A huge factory in Northern Japan stands barren in the snow. Snow that drives through cracked window panes and gaping holes in concrete and brick. A severed and frayed high-voltage cable swings in the wind. The empty hulk of a foundry that no longer pours molten steel. No longer makes locomotive wheels or bulldozer buckets. No longer feels steel-toes boots walking down long corridors to load flatbed trucks with carbon alloy motor cases. Now the loadings docks sit empty, boarded shut. Shipping skids lay strewn around the yard.
I step through a door-less entry. I feel as though I must walk slowly, reverently, as if in a church, so as not to disturb sleeping workers. Shafts of snow speckled sunlight column down from above. Cracked and stiffened boots lie next to an overturned helmet. Someone must have decided that these weren't worth hauling away. The lunch menu still hanging on an oil-stained wall.
The work has moved south and is not coming back, at least not for the ghosts who roam these lonely halls. Now someone else will make gears with grease and iron, and wash off the grime of a full day's work with pumice and cold water. Now someone else will drink coffee at break time from a worn and dented thermos.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Heavy Industry Ships South
A huge factory in Northern Japan stands barren in the snow. Snow that drives through cracked window panes and gaping holes in concrete and brick. A severed and frayed high-voltage cable swings in the wind. The empty hulk of a foundry that no longer pours molten steel. No longer makes locomotive wheels or bulldozer buckets. No longer feels steel-toes boots walking down long corridors to load flatbed trucks with carbon alloy motor cases. Now the loadings docks sit empty, boarded shut. Shipping skids lay strewn around the yard.
I step through a door-less entry. I feel as though I must walk slowly, reverently, as if in a church, so as not to disturb sleeping workers. Shafts of snow speckled sunlight column down from above. Cracked and stiffened boots lie next to an overturned helmet. Someone must have decided that these weren't worth hauling away. The lunch menu still hanging on an oil-stained wall.
The work has moved south and is not coming back, at least not for the ghosts who roam these lonely halls. Now someone else will make gears with grease and iron, and wash off the grime of a full day's work with pumice and cold water. Now someone else will drink coffee at break time from a worn and dented thermos.
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