My personal thoughts on the war's end in 1945
Yojūrō Yasuda
I learned of the end of the war in a ward of the military hospital at Beiji Shimen, where a high-ranking military doctor was reporting that he had no information and was neither certain nor affected by the news. The commander's military equipment could not clearly state the end of the war. My realisation came late at night, when the ward nurses gathered in a room and the sound of weeping echoed through the wards.
How did I feel about the word "abstinence," which I had seen countless times in the past, and sometimes even written myself? At this moment, when I reflect on my thoughts at that time, I feel as if the heavenly pillar has collapsed and the earth's axis has shifted. I feel that I have no sense of normalcy, as I realise how little I know about myself and my life and death at that time.
But I am still patient with it. I persevere. This perseverance has been my continuous condition for the past twenty years since the end of the war. I do not speak of guts or stubbornness. Three times during these twenty years, I was saved from a great pain that almost killed me. During those serious illnesses, I did not realise the seriousness of my condition and endured the pain in my body until the moment I lost consciousness.
I left the Ishimon Military Hospital in the late autumn of the year of the end of the war, when I had decided to return to Japan. However, I moved from Ishimon to a small station called Shangan Station at the entrance to Shanxi, and during that time, they spent days and nights fighting against various enemies in the Eighth Route Army.
During the Meiji Festival, one of the soldiers wrote a phrase, "Meiji Festival without the Autumn Sky of the Japanese Flag," which made all the commanders weep.
During this period, there were only a few days in the New Year when there was no fighting. The Japanese troops who had joined forces with General Seki in Ohara, Shanxi, were still there. They did not want to return home. It was about two days after Yujing, the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, that they withdrew the defense of the railway that they had tried to protect for their return journey, set out for Tianjin, and entered the mainland.
From Sasebo I moved to my hometown of Sakurai in Yamato. At that time, I did not even think about my home in Tokyo. It was the custom in my hometown to go back to my hometown at a certain time or in a certain situation. It had been a part of my family's history for generations. I naturally thought about it, but I did not know how to question it, and I did not have the experience to have people's views and criticisms because it was in my hometown. In the domiciles of my hometown, the old customs dating back to the days of the War between the Northern and Southern Courts served as a natural basis for judgment.
I did not think about the literary world or my own future. The fact that Masao Nakayama of the Tenrikyo Church took the initiative in publishing a magazine called "Yamato Bungaku" was a sign of his cultural spirit, but on the other hand, the Tenrikyo Headquarters at that time had a desire to attract attention both in Japan and abroad. A large number of friends from Manbashira had gathered there.
This was one of the projects of this group of wounded friends. At that time, the name "Shinbashira" was not yet used in the faith community, but rather "Abbot." The reason why I wrote about Okinawa in this magazine under the title 'Miyarabi Aware' was because I am still impressed by my feelings towards Okinawa. It was the first post-war article I wrote on Okinawa, and I received many moving letters from people in the region.
This is a personal story, but during the past twenty years, Nakayama has been a great admirer of the Tenri Library, the Tenri Reference Museum, and the Folk Art Museum.
These two museums are neither art museums nor folk art museums, but rather museums that are based on the idea of missionary work. These two museums can be regarded as world-class cultural achievements by the Japanese people in the hundred years since the new era of civilisation and opening of the country to the outside world.
Last spring, I visited these two places as well as the Tenrikyo headquarters with Haruo Satō-sensei. He told me about the changes in the lineage of the founder's thought, "Kami, Kami, Kami," and gave me a booklet of his own writing outlining this change.
This way of thinking is one of the most profound in terms of the history of Japanese religious thought, and was spoken by the founder as "Ofudesaki" in a moment of divine revelation, and it was organised into a series and became a philosophy. I have said before that the Shinbashira has done great deeds in the history of Japanese religious organisations, just as the Shinbashira did in the past, but when I was shown his philosophy of "Kami, Kami, Kami," I felt a completely different kind of respect.
We, the alumni, have playfully criticised the pillars of beauty as having finally connected to the teachings by thoroughly considering the founder's teachings, but this examination revealed the thought that revealed the most profound and rapid progress of all our paths. This is one of the most powerful thought processes of the last twenty years of post-war Japan, apart from the mass media and the cynical society of civilisation. Such is the state of Japan.
The reconstruction of Japan lies in the fact that it is always made up of young life and creativity. When I returned to my hometown to farm and wrote 'Miyarabi Aware' in the twenty-second year, I was exclusively cultivating rice paddies. I did everything from planting to harvesting.
The summer heat was intense that year, and I spent all night guarding the water, sometimes spending many nights in the rice paddy shed with the neighbouring peasants. During this time, I learnt many things about water use practices that were not known in books or words.
I suppose it was to explain my actions that some people in the literary and academic world, who were at that time so eager to flatter the new powers that be, looked at my daily life and told me that I was fortunate to have land and fields, while they did not. The reason they said that was probably to make sense of their own actions. In those days I never criticised the cowardly behaviour of others.
Many people tried to bury me, alone, as the person responsible for the war, and thereby rationalise their own ephemeral existence. Before that, I had never imagined before that the spirit of the artists had been so corrupted. I thought of the spirit of the Japanese youth of yesteryear and was surprised and saddened by the achievements of fifty years of so-called "civilisation opening."
Even now, I still want to say that it is not only possible for a man of letters to die, even when things are not going well, but it is possible for a very young man to die. Lord Kikugoro died in battle, but his father Masanari and mother did not allow the young man to commit suicide. When a writer or aspiring writer goes back to farming in the mountains when things do not go well, it is the first step in his daily commitment. The phrase "Existing freely in the mountains and forests'' was the spirit of the history of our Eastern civilisation, and it was also the principle behind the creation of literary figures. The phrase "If you prepare, you have no regrets" does not refer to storing up weapons and military service in an arms race, but to pursue your aspirations with sincerity, which is both vulgar and cowardly. It was a literary expression of the aspirations of the East. It is depravity to interpret it in the manner of a sophist's comic dialogue.
To fulfil the principle of the birth of a man of letters means to cultivate one's own land, to eat, and to make a house to live in by one's own strength. In other words, it is the minimum level of autonomy that sustains life. No matter how the world changes, there is no other living proof, or at least the most important proof, of the spirit of "independence."
I was not prepared to purchase land and forests myself, but my ancestors handed it down to me and taught me their way of life. It is not a wealthy property, but a basic livelihood that protects the aspirations of independence. This is also the basis of "home'' in my firmament.
In the East, and of course in our own dance, when discussing literature and writing, the life of the writer was considered first, rather than his tangible works. A certain type of literary life was seen as a symbol of the highest literary quality. Saigyo Shonin, Sogi Hōshi, Bashō, these people were regarded as such. Du Fu was particularly respected for his loyalty.
Bashō said that it was really a trivial thing to publish a collection of his own haiku and to publicise his literature. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's skill in pointing out his contradiction by asking why such a man would publish a haikai collection shows Akutagawa's declining view of Eastern literature. This was a proof of his negative view. The fact that he published a collection of haikai with his comrades, but not a private collection, is a sign of the Eastey way of respecting and worshipping the literati in their lives.
The Eastern customs of respecting people in their daily lives were exposed. Because I questioned the customs that I respected in my life, they condemned my labour to hardship and my farming, and the native peasants in my neighbourhood sympathised with me. They considered my dream of working as hardship. And they said that they may stand for a day, but sit down for a moment.
I was willing to work, but I thought of the hell I would face if I had to sit behind a desk. At that time, it was popular in our country to argue that non-resistance was the principle of peace. They mainly relied on the ideas of Gandhi. However, they did not know that the old man had said the principle of non-resistance was a virtue, but that the law was a different thing from the principle of non-resistance, and that it was the most important thing for human beings to eliminate. What people at that time called peace and non-resistance was actually cowardice, the most reprehensible human evil.
I wanted to say what my position was during the war and that peace and non-resistance are not the same thing as cowardice. But at the same time, I was also thinking that being argumentative was a form of cowardice.
Eventually, I was the recipient of an order to expel me. My banishment was a special case, designated in the name of the Minister of General Affairs, and I received special treatment from various quarters, as there was no other similar case of banishment in Yamato. The C.I.C. in Nara was deserted, so I was under special surveillance.
My expulsion was accompanied by Ichirō Hatoyama's in order to delay his expulsion, and I do not know how it ended up.
When my speech was suspended as a result of my banishment, I became acutely aware of my work as a writer. I kept my business in the countryside for most of my life, but went to Kyoto and gathered young comrades to form the 'Sokoku-sha,' (Ancestral Society) which published a monthly pamphlet called 'Ikkoku,' and was absent from 24 to 30 years.
Under the banner of exile, I was not allowed to write or speak about anything from politics and economics to world affairs. So I thought that if I did not sign my worldly name, an unknown Japanese missive would be a great Japanese volume, and I sometimes wrote an entire book without signing my name.
There was a time when a young American commissioned officer from the C.I.C. came to Sakurai's house and mentioned this fact to him. This young man had longed for the civilisation of the East, had studied Japanese studies at a university in his home country, and had applied to become a commissioned officer because he wanted to come to Japan.
At the time, the American government set up a direct information centre in Kyoto for the 'Sokoku-sha,' but it was not until 1945 that the 'Sokoku-sha' was able to establish its own information centre in Kyoto.
However, neither the 'Sokoku-sha' nor the 'Fatherland' were directly oppressed. In the days of 'Mitoshi Shoku,' the predecessor of 'Sokoku-sha,' the managers were summoned one after the other and questioned about the nature of the work and the way it was run. The writing was reminiscent of the war, evoking the elegance of the song combinations, but in terms of thinking, it was no different than during the war.
The Emperor is the centre of the nation and is a god because he is the eternal fulfilment of the mythos of the founding of the nation. In Japanese mythology, the gods of the high heavens gave their grandchildren ears of grain and promised that if they planted them and made this their life on earth, they would create a supreme kingdom with the manners of the heavens. This divine promise was the cause of the founding of Japan, and the Emperor is the one who carries out this divine covenant from generation to generation. Therefore, the Emperor of our country has always remained the same throughout the hundreds of generations, and all of them are the "grandsons of the Emperor." It is important for our nation that the seed of this deity is not barley but rice, and that our way of life is not hunting or stock-raising but paddy-field farming. Furthermore, the Emperor has no possessions in this respect, that is, he has no property. To be known but not ruled means to have no dominion. There is no such thing as a "house," not even a "surname." This was the mythical god of Japan that our ancestors believed in for thousands and hundreds of years. While I was recounting these stories to several people, the American military stationed in the Kansai was convinced not to recognise the Japanese "god," but to say that the Emperor had nothing to offer.
However, the argument that the Emperor has nothing to rely on is different from the argument that "everything belongs to the Emperor.'' Even during the war when we created the slogan, our military at the time did not criticise us. Rather, the nationalists who followed the times criticised my theory, but from that time on I took pride in myself as the pinnacle of classical thought, and the world recognised my background and did not persistently oppose me.
I was not concerned about being treated as one of the people most responsible for the Greater East Asia War. But I am not ashamed. I did not care about the closure of the publishing house, because I believed that for a man of letters to do literature and leave it for the eternity of his people, it was not about the meagre popularity of his prose, but about showing how he lived on what day he lived. The new company was always favourable to me and I wrote on rare occasions, but out of concern for those who shunned me, I refrained from discussing much about the world of literature.
I respect Tomioka Tetsusai Sensei, believe in his ultimate goal, and believe in his loyalty and filial piety. For the purpose of preaching the virtues of righteousness and faith, he is a master of the art that guides the uneducated. I saw this as the aspiration of a man of literature, and as I recalled the wistful thoughts of the patriots of the Meiji Restoration, I felt deeply touched and felt pain in my heart.
In the history of literature in Japan and the East, the supreme image of literature is not found in a single piece of artistic work, but in the way the literati lived their lives. I believe that to realise the philosophy of the underworldly thoughts of the Eastern civilisation, which I love so much, in the present day, is the reason why I have been able to see the eternity of the lives of the young people who died for the sake of this war, with the warmth of the sun, by adhering to the concept of "Great East Asia War" without love.
The work of our company was to clarify the ideology of the Greater East Asia War, mine and ours.
The argument is that in the history of the hydroponic peoples of the East, there has never been a war of aggression with weapons, but a war of self-defence with bamboo spears. The bamboo is a necessity of life in rural Japan, but bamboo forests were planted for the defence of river banks. In our 'Homeland,' we stated that the Meiji Restoration, when seen from the perspective of international affairs, was a declaration of Asian independence against European aggression in the East, in love with the spirit of independence and self-reliance, and that this was exclusion of barbarians, and in this defence philosophy and belief, it opened the eyes to the myth of the founding spirit of the Emperor.
He explained that one of the objectives of the Great East Asian War was to further amplify the spirit of the Meiji Restoration, realise an Asia of Asians, and complete the history of the twentieth century as the "Great Asian Revolutionary Era." This has been our belief since the war.
Of course, our Greater East Asia War was based on such a philosophy, but some Japanese also came close to the subject of war for the sake of aggression and prosperity. We can no longer influence others because of our own actions and decisions. Those with such a spirit, whether American, Communist, or Chinese, approach power where it exists, and the principle of their transformation and change is not an ideal, and therefore not a revolution, but merely an expedient. To ignore them, not to speak of them, not to see them, not to hear them, is sometimes an effective attitude for the progress of humanity and peace. It also erases itself. This is one of the important points above.
Although there is a historical difference between the theory of exclusion and the theory of national isolationism, I have also bought into the principle. From a certain period, the evidence and principles of isolationism developed into a moralistic prayer.
A direct illustration of this situation can be found in the confrontation between Captain Golonin, a noble naval officer of the former Russian emperor, and our virtuous magistrate in Hakodate. In this court, both sides spoke of morality. The Hakodate Magistrate said that our country's reason for doing what he did was that if we open up our ports and trade with foreign countries, our luxury will increase and some will surely become rich and prosperous, but if you look at the history of Europe over the last hundred years, it has been a time of constant war. We would rather hate poverty and live a peaceful and moral life than be foolish enough to start a war. This is the view of the Hakodate Magistrate's office.
When the Japanese first opened their own country to the world, saying that flying machines were a way of life, the power of Western missiles spread throughout China and invaded many of its key areas.
The Meiji Restoration's principle of expulsion of foreigners was based on the realisation of this fact, and was intended to protect Japan from invasion. This expulsion of barbarians, therefore, did not lead to a nation-state, but to an immoral attitude that was proud of opening the country to the outside world and worshipped hewn weapons such as bamboo spears. In this way, civilisation and enlightenment and the development of a rich and strong army have the same meaning. Thus, finally, in the Greater East Asia War, the Europeans threw the final weapon of their invasion, the iron-fire weapon, into the final land of their conquest of the East. This is the "Hiroshima" as seen by the Japanese. It is the inevitability of Omei. But the spirit of the Orient, the Takekan, will neither break nor perish. I believe.
In the 1945s, I was in exile at the time, and so I wrote the most numerous and the most blatant statements on current affairs in my entire life. I gave up my name and marked it with the Japanese prayer. But the theory of affairs is empty to the last. It is not the work of life. Sincerity of faith is eternal, that is, peace of mind and peace of life. Literature is only about the essence of this sincerity.
Before the beginning of the 1960s, the idea of dissolving the 'Sokoku-sha' and creating the 'Shinron-sha' was an extension of the current situation. I felt that the spirit of true "conservatism" and its historical clarification of Japan, with an Asian perspective, must be established at the root of the conservative joint national stability policy of the time. This effort failed almost miserably.
However, I did not initially think it was a failure. At first, the enthusiasm of the Kwansei side was of a beautiful sword, which was not easy to achieve. But it was not to be.
One of the interesting stories from those days is that Michisuke Sugi, who has since passed away, saw the cover of the first issue of 'Shinron' and thought that a nude woman should not be on it. We do not strip women naked on the streets, but her nudity was a manifestation of our ideals of beauty and virtue.
But my actual desire is that you should also make costumes for naked children, as they will soon become old enough to wear them. Mr Sugi seemed to be very amused when he heard this. Six months after I started 'Shinron,' I became deathly ill and was taken to an Osaka hospital. This illness was the worst thing that could have happened to 'Shinron.' It was a real shame.
I still believe that I led a full life during my exile, when I tried to cultivate the rice fields and find my homeland. Many of the articles I wrote on current affairs in 'Sokuku' at that time have largely dissipated.
However, it was also a great pleasure for me to be able to honour and confirm, for the first time in many decades, the passionate research on Yoshino Rikyu by Narakichi Moriguchi, who passed the age of 90 this year, based on his identification of the site of Asuka Kannabi and its main deity, and the relationship between the most sacred pilgrimage to Tanjo and Yoshino Rikyu, which he wrote around that time to reveal forgotten myths of our people and lost mythological stories and, in some cases, the abuses of the Man'yōshū. I also studied some of the historical sites of famous local families, and I now have a clear understanding of how the Yoshino dynasty is still at the root of our lives today.
Even after the civilisation and opening of Japan to the outside world, the blood of our ancestors remained strong in our common way of thinking. The fear that the souls of our great ancestors might still remain in some dark recesses of the complex layout of our mother's house, which was one or two hundred years old, did not disappear into another form, even after the house was rebuilt.
When I wrote at the beginning that I wished to be prepared, I was not referring to my personal savings, but rather to our heritage. In the latter stages of the Great East Asia War, I feared that the military had consumed all the lives of today's young people, and that they had destroyed everything that had been accumulated since the Meiji era and even earlier, from the feudal era.
But there was no such fear. The feeling of a village that had lost all its strength and ceased to fight was not to be found in the farming villages of the Kinai region in the early 1920s. Every village was still beautiful, and the houses were still splendidly imposing.
Moreover, I tried to remain in a respectful attitude toward nature. The beauty of Japanese villages could not have been created by landscape artists anywhere in the world or architects from any country. The Japanese village demonstrates the beauty of the natural harmony between mountain and sea. I consider this beauty and its causes to be the principles on which humanity is based, both in the past, now, and in the future.
My conception of the Great East Asia War was a bamboo spear for the extension of that principle.
So it is sad that even now, as it is so often the case, bamboo spears also kill and injure people. I am a man of letters, and my reality and creation is not a bamboo spear, but a brush. The brush and paper, which were originally made of bamboo, are the means of expressing my thoughts and prayers, and are all that I have created. The brush also pierces the person, but they do not see each other's blood. These were the lamentations of my old friend, Akinari Ueda.
I was so moved by this phrase that I put it into my writing one day during the war.
It was in the 'Nihongo Kasen,' written around 1950. In the early 1940s, I lived in a farming village in Yamato and travelled around the farming villages in Kiuchi, I had no experience of what it felt like to be a broken country and to be surrounded by mountains and rivers. This was because Japanese villages were so beautiful. The external appearance of the village had not lost any of its richness of beauty.
At the beginning of the 1960s, when I was working for 'Sokoku-sha,' my colleagues and I published a book on education. At that time, there were no textbooks or teaching materials for compulsory education, and the job of the elementary school teacher was to carry a sack on his back and buy all the teaching materials he could find. Teachers at that time continued to hold on to the ideas they had during the war, so they had to make such tearful efforts to teach the children. However, at that time, primary education in Japan was in a serious crisis. Low-class pedagogues from the western part of the USA came to Japan and broke up Japan's world-first educational system, which was unrivaled in the world after the Meiji era.
The Ministry of Education (Monbusho) has taken no action against them, and the government academics, who listened to this new power, worked to dismantle education in Japan. The precious primary schools teacher, who had been scouring the bookshops with a rucksack for her children, had discovered the plot of the Occupation Forces and the government academics who followed them, and had physically plotted to destroy their education by rewriting the dream of a decline. It was, for example, an education that did not teach the principles of automobile manufacturing at all, but instead trained them to become repairmen.
While the literati could take measures to counter the destruction of history with this, and while the teachers could enlighten the children on how to learn the principles, we began to publish educational materials that would instil an attitude to the principles in the body through the training of the child in "study." This is the way of life in the world of education.
Japanese primary educators, who had been with us since before the war, did not hesitate to search out our books without a word of complaint. Today, the curriculum guidelines of the Ministry of Education are gradually being restored to normal. However, there is still much that remains to be done to improve the ability of the students to learn and to nurture human emotions as the image of a solid citizen.
I do not have any knowledge of the material of primary education, but I know how much it means to me, and that is why I have been working with my young colleagues on the development of the "Tokusho Gakusha" and its predecessor.
In the era of "Gakusha" and its predecessor, this education was the correct answer. I have been there. It was not so much a retitle as it was the greatest achievement of the war. I was glad that Haruo Satō, who is no longer with us, was able to contribute so much to the spirit of this project. The former Dean of Kyoto University, Dr Ko Hirasawa, also showed great enthusiasm. I have often been moved by and reflected on the earnest patriotism common to people around seventy years of age.
I was also deeply moved and reminded in a different way that Taro Ochiai, whom I have admired for thirty years as a truly pure scholar of literature who transcended the world, showed deep sympathy and kindness to the spirit of this project of our young colleagues.
After the closure of 'Sokoku-sha' and the dissolution of 'Shinron,' I moved from Yamato to Kyoto and built a villa on the three-storey mountain above Dentaki.
There are two ponds on the mountain, the entire hill is a forest of red pine trees, and a Saga bamboo grove below the house. In the old days, it was said to be a land that was marked in the Kyoto Famous Places Exhibition, but when I came to see the house a little over six years ago, I was told that it was no place for a human being to live, and that women like Hisako Tomita of Tenyo were too afraid to visit alone. I moved to Mount Mio, where I was able to observe the wind and sun of Kyoto in detail. I was able to see the landscape of the late Imperial Court's former residence and the capital city of Kyoto.
The difference in the scenery of the country's hometown and the views of dawn and sunset in Kyoto taught me the cause of the changes in the Man'yōshū and dynastic literature. The imagery and fantasy prototypes of 'The Tale of Genji' became more and more comprehensible to me as I gazed upon the natural landscape of the evening. It was an unexpected pleasure to realise that I was beginning to understand the meaning of the mysterious essence of 'The Tale of Genji,' which Lord Kujo had taught Sadatoku Matsunaga once upon a time.
From this location, Mount Hiei and Mount Atago-yama, seen from the vicinity of the temple, were indeed the imposing mountains of the gods and the capital's citadel.
The 'Tenryo' (the fish of the heavens), which I have described in this issue, is a pamphlet that I started after the dissolution of the 'Shinron' with the aim of elucidating Japanese ethnic forms. It would be unreasonable to say that the unique forms of a people can be reduced to their elements, but this is the work that I have created from the point of view that what is usually referred to as Japaneseness, Japanese beauty, Japanese spirit, or even Japanese tradition is all a lie. In literature, it could be called Japan's unique conception, but since we are now beginning to understand more and more about the factors that underlie this development, I will continue my search using the vague term "ethnography."
I hope I have answered your questions by chronicling the twenty of my life, but I would like to say a few words.
I do not believe that my "Greater East Asia War" has come to an end. The world has moved on since then, and humanity has become more and more extremely depraved. Japan's glorious way of life has fallen, and even the unique arts, such as calligraphy, tea ceremony, and flower arrangement, have become what is called "Japanesque," and especially abroad, they have become unbearable to look at. If I were to speak of the Japanese spirit or Japanese tradition as a pretext, I would say that it has become a kind of "Japanese culture" that I lamented during the Great East Asian War and that I have been trying to preserve.
I am not a fan of the Japanese spirit or the Japanese tradition, but I do think that what I lamented during the Great East Asian War, what I was inspired to do and acted to achieve must be reenacted today, and in fact I am trying to do so. However, since the world has become more and more competitive, and my experience and perspective have broadened somewhat with age, so now my sorrows and worries have increased.
My anxieties and concerns are now more distant, wider, and more serious than they have been in twenty years. I now live in a wooden house designed by a master craftsman of the time, on a mountain top with the most beautiful view in Kyoto, and I use as my daily utensils what are probably the masterpieces of the Shōwa period. People say that I am a person of leisure and self-sufficiency, but I believe that the literature of the tearful writer is, ah, such a life.
Last year, Haruo Satō came to see how my villa was doing after seeing 'Shisen-do' by Jōzan Sensei. He was a man who could do that. On that day, he asked me if I would like to learn more about Jōzan. When I said no, he told me that if I looked at 'Shisen-do' and imagined his life, I could fully understand how excellent he was as a poet, not just his works. On the way back home that day, he complimented me on the view of my villa and said that even if you did not write a single poem, you would still be a poet because of this place.
I was surprised to hear him say that he recognised me as a poet even if I did not have a single poem to write. I have always thought of writers and literature as such. The reason I say what I should not say is that today in Japan there is no more literature and no more writers. It is because they have been forgotten.
However, it should be noted that in the West, especially in the United States, the general public, especially the younger generation, is increasingly attracted to art and crafts, and the number of applicants to art universities is increasing dramatically, which is something that should be considered early on, but may not be a problem at all, as it is a phenomenon that is occurring here. It is only when this happens that we are astonished and realise the magnitude of what we have already lost.