Haiku: A Lament for Trees

Where the tall trees grow

In a concrete covered land

Shrines the one refuge

There is no more damning indictment of post-war Japan’s corrupt modernization and environmental degradation than Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan. Yet amid the carnage of an urban dystopia full of loss for traditional ways that understood and respected nature, the plentiful shrines are final bastions of green, protecting ancient trees, like oases in a desert of concrete and neon. My god-daughter upon returning to Tokyo from a holiday in New Zealand said to her mother: “Where are the trees”?

In other recommended reading I suggest The Lorax by Dr Suess.