“He-y, Come on O-ut!” by Shin’ichi Hoshi Text Analysis
The text chosen by me to be the main part of the analysis is “He-y, Come on O-ut!” by Shin’ichi Hoshi. The story chosen to support the ideas represented by Shin’ichi Hoshi is the one written by Hiromi Kawakami and it is named “God Bless You”. The first story is about a mysterious hole, which appears near small village and almost immediately makes it enormously popular. What is special about the hole is that it seems to be bottomless, which allows to utilize anything therein. People from the city nearby understand that very quickly and the hole becomes a final destination for all city wastes, the wastes from nuclear reactors, and even personal staff, of which the owner wants to get rid. This way of utilization seems to be the safest one, but the final passage of the story proves it is not and everything is going to get back to people. The second story represents the world after nuclear catastrophe through the eyes of the narrator, who is a friend of a bear (which reminds the reader a human being rather than an animal). It is contaminated tremendously by nuclear pollutants, which has changed the environment and urban landscape dramatically.
Both stories were written by Japanese authors, thus, the views and opinions they promoted in their texts about the environmental issues are similar at some point. Both of them percept a human being as an integral part of the world of nature since in the minds of Asians it is necessary to respect the environment, given its sacral nature. This can be proved through the lines in the story by Shin’ichi Hoshi, where a man asks not to interfere with the hole in order to avoid putting the gods into rage. Hiromi Kawakami also brings in this idea of the continuity of humans with nature. In his story, the narrator is a friend of a bear, and this friendship is a symbol for the unity of people and environment.
In my opinion, the hole in “He-y, Come on O-ut!” represents the whole world, nature or even the Universe. People have been polluting the environment for ages without even thinking about the possible consequences just because they were not obvious to them. The hole is, basically, the same: after weak attempts to understand its nature and failure to do that, people decide that if they are not able to explain or study the phenomenon, it is safe and does not represent any danger. However, what seems to be safe is not always safe indeed. The story is telling us that people should always think twice before doing anything to the environment, especially when they do not completely understand the mechanisms and the processes of certain phenomena. The reason is simple: otherwise what they do will once return to the humanity in a very unpredictable way and it will be too late to stop it. That is what happened in the …
