VOX POPULI: Pride and unpredictability can go a long way

Here are some quotable quotes from June, the month that may be remembered more for the space probe Hayabusa's miraculous return to Earth after a seven-year voyage, an unfolding scandal over illegal betting on baseball games by sumo wrestlers and soccer's World Cup rather than a change of prime ministers.

Shiori Naka, a third-year student of Futenma Senior High School in Okinawa Prefecture, read a poem she composed at a memorial for those who died in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

"(U.S. military) bases sit here as if they are nothing out of the ordinary/ Helicopters are flying as if they are most natural ... While feeling mundane happiness/ I only wish for peace now/ But is it all right to readily dismiss this uncomfortable feeling?"

Hisako Morimoto, 60, of Kawaminami, Miyazaki Prefecture, had to cull 1,368 pigs to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.

"It was painful to kill those defenseless piglets," she said. "Perhaps mothers who sent away their sons as soldiers for the nation must have felt the same way."

Actor Hiroshi Yagyu, 73, who runs an eatery and other facilities in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture, devotes himself to tending coppices in surrounding areas.

"Don't you want to work for something that is not just for money and that you are proud of?" he said. "A solid future lies in a landscape that brings back fond memories."

"Time only passes slowly for bereaved families. I want to share that time with them," said Kazumi Wakabayashi, a caretaker of Chiisana Kaze no Kai (the society of small winds), an association of parents who lost their children. "Even when all the trees get completely burned down, buds eventually emerge from the stumps left behind," she said. "In the midst of despair, I observe the budding of hope."

Matsumaru Honpo, a shop inside Maruzen bookstore's main outlet in central Tokyo's Marunouchi district, displays books by theme, instead of lining up tomes of the same size on the same shelf, the traditional way to display them.

Seigou Matsuoka, an editor and a writer who contrived the display, said, "For bookstores to regain their status, they need to build shelves that reach out to customers."

Architect Tadao Ando, 68, overlaps his idea of "an ideal life" with the Sagrada Familia (Church of the Holy Family) in Barcelona, which has been under construction since the 19th century. "I want to get a kick out of things that do not go as planned and in discontinuity," he said. "It's nice to think freely while building toward a big goal."

I also yearn to live a life less predictable.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 30

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.