiny streams just a meter across into deep chutes slicing through slabs of concrete ten meters wide and more. Builders of small mountain roads dynamite entire hillsides. Civil engineers channel rivers into U-shaped concrete casings that do away not only with the rivers' banks but with their beds. The River Bureau has dammed or diverted all but three of Japan's 113 major rivers. The contrast with other advanced industrial nations is stark. Aware of the high environmental cost, the United States has decided in principle not to build any more dams, and has even started removing many that the Army Corps of Engineers constructed years ago.