Recent military strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel suggest that the conflict may not end quickly. Watching these developments from Japan raises unsettling questions: how stable is the world we take for granted, and how suddenly could our own lives be affected by war?
The military attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel appear likely to continue for some time.
Few people expected Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to last this long, yet it has. Something similar could easily happen again.
Time cannot be rewound, and no one truly knows what will happen next.
There are reports that Arab oil-producing countries may also be drawn into the situation, potentially affecting the production of oil and gas. For a country like Japan, which has few natural resources of its own, the consequences could be serious.
Even the trains and cars that move so routinely today might not operate as freely as they do now. If that happens, what would our daily lives look like?
And there is always the unsettling possibility that missiles could one day be launched toward Japan from abroad.
A few nights ago, I woke in the middle of the night to a roaring sound from the sky.
For a moment I wondered if war had finally reached Japan. I hesitantly pulled back the curtain and looked outside, only to find a torrential downpour.
My wife, sleeping beside me, had apparently thought the same thing.
War can arrive in someone’s life at any time. None of us can say it will never happen to us.
When I see images of war—beautiful buildings reduced to rubble in an instant—I cannot help thinking how foolish it all is.
Human beings have repeated the same act throughout history: destroying human, animal, and plant life, reducing everything to nothing.
If this is what progress leads to, I sometimes wonder whether humanity needed to evolve and advance at all.
Perhaps it would have been enough for us simply to live in harmony as part of nature.
