Read Ebook: Down with the Cities! by Nakashima Tadashi

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Ebook has 627 lines and 44916 words, and 13 pages

All living things are borne and nourished by the Land. Rain is absorbed by the Land, becoming the source of well water and stream water, water that is released gradually in dry times by means of the Land's regulatory and retaining capabilities. The Land also purifies all contaminants . The Land has, for millions of years, continued its work of reducing waste products, dead plants, and fallen leaves by means of bacterial action, and returning them to the soil.

But by covering the Land with concrete we paralyze this function, and it dies. Dead land will not grow plants or absorb water, or give it forth in dry times. And contaminants on concrete just stink without being purified; if we don't clean up the mess we cannot even live there.

The functions of the earth -- giving life to the plants and animals, regulating the rainwater, purifying waste and returning it to the soil -- may be said to form the main artery of Nature's cyclical function. If the earth is blocked off, the flow of blood will halt, and the Earth will turn into a dead planet. And it is none other than concrete that is responsible for cutting off the flow of blood.

The big city is a great mass of concrete, and it is here that the rape of the Land attains its highest perfection. Should the multitudes of buildings collapse, how would they dispose of the mountains of rubble? No matter where they put the rubble, it will cover the earth, and the bottom of the ocean should also be considered earth. Whether a factory, an office building, or a paved road, once it is built we have condemned some part of the Land to be covered with it. The more you block off the Land, the more the functions of nature are necessarily impaired, and we will pay for this sooner or later. The net of Heaven is coarse, but allows nothing to escape -- is it possible that Nature will miss this or generously overlook it?

Evil Four

The fourth evil is the theft of the farm population.

The cities have burgeoned by stealing the farm population. The expansion of the cities is in other words the growth of those employed by the secondary and tertiary industries, and the growth of the secondary and tertiary population represents the decline of the farming population.

In order to feed a large non-tilling population with a small farming population, labor-saving, high-yield agriculture is an absolute necessity, and this leads to plundering, contaminating agriculture using machines that run on petroleum. As long as the increased secondary and tertiary population tries to enjoy a modern lifestyle , it only stands to reason that the consumers will have to put up with, and pay the price of, contaminated agricultural produce.

Evil Five

The fifth evil is squeezing food out of the farmers. Since the concrete cities are incapable of supplying themselves with food, the inhabitants must, in order to survive, squeeze everything they eat -- be it an apple, a tomato, or a grain of rice -- out of the farming villages. Long ago the cities expropriated agricultural produce through the feudal lords and landlords, and in more recent times they forced the farmers to give it up by means of the Food Control Act. Now, however, they take mountains of food by means of money. These are necessary, desperate measures taken to keep the cities alive. No matter what means they employ, the cities must forever continue to extort food from the farmers. They can do nothing else, even if they have to send in the military and seize food from the farmers at gunpoint.

What is more, as long as one has to rip it off, why not grab the best ? That is why the feudal lords and landlords issued orders for rice to be sent to them. "Millet will not do. Such is for farmers to eat." Thus they ruled. And now the city dwellers say, "Let us pay a lot of money for sasanishiki and koshihikari." How is this different from the arrogance of the feudal lords and landlords?

In this way the best of the agricultural produce continues to flow into the cities, while in the country we continue to satisfy ourselves with the leftovers. It ought to be the other way around.

Evil Six

The sixth evil is the destruction of the seashore and the prodigal consumption of marine products.

Once upon a time Tokyo Bay was a famous fishing ground for shorefish, but now the shore of the bay is concrete and great quantities of sewage pour into the water, destroying the fishing. In order to make things better for themselves, the cities have destroyed the natural seashores and sacrificed the lives of the fishermen living there.

The shore has always been the greatest mechanism for the sea's ability to purify itself. Great numbers of marine organisms live near the shores, so that as long as we do not cover them with concrete and fill the littoral areas with garbage, there is no need to go far out to sea to fish, thereby being a nuisance to other countries.

Japan's deep sea fishing industry, for example, has taken too many shrimp near Indonesia, and in order to get 8,000 tons of shrimp, once discarded 70,000 tons of fish . Extravagant city dwellers will pay high prices for shrimp, but they will not pay much for other marine foods, and since the fishermen cannot make money by offering ordinary fish, all the dead ones are thrown back into the sea after sorting. Such fish are a precious source of protein for the people of Indonesia.

Thus the egomaniacal cities waste 70,000 tons of fish so that they can gorge themselves on shrimp . And what is more, they so recklessly take shrimp that the shrimp are now in danger of running out. Just as with the forests, Indonesia's fish crisis is intimately connected with our cities' appetite.

Evil Seven

The seventh evil is the copious consumption of resources and energy. The functions of the cities are supported by vast quantities of energy and underground resources. Almost all these resources are used to maintain the extravagance and convenience of the cities , and to make idiotic trinkets and gewgaws . The cities are built on the assumption that petroleum and metals will be supplied forever, and in unlimited quantities. However, it should be manifest even to a little child that such things are limited, and what remains dwindles day by day.

The incredible fight over, and waste of, resources is an indication, along with the pursuit of profit inherent in a money economy, of the competitive ideology of the city mind. Modern urban civilization -- that is, the extravagance and prosperity of the cities -- is a fruitless blossom fed by this waste of energy and underground resources.

Evil Eight

The eighth evil is the excessive consumption of oxygen and water.

The consumption of oxygen is just as I noted in the section on forests . Were it not for oxygen, even the convenient energy provided by petroleum would not be available. Oxygen is the most important thing in maintaining the functions of the cities, and they consume it with wild abandon. Oxygen decreases minute by minute, so that in time we too might not have enough to breathe .

The cities also think nothing of wasting water for convenience and money-making, for their flush toilets and their factories. The cities take water from others by force, and then dump their wastes everywhere.

Evil Nine

The ninth evil is the way the city forces sacrifices on others so it can obtain electricity and water.

The egotism of the city is more than apparent in its method of obtaining electricity and water. We all remember when Tokyoites insisted that, in order that they could live a convenient, pleasant life, it was only natural that the village of Okawachi sink beneath the waters of a dam reservoir. In this way the farmers of the village were turned out of the place that had been their home for generations, while the citizens of Tokyo, in their pursuit of convenience, extravagance, and ease , never even looked back. And the tragedy of such obscure villages is just like that of the villages ruined by nuclear power. Why don't the cities build their nuclear reactors right in the middle of the cities? Why don't they build them in one of their seaside industrial zones? If city residents do not have enough water for their flush toilets or electricity for their automatic doors , they should leave the cities.

The Evils of Urban Wastes

The preceding nine sections are an outline of the plundering, destructive acts that the cities must perpetrate in order to maintain themselves.

Now, having consumed all of these plundered resources, the cities are left with wastes -- both industrial and human -- and they then proceed to dump them on others, all the while thinking it a perfectly natural thing to do. No matter that the cities have been so devilishly clever in devising a civilization built on all manner of amazing apparatuses -- the law of conservation of matter guarantees that they cannot do away with their garbage by sleight of hand.

Let us now list and examine the various evils of the cities as represented by their wastes.

The first of the wastes is the excessive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The result of robbing great amounts of oxygen and consuming it is the production of similarly great amounts of carbon dioxide. Trees would be expected to consume this carbon dioxide and deliver oxygen to us, but since the cities are also destroying the trees, this conversion process cannot keep up; if there were no cities in the world, we could expect the consumption and production of oxygen to be in balance.

Thus the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere steadily increases, and it is said that by the years 2025-2050, there will by twice as much in the atmosphere as there was before industrialization. Because of the greenhouse effect the temperature at the surface of the Earth will rise two or three degrees, the glaciers will melt, and the surface of the oceans will rise five meters above their present levels. Most of the big cities of the world will then be flooded. They shall reap as the have sown.

The second is the production of particulate matter and exhaust gases. Prodigious amounts of poisonous gases and particulate matter pour from the smokestacks of the cities' innumerable factories, from the throngs of automobiles crowding their streets, and from the swarms of jets in the skies . Not only does all this pollute the atmosphere, it is also said that the particulate matter blocks the light of the sun, thus causing a drop in the temperature on the Earth. There is no reason to believe that this will be balanced off satisfactorily by the greenhouse effect. The increase in carbon dioxide, poisonous gases, and particulate matter in the atmosphere threatens the lives of all living things on our Earth.

The third is the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer.

Those ever-so-convenient city inventions the jet plane and the aerosol spray, and the nitrogen fertilizer that the city invented to dominate the farming villages, are the instruments by which the city is destroying the ozone layer.

The effects of the exhaust gases and nitrogen oxides released in the stratosphere by jet planes will, in the final estimation, reduce the ozone by 6.5 percent. And it is thought that the CFCs used in aerosol sprays, which rise to high altitudes upon their release, will, even if their use continues at the 1974 rate, cause a 14 percent loss of the ozone over the next 50 years. The nitrogen suboxide released when the nitrogen fixed in chemical nitrogen fertilizers is denitrified will, it is estimated, cause a future 3.5 percent reduction of ozone.

A 1 percent reduction in ozone translates to a 2 percent increase in ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface, and an increase in ultraviolet radiation is a threat to all living things on Earth; it is said that, if nothing is done about this -- if the ozone layer continues to be destroyed -- certain species will be faced with extinction. Since all species in their interactions work to maintain the ecosystem, the loss of even one could signify grave consequences for the ecosystem as a whole. As for human beings, should there be a 10 percent reduction in ozone, it is thought that cases of skin cancer could increase 20 to 30 percent.

The cities steal nitrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere, they rob metals and petroleum from the earth, and their wonderful scientific achievement is to put us and the entire ecosystem in mortal danger by means of the production and use of their inventions.

Fourth is the dumping of sewage into the ocean.

In order to maintain convenience, extravagance, and ease, the city must somehow dispose of the great amounts of water it converts into sewage, and that sewage always ends up in the ocean. The amount of sewage produced is about equal to the amount of water consumed.

This sewage is treated and divided into water and sludge; the sludge is used for landfills, and the water goes to the sea via the sewage system. However, since this treatment is not perfect the water flowing into the ocean contains, depending upon the substance, 10-60 percent of what it originally contained. In addition, most cities have a sewage system in which rain water is collected along with the sewage, so that on a rainy day the treatment plants cannot handle the volume, and the result is that some of it goes to the sea just as it is. Thus the ocean has become a cesspool.

Washing one's hands means that one must dirty some water. And doing the laundry means that one pollutes the ocean by cleaning one's clothes. Flush toilets are no different. As long as I can live under sanitary conditions, it doesn't matter if the ocean becomes polluted -- this is the egotism that the city is built upon.

The fifth is landfills of garbage and sludge. No matter what kind of garbage one has, it is quite impossible, even if one changes its form or appearance, to make it disappear. Unburnable solid trash goes without saying, but burnable trash is no different: even after burning, the gaseous part disperses in the atmosphere, and the ashes still remain. And there is no proof that these are harmless. Even if the city had the technology to make them harmless, these great amounts of waste must still be put somewhere, and that will cause problems for someone.

The cunning, arrogant city is able to maintain the pleasantness of its own environment by shoving its tons of garbage off on the country, or by dumping it in the ocean. But do we tolerate it when someone dumps his garbage in his neighbor's house in order to keep his own clean? The beautiful cities and spic-and-span factories which receive awards from the Environment Agency are showing us that they are shoving more garbage off on others than are other cities and factories.

Of all the kinds of trash brought out of the cities the most voluminous is demolition wastes. It is said that this makes up one-third of the waste from the big cities. Whenever they begin some new enterprise, they remove the old buildings since they are now just in the way. And the place they discard this waste is farmland purchased for the purpose. Every bit of junk that the city produces in order to achieve even greater benefit and extravagance are taken to the country and forced off on us. If the people in the country bought some land in the city and began to haul things like straw, wood chips, and rocks to the city and dumped them there, would the city stand by silently and allow this?

Second to demolition wastes, the wastes of greatest volume are those created by the manufacturing and processing industries. Next come domestic wastes, and then those produced by the services . These wastes are disposed of, along with the sludge from sewage treatment plants, on land or in landfills near the ocean.

The sixth is the flood of products .

I have already written about how, in its activities of manufacturing and processing, the city robs and wastes resources; how it spreads pollution everywhere; how it shoves its garbage off on others. But these are not the only evils inherent in the city's industries.

The city produces vast quantities of products , piles them high everywhere, and threatens the very future of human society with this flood. Look at the packs of automobiles crowding the roads. Look at the great quantities of agricultural chemicals in use. Look at the mountains of medicine and food additives being shoved down our throats. It is the same for the worthless cigarettes produced in mountainous quantities; for the oceans of alcohol meant to help city people forget that there is no longer any meaning in their lives; for the heaps of records and tapes, which, like sonic narcotics, produce noise and dementia; for the weekly magazines and comic books that overflow with idiotic stories and pictures -- one could go on without limit. It would not be an overstatement to say that all merchandise produced by the city is the same. And just as I mentioned before with jet planes and aerosols, they produce pollution not only when they are used, but, as outlined in section five, become pollution themselves after use, thus causing the utmost trouble for people in other places. No matter what product, it cannot stand up to use indefinitely; sooner or later it becomes trash and the city must dispose of it somehow . Everywhere we look we see discarded junk like televisions, washing machines, and automobiles -- does it not make one feel the desolation foretelling the end of an age? When a tiger dies it leaves its hide, but when city merchandise dies, it leaves more evil.

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