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Letter from Japan: Ode to Summer
Give me blue skies, bright stars and singing cicadas
By PETER McKILLOP
August
4, 2000
Web posted at 1:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 1:30 a.m. EDT
Summer in Japan takes some getting used too. Actually, no one ever gets used to the stifling heat and humidity. There are summers where they seem like they will never end. Other times, like this year, they are positively delightful.
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Summer in Japan usually arrives abruptly, often after a month of monotonous monsoonal rain. For the next 90 days or so, temperatures and humidity soar. Yet each summer is different. The worst are when a thick layer of white heat settles in over the vast urban stretches of Japan, suffocating its inhabitants. Without a puff of wind, the air putrefies with every lingering day. These are truly insufferable times, where no amount of air conditioning, cold beer, or any beach or mountain, can offer an escape. The Japanese stoically carry on, dabbing their foreheads with handkerchiefs, cooling themselves with tiny fans, or simply telling each other just how hot it really is. I guess that helps.
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ASIAWEEK |
Intelligence
The story behind today's news from the editors of Asiaweek
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Summer in Japan this year has been truly glorious. For some reason, the heat has been joined by near gale-force winds that have kept the skies sparkling blue, the humidity down, and the heat at bay. The days are filled with clouds racing over the city at unprecedented speed. For once, the unpolluted skies allow the rising and setting sun to bathe the city in a golden glow. The cool evenings have been an absolute delight; the mild breeze allows for intimate conversations to linger into the early dawn. And stars can actually be seen in downtown Tokyo.
I know, however, this cannot last. With the dog days of August, come Japan's man-made methods of controlling the heat (and I am not talking about air-conditioning). Despite what global warming alarmists may say, heat has been an issue in Japan for as long as it has inhabited its islands. Here tradition is often cooler than the icy blasts of mechanically induced wind. So for the next month, Japan will relish in time-honored ways to escape the heat. Soon, magnificent fireworks will light up the sky as each town and association seeks to outdo the pyrotechnic bravado of its neighbors.
Another oddly comforting sound of summer comes from the cicadas. At the moment the first tree-based violinists are just tuning up. But soon, rising from every patch of green in Tokyo will come a high-pitched screech that will end in a late summer crescendo. There are many reasons why the Japanese find this sound so comforting: most likely it has to do with savvy advertising pitchmen who fill summer television commercials with pastoral dreamscapes of a simpler era, with a constant backdrop of singing cicadas.
In the end, Japan, somehow, always survives its summers. There is almost a sense of pride that comes with conquering the heat. When the first cool winds of October arrive from the northern realms of Manchuria, Japan congratulates itself for surviving another assault of heat and humidity, smug in the knowledge that its culture, like its seasons, will outlast the mere humans who must experience it.
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