My husband works at one of the steel factories in town. On his way out he says the same thing every day, “You know, business is good these days.”
After he leaves for work, I wash the clothes and hang them outside to dry. But why do I feel like the laundry is getting dirtier as it dries?
I mentioned this to my neighbor. She said that lately, the water has become so polluted that the sea has been called “the sea of death,” and it’s so bad they haven’t been able to fish.
As I wiped the sweat off my forehead, I looked up to the sky and saw a colorful cloud of smoke rising from the distance-- it was coming from the steel factory. I thought about how my husband is working so hard for me, but all I’m doing here is washing clothes that don't get any cleaner. It's strange and unsettling, to say the least.
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
My neighbor seems to agree with me.
The colorful clouds of smoke are the sign of Yahata’s prosperity but are also the source of my anxiety. I could never talk about this with my husband-- that factory is his life.
But are we supposed to just sit around and do nothing?
All the housewives in the area are talking about it these days.
Eventually, this period would be referred to as the “Pollution of the Sky, Pollution of the Sea,” but after 30 years of hard work and determination, we unveiled the beauty of Kitakyushu’s nature once again.
Mt. Sarakura is a very tall mountain, but everyone used to climb up and enjoy festivals at the summit.
Yahata grew as an industrial city after the establishment of the steel industry in Japan, leading the country into modernization and high economic growth. But due to the pollution from the factories, the view you see before you today was nothing more than plumes of smoke, and the dirt from the ground used to turn the soles of your feet black.
Children back then didn’t think anything of it-- How could they? No one could’ve predicted the level of pollution that was happening due to Yahata’s prosperity.
If you tried to look at the scenery from Mt. Sarakura’s summit, all you would see was the “seven-colored smoke." It wasn’t like a rainbow, but more like a range of dull colors.
The housewives of the area were the first to realize something was wrong. But they wouldn’t dare speak of it, at least not at first. They’d just whisper it in passing, “Don’t you think that smoke is harming our environment?”
The men must’ve noticed it too, but I guess they didn’t see a point in mentioning it. All that would do is potentially get them fired from a secure and steady job.
But the housewives of Yahata saw things differently. They knew they had a responsibility to their family and children to raise their concerns, so they opened an investigation that confirmed the pollution levels were problematic. They took this hard evidence to the local government, who set a rule to establish the 24-hour monitoring system that’s still in place today.
It took some time and ingenuity, but they were successful in decreasing pollution and its effects on the environment. They added giant air purifiers, changed fuel types, and altered the methods of waste disposal-- achieving tangible results.
Thanks to the accumulated efforts over 30 years, they cleaned the environment in Kitakyushu and turned it into something unrecognizable compared to the view of the seven-colored smoke.
Yahata is no longer as prosperous as it was during the economic boom, but the nature there is thriving instead.
People who grew up around Mt. Sarakura can finally see the view from the top of the mountain. These days you can take the cable car and enjoy the view, without the seven-colored smoke blocking it.
