11
I am not especially trying to ignore the "good" of the city's products, but allow me to remind the reader that there is no denying the harm rendered to people by cigarettes, food additives, and cars.
12
"Idle and gluttonous" (fukou donshoku) is a term from the
Japanese feudal-age thinker Ando Shoeki, whom Nakashima will
introduce later. I have borrowed the translation from E. H.
Norman. (Translator's note)
13
On a special program, "Earth in Flames," aired by NHK on August 5, 1984, they told of the effects of a nuclear attack on Tokyo (a single one-megaton bomb exploded over Tokyo Tower). The many high-rise buildings, the Shinkansen trains, jet planes, and cars on the expressways would all be set afire and blown away in an instant; furthermore, computer operators, people enjoying themselves downtown, housewives shopping in the marketplaces, and children playing on the school playgrounds would similarly be blown away in an instant, their flesh half melted; in this way the six million people within a 15 km radius of the explosion would all die instantly. This is bad, but I must take issue with the view that all these Tokyoites are just innocent, pitiful victims. There is absolutely no difference in this case between the attacked and the attacker, because both are destructive, rapacious, haughty, arrogant, tyrannical cities. The civilization of the city, which produced the high-rise buildings, the Shinkansen, the jet planes, the computers, and the supermarkets likewise produced nuclear weapons. Therefore, if we are to get rid of nuclear weapons, we must also get rid of the cities. Nuclear weapons are like the bull's horns — we cannot just cut off the horns and then believe it is all right to let the bull go on living.
You in the cities! Open your eyes! Your belief that if we just get rid of nuclear weapons then we are assured everlasting peace and prosperity is nothing more than a delusion.
In order to maintain this peace and prosperity how much evil (destruction, contamination, waste) must the city perpetrate? What great catastrophes must the city bring down upon humanity and the Earth?
There is little difference between dying by nuclear weapons and dying by contamination and destruction. If the city is destroyed (of course it will take the rest of us down with itself) by its own nuclear weapons, then it will have reaped as it has sown.
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