Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Page #3

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It makes me warm.

These hornets can fly

100 kilometers in one day.

So they have a lot of stamina.

Regular sake is 14 proof,

but because of the hornets, it's 50 proof.

I can get drunk, huh? In the afternoon!

When the wet-paddy rice system

became widespread in the 4th century,

it utterly changed the Japanese landscape,

taking on an aesthetic and moral weight

and becoming the embodiment

of a national identity.

The flooded fields and streams

of the rice paddies that covered the country

exaggerated Japan's already

lush, almost watery environment,

much to the benefit of the insects.

As both dragonflies and fireflies

have aquatic larval stages,

the rice paddies became fertile breeding

grounds for the already abundant insects.

Not good... They seem wary.

It's big. Can you see it?

Maybe a beetle and a bee?

What is that thing...

that eye shining in the dark up there?

That's too high. I need a longer net.

- Catch it!

- Catch it...

A big one!

Show me!

This insect hasn't evolved.

For millions of years,

it has stayed the same.

That top one evolved and turned into

the moth, the dragonfly and the beetle.

International trade has

reduced the necessity

for such large-scale productions of rice

and Westernized Japan

has stretch its cityscapes

deep into the rice fields of the past.

With a certain nostalgia,

rice fields have become

thought of as an ideal,

time-honored, landscape

having taken on significance as

the quintessence of traditional

Japanese values.

Japanese people now call the

countryside of rice fields

furusato, or "One's home region,"

even if they have spent the whole of their

lives amid the crush of a crowded city.

The preservation of streams and ponds

as well as the reconstruction

of those damaged by urbanization

has been incorporated into

municipal policy across the country.

The reintroduced fireflies and dragonflies

have become a symbol of

environmental regeneration,

community rejuvenation

and great national pride.

Insects are more than pets,

more than spirits in the cycle of reincarnation,

more than the subject of municipal policy.

Insects, in their miniscule being,

represent the entire history of a culture.

They are inscribed with all the

impenetrable mysteries of nature

and all the varying philosophies

of the human mind.

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