研究生 英语阅读教程 第三版 课文 Lesson 2

研究生 英语阅读教程 第三版 课文

Lesson 2

Humbled by Nature,Humeble by Culture

Susanna Jones

[1]The scale of the 11March Japanese earthquake and tsunami is a profound reminder of just how small we human beings are.But it also carries a message of hope about Japan’s long struggle with the natural world.

[2] News reports describe the scenes from northern Japan as being from a horror film. Watching television footage of the events and discussing it with friends, I find the same phrase comes to mind. It is a cliché, as it is to talk of apocalypse and nightmare, but when something is beyond our experience, we reach for the points of reference we have. In Britain, where such vast natural disaster is unknown, perhaps this is the only connection we can make when we see whole communities ripped away by a tsunami, helicopters hovering over raging fires that go on for miles. Warner Brothers has pulled screenings of Clint Eastwood's film Hereafter from cinemas in Japan because of its "inappropriate" tsunami scenes. The horror has become reality and it is hard to comprehend the scale of it.

[3] No one could prepare for an earthquake of this magnitude, yet no one was better prepared than the Japanese. The earthquake and tsunami are crucial to understanding Japan's relationship with nature. Throughout history, the Japanese have had to work the land and sea hard to survive and enable communities to thrive.

[4] It is unforgiving, mountainous country. Nature brings frequent quakes and typhoons. Lest you should ever forget the smallness of being human, the iconic Mount Fuji, instantly recognisable yet somehow different on every viewing, is an extinct volcano.

[5] This relationship with nature is not all about hardship and fear, as I discovered when I lived in the country for long periods during the Eighties and Nineties. There is celebration, too, tempered with respect. My Japanese teacher used to take out a different set of plates each season, with colours that matched the season's mood: dishes with bands of red and gold in autumn, pink flowers in spring. A meal

研究生 英语阅读教程 第三版 课文

contained not only the flavours of a season, but its very atmosphere and the memories that it evoked. In the cities, people wait for and celebrate the cherry blossoms and autumn leaves that spring up from the earth as though to remind us that the concrete and neon are a mere overlay.

[6] The Japanese have always lived with the knowledge that natural disaster can occur at any moment and, for the past couple of decades, with the knowledge that an earthquake, "the big one", was due. Small tremors, most of which are harmless, have provided frequent reminders. To be teaching a class, paying a bill at the bank, fast asleep in bed, and then brought to attention because the ground beneath you is shaking, leaves you suspended momentarily. It's a state of uncertainty, humility. Even if you never experience one that pulls the building down around you, the earthquake occupies a part of your imagination, your consciousness.

[7] I was living in Japan in 1995 at the time of the Kobe earthquake. More than 6,000 people were killed in the quake and subsequent fires. Just two months later, Aum Shinrikyo, a bizarre religious cult led by Shoko Asahara, left packages containing sarin gas on the Tokyo subway. Twelve people died from the effects of the gas and many more were injured. It surprised me, over the following months that the gas attack seemed to dominate the national media coverage, whereas Kobe, after the initial weeks of horrifying footage, slipped somewhat into the background. The Japanese attitude of being stoical in adversity because shiyou ga nai ("nothing can be done", or "it can't be helped") perhaps goes some way towards explaining this.However, the sarin attack was a new, unexpected kind of terror but it was also something that could be investigated and dissected. and there were people to blame. There were names and photographs. Even though the emergency services in Kobe were criticised for being underprepared and slow to respond to the earthquake, the event itself was inevitable.

[8] Kobe was a horror story that people did not want to keep reliving. In the UK we have the luxury of being able to consider, for example, the consequences of global warming through apocalyptic visions of the future in film and theatre, knowing that we'll be all right today and for the near future. In Japan the catastrophe is in the past

研究生 英语阅读教程 第三版 课文

and the present and will be in the future. All practical considerations relating to earthquakes---quake-proof buildings, emergency drills-are handled with matter-of-fact efficiency, but the event, when it happens, is often kept at some distance.

[9] It will take generations for the north-eastern communities to recover. What will be the effect on Japan as a whole? Rather than immersing ourselves in the language of horror films and the end of the world, when the time is right to try to glimpse this new territory, we might for thought reach for a book by Japan's most popular contemporary novelist. Haruki Murakami's slim collection of short stories After the Quake, published in English in 2002, was written in response to, but not directly about, the Kobe earthquake. From the painful to the surreal to the gently touching, the anthology presents a series of psychological aftershocks.

[10] In "Honey Pie", a small girl has recurring nightmares after watching the disaster footage on television and is soothed by stories from her mother's friend who, in turn, is comforted by his own story. In "Landscape with Flatiron", a man spends his time collecting driftwood for bonfires on the beach. Is this connected with the fires that burned through Kobe? We don't know, but we sense that the earthquake is somew …… 此处隐藏：5831字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……