Cities in silence, resuscitation of nature.
After long absence, my recent visit to Inokashira Park found water of the pond cleaner and transparent. Nitella mirabilis var. inokasiraensis, a kind of algae, considered to be extinct, has sprouted in years of conservation. The more they grow, the cleaner the pond becomes. If you look into the pond carefully, you will see clusters of Nitella mirabilis var. inokasiraensis inhabited like groves and bubbles of oxygen exhaled from them. Their appearances somehow reminded me of the world rendered in the works of Studio Ghibli.
There is a research by an archeologist, Patrick Kirch, comparing the civilization of three Pacific islands of large, medium, and small sizes. The smallest island, Tikopia, still maintains a living from 3,000 years ago, but civilization has gone in mid-sized island, Mangaia. And the largest, Tonga islands has successfully developed and maintained a constitutional monarchy until now. The key of the survival of civilization rested on conservation of natural resources. The smallest island has the tradition of forest conservation based on a grass-root support of residents, and the largest has the mandate to implement forest conservation by the monarchy. It is very interesting Kirch’s remark that the annihilation of civilization occurred only in mid-sized islands because of neither of above two options available. The books of Jared Diamond such as Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies have accumulated evidences that show what happened when civilization collapsed. The reason why a handful number of Spanish invaders landed on the new continent was able to wiped the civilization momentarily, is concluded as the pandemic spread among inhabitant of the new continent who has no immunity to the epidemic brought by these Spanish. This is also the exhibit of the transportation of the epidemic through the global commerce.
As music is interrelated with society, the epidemic is linked to the economy. Delving into the world history leads us to evidences that in the past many kinds of epidemic drove mankind to crises and each time mankind improved how economy worked. The COVID-19 confined inside the animals which have immune system to it and live away from human society, is alleged to have been spread from people to people, by the people. The expansion in the range of transportation of people followed by the growth of global economy triggered the epidemic to bring the balance in the nature. Although Spanish flu 100 years ago and the plague in 14th century is frequently compared to it, as a matter of fact, the history tells us the scale of the damage from these two epidemics was quite small to provoke the revolutionary change of civilization. Rather, the real-time networking to unveil the number and the whereabout of the infected today in the world instantly to the other side of the world, is the first experience in history of civilization. Once infected with COVID-19, the function of the human immune system injures the lung and veins. Overreactions of the immune system risk our life more than the virus does. Now the body and the society faces a common problem. As the most people intuitively understand, the consequence was predictable to happen, in a sense.
The stupid choice by human beings and its consequences rendered in
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke.
The natural world holds the cyclic relation that detoxifies and purifies harmful substance generated from the process of producing and consuming by soil, mosses, algae, and decomposers like bacteria or mushrooms. Human society also used to put important positions to the functions of detoxifying and purifying by Matsuri (festival) and Geino (folk entertainment), but gradually the idea preferring the production and the consumption has been introduced, and it forced the function of decomposition into a tighter corner. And I consider that giving the comprehensible illustrations of the whole image of these relations are the world rendered in the Ghibli works employing old mossy trees, spirits like fairies, and Princess Mononoke. It was precisely the end of medieval period plotted in the Princess Mononoke, the beginning of critical turn of the world that this repression begun. Since human obtained the fire, the “explosives” were invented through seven energy revolutions, and human beings had come to be able to create the explosive energy by humans’ own hands. This invention lead us to steam engines, internal-combustion engines, electricities, and nuclear power. When humans commence the artificial explosion, the field of economy also has set out its expansion by explosive merger and reaction. In this period, capitalism that manages and administrates huge capital by monetizing the credit, has germinated. And global trade has begun together with practical use of the explosives. And the negative by-product of this global commerce is such pandemic as plague whatsoever. Until the achievement to extract energy from nuclear power, the mankind has put the decomposers steadily into a tighter corner, and thrust to built the artificial world based only on the production and the consumption. As its inevitable consequence, wars, famine, and plague have recurred. This immediately links to people’s attitudes which exclude the music of the clubs and the venues as its “unnecessaries” for the society. Suppose that Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind represents stupid consequences caused by human beings in the form of myth, it might have been its beginning that Princess Mononoke represents.
After the period plotted in Mononoke Princess, Japan opened the door of battles thrusting into the age of Provincial Wars. It may be surprising to know that the forest in Japan is said to have been in the critical state from then to the Edo period. The illustrations on travel journals from Edo tell how thin the forest of Higashiyama in Kyoto were. If we consider such a crisis of the forest happened after a few generations from Princess Mononoke, the history begines to tell whole another context.
The forest, a natural resource to be conserved. Japan as the eco-system engineered in Edo period.
In the Edo, Japan made two important choices which affected the nation in the dimension of civilization. One is engineering closed self-sufficient economic cycle by the national lockdown. The other is “the prohibition of logging mountains and forests”. The other is “the prohibition of logging mountains and forests”. According to Jared’s researches, the Tokugawa successfully organized the Japanese islands as closed eco-system and procured the lumber of forest resource by this restriction (Jarred remarks that the restriction came into force under the sacrifice of Ainu forestry). This conservation of forest originated back from the ban issued by feudal lords in their territories, and it forbid not only the plunder and the arson, but also cutting bamboos and trees. This means that they had recognized forest as valuable resource and in other words deforestation to supply their demand was carried out till then. The fact that national land has lost the virgin forest which once occupied 80% of it, and another fact that such words as “Mori = forest” or “Hayashi = trees” share their stems with ”Ma-mori = conserve“ or “Haya-su = sprout” can tell us that the forest was already recognized by them as the thing to be lost without its protection.
“The acoustics of cities” after lockdown 2020.
And the year of 2020 has come. The world on lockdown has been providing opportunities to find videos of wild animals loitering in the city and penguins touring around the aquarium. It is said that the air in Los Angels becomes clean, and the polluted materials reduced in the skies of Chongqing, Beijing and Shanghai, and you can have a clear view of Everest from Kathmandu for the first time ever since the modern times. But the most amazing image was that showed clean the Ganges.
The case that the invisible grasps the nature of the situation often occurs. I guess it is just my imaginations, however, since “Stay Home” days begun, ears tend to be distracted by fits of coughing and quiet streets seem to pick up the sound of ambulances more than ever. I remember the soundscape has changed completely before the reality comes. The book of R. Murray Schafer, A Sound Education: 100 Exercises in Listening and Soundmaking lays out the method to catch the world by the sound. The current situation may turn positively and unexpectedly by the idea that changes the way of perceiving the world through the sound.
The project by Matt Mikkelsen, documenting the soundscapes of cities on lockdown catches attention. The project asked local recording engineers all around world to collect soundscapes of quietness. The recorded sounds at Times Square are, of the air blown through the chasms of cold concrete, sound from cars passing on rough roads from time to time, and a speech voice of low and thick, coming at times.
The recorded sounds at the Covent Garden in London is covered by the quietness as in the dome of the botanical garden. You can hear people coughing from the street. The acoustics have many images to show. Even the slightest sound from the objects can give physical images of the space such as the depth, the height of the ceiling, and the width by the acoustic of the air passing through. And Church bells telling the time with their tone colors, air humidity and warmth there, deliver clear image of London.
Trying to detect how this quietness arises, I understand for the first time, that “the acoustics of cities” as in real cannot emerge without the bustle of the city. Brakes and horns have their own stories to tell. But here, only the rotational noise from the motors resonate against walls of concrete. I remember an expression like “The Concrete Jungle”, but I can’t say this is a jungle. The sound compels me to think of a strange quietness holding dangerous balancing between life and death.
Among those, in the sound recorded on the road in Los Angeles International Airport, echoes of cars in the far distance stays like those in the tunnels resonated by foot steps, and only the sound of motor keeps on echoing. It is quite understandable that the recording engineer leaves comments on this experience as “just deadly chilly one.”
On the contrary to this recording, the sound recorded in the vicinity of Kolkata Airport moves my heart. Enchanting bird calls as in the intro of the music by Martin Denny. The sound of paradise, isn’t it? It may be due to my imagination, but it sounds like a premonition implying our fate oriented by Karma piled up by us in the world up until now and its consequence.
For instance, if someone had said “This is the sound in New York of 2020” and made me, a schoolboy in 1980s, listen to the sound, what would I have said to? Even that chilly sound might have made me relieved to know the survival of human beings in the 21st century.
