While we were down at the girls' grandfather's
place in the country last summer, I spent time every evening sitting
out on the river bank. It was a very peaceful place, and each day,
when I came back into the house after it became too dark and chilly
to stay out any longer, I got out my notebook out and wrote a short
piece on some topic inspired by the peaceful scene. We were there for
two weeks, and I wrote fourteen of these little essays.
When we returned to Tokyo, I was looking through
the pile of newspapers that had built up, and saw a notice in the
Yomiuri asking for submissions to an essay contest with the theme:
'What can we do for our Environment?'. I thought this matched pretty
well what I had been writing about, so I selected one of the
fourteen, and sent it off. As some of you may have noticed in the
media last month, my little essay was lucky to have been chosen the
winner, and I was awarded the 'Ministry of the Environment Prize' in
the contest.
It doesn't have anything to do with 'Hyakunin
Isshu', but perhaps it will make an interesting change ...
The Neighbourhood we all
Share
I've been here in Japan long enough to have grown
a bit accustomed to things here, and can now notice some differences
between the Japan of eight years ago when I arrived, and the Japan of
the present.
Each
summer, we make a trip to the country village where my children's
grandfather lived. While there we swim in the river every day,
usually surrounded by sun-browned elementary school children. The
first time I saw that river, I was quite shocked at the amount of
garbage that had been thrown into it. That this beautiful swimming
area right in the centre of the village should be so spoiled with
junk, was quite a disappointment to me.
We didn't say anything to the village children,
and we didn't chastize them, but one day, after becoming just too
disgusted by the garbage, we got some large plastic bags and started
filling them up with trash. There were two kinds of reactions from
the children playing in the river. Most of them either didn't notice
what we were doing, or simply ignored us. But a second group, just a
few, started to help, collecting garbage and bringing it to help fill
our bags.
From then on, we made this a regular habit, and
always returned from swimming trips carrying bags of assorted
garbage, and I suppose the village gradually got used to our
behaviour. Year after year, there was always lots to pick up. The
garbage was mostly made up of a few standard items: styrofoam noodle
cups and plastic snack food packages thrown away by the little kids,
coffee, beer cans, and cigarette packages from their fathers, and
third (and most disturbing) large plastic sacks that had contained
agricultural chemicals, obviously discarded by farmers whose rice
fields bordered the river.
Well,
that was eight years ago. How is the river now? Well, as most people
in Japan know, the situation has improved very much. In recent years
the amount of garbage we bring home from the river has greatly
decreased, and we no longer automatically take the plastic bags with
us when we go swimming. It's not perfect yet. The first type of
garbage is still to be seen here and there, but the second is quite
rare, and I haven't seen any of the third type at all for a number of
years now. Please don't think that I'm trying to take any credit for
this improvement. My family is only in the village for a few weeks
each year, and this gradual clean-up of Japan is a much wider
phenomenon than just this one little river pool.
I understand that the Tokyo Olympics back in the
60's was a major turning point. Friends tell me that the Tama River
near my home in Tokyo was an absolute garbage heap before that time,
being piled with old cars, tires, furniture, household garbage, and
all kinds of junk. But a new ethic has gradually replaced the old
one, following that initial stimulus of wanting to show a clean face
to the Olympic visitors. The old cars have been replaced by cherry
trees, and the area is now the 'pride and joy' of the
neighbourhood.
And of course, that's why people are now keeping
it clean, because it has been transformed from 'soto', something
'outside' that belonged to no one, to 'uchi', something 'inside' that
belongs to someone, in this case, the local people. The next step is
obvious ... to widen this viewpoint; to include in the 'local'
classification, not only our own neighbourhood or town, but each
neighbourhood, town, and mountainside in Japan. And then further, to
include every square inch of this entire planet.
So that's how you can help. Learn to think of the
entire earth as your own home. Keep it clean, don't waste its
resources, and set a good example for others.