I was born and grew up in a small village of Kyoto, Japan. My family
made a living by farming, which contributed to my even more
old-fashioned childhood than usual that was nothing like a current
ordinary life.
Food on the table was almost self-sufficient that came
form our fields or the front yard and the chicken coops of the house.
We had only one tiny refrigerator without a freezer that was more than
enough as beer or watermelons were chilled by pumping well water. The
bathtub was round and made of wood. Its floor was a round iron plate on
which a round wooden board was put in to sit. Beneath the iron plate was
a small furnace that my grandmother put wood, straw or used paper in
the fire to heat water in the bathtub. Our toilet was a wooden bucket
placed in the garage. My grandfather would carry it on a wooden pole to
our fields as manure. Not only the way of living was old-fashioned, but
also the way of thinking was. All the family members obeyed submissively
my grandfather who was a patriarch of my family. Women were deemed to
be inferior to men and treated unfairly. Families were giving and
receiving them through marriage as if they were commodities.
But the
changes of the world can’t be stopped. In the year I was born, a bullet
train started running between two major cities in Japan, Tokyo and
Osaka. It was dubbed ‘a dream super express’ because of a high speed.
The city of Kyoto where I lived was close to Osaka and on the line of
the bullet train. A new special railroad and its platforms were built
above the existing ones. The railway near my home accordingly had the
new overhead railroad above it. When I was an elementary school student,
I crossed the local train railroad and the big, tall, splendid bullet
train railroad by an underpass beneath the tracks on my way to school on
foot every day. In the middle of the passage, when a local train or a
freight train passed above my head, I would cringe at an enormously
thunderous noise. But the bullet train sounded like a whistling wind,
almost soothing.
The number of children had been increasing as the economy was
picking up. The elementary school I went to burst with students and a
new school was built when I was in the fifth grade. I was sent to the
new one that stood right next to the railroad. Out of the windows, the
bullet train was running. From a brand new school building, I had never
get bored to see the bullet train zipping past at incredibly high speed
through the countryside where time went by so slowly. Thanks to the
bullet train, my new school had the air conditioner since the building
had soundproofing windows that can’t be opened because of train noises.
My former four years in the old school with wooden buildings and coal
stoves were felt like ancient.
I loved the bullet train so much. To
me, it seemed alive with a soul like Thomas the Tank Engine as its
headlights looked like eyes and its coupler cover looked like a nose.
Since I had difficulty in getting along with others back then, I felt
more attached and closer to the bullet train than other human beings.
Every time I saw it passing by, I sensed it glanced at me and was
running toward the future, carrying hope and dreams. Years later, I left
home of an old village and moved to Tokyo by bullet train to become a
musician.
Sometimes there is a day when we feel that this world has
come to an impasse and been headed just for destruction. But if we adapt
ourselves to new ways of living or thinking, we may be able to see more
of something bright and exciting. In 2027, Japan is going to have a new
railway on which magnetic levitation bullet trains called Linear Bullet
Trains run at the highest speed of 320 miles per hour. I wonder how
their faces look like. I can’t wait to see them.
