Japanese Culture.

Enough said.  Great stuff.  Humanity.

But...  the greatest horror of the last century...  the effect of industrialization, of economic competition in the industrialized age...  Japan, must keep up with the West (who has already accepted the fact of war over industrialization, the win and lose battle.)

Japan.  A country of subtle aesthetic, Zen, understanding of the fiber of Nature, the pattern in waves, in wood, in meat, in tea, in people, in time, in architecture, in all things... Nature, nature, nature...

And to be modern, the times are taking such people, and all their culture, and telling them, to add the machine, to add the machine to everything.

The machine is now the bee's sting, the bite of the predator, the fire, the warmth of a robe, the metal of a highway bridge...  no questions asked, must modernize, jump into the newest century...

And so Japan went crazy.  Fought to the death, over industrialization.

And, like the rest of us, now, can only ask why.

Nature disappears.  A little bit left, here and there.  Pathetic, our stewardship of natural resources.