50 years. Half a century. Has it been so much since 1970? Osaka Expo, Yodo-go hijacking, dissolution of the Beatles, suicide of Yukio Mishima. Well, it's a long time ago. As you might have guessed, let's start this incoherent blog by writing down the memories of 50 years ago. Even though I was in the lower grades of elementary school, I couldn't understand what’s going on in the world, like a raccoon that just came out of a cave, and at that time it was like that there is no way to talk about. I didn't know about Vietnam War, Arab-Israel conflict, violence within a student sect in Japan, so called ”Uchigeba”. I was just an ordinary boy, going to the base-ball stadium named Koshien, because I wanted to see the famous player, Tabuchi, and his home run, and went to play in a nearby vacant lot. When the economy entered a recession, there was a vague feeling that the world was somewhat daydreaming, and only the melody of the Beatles' "Let It Be" that was flowing with an insertion song or something of a TV drama remained in my head. As I couldn't understand English, I misunderstood the lyrics of the chorus as "LP, LP," and assumed that it was a commercial LP gas song. But I found the Beatles are nice, and very fresh and exciting. I also often heard the word public pollution, “Kogai” in japanese in the news. Nowadays the term environmental pollution is normal, but when did it stop being called Kogai? The pollution problem has the impression that newspapers and television began to rush all at once in the 1970s. During the high economic growth period of the 1960s, It was just like there was no pollution. It just came out, just as an "incident," and the sudden outbreak of that incident also puzzled me. However, due to lack of judgment, I understood Kogai as an evil, simply because people around me said "bad guys spread the pollution!" Oh, yes, and shocking was the failure of Apollo 13's moon trip. The Apollo 11 lunar landing last year grabbed the hearts of people around the world (at least the "western side" people at the time) and expanded their dreams of traveling in space. Alright, we've got on the moon, next time on Mars, maybe 50 years later, jumping over the Galaxy and reaching Andromeda! It was the event that I thought. Oh, shit, It's an irresponsible prose anyway. Then I will stop here, and try to summarize what I have written so far.
1) The world was somewhat daydreaming 50 years ago 2) Beatles is very fresh and exciting 3) Environmental problems occur when economic growth stops 4) The age of space travel is yet to come
Huh? What on earth is this? Any difference from now? Billie Eilish worships the Beatles, and environmental pollution is chronic. Humanity has not yet been able to go to Mars. What has progressed these 50 years? Smartphone? Internet? Translation machine? Such useful devices have certainly advanced, but has there been a bigger advance more fundamentally? Continue to the second blog, driven by complicated thoughts. Next time, I will try to trace the memories of 1980.