2008年6月四级英语考试巅峰阅读培训(第三讲)

OGAMA,Japan,this mountain village on the West Coast, withere(枯萎) to eight aging residents, concluded recently that it could no longer go on. So, after months of anguish, the villagers settled on a drastic solution;:selling all of Ogama to an industrial waste company from Tokyo, which will trun it into a landfill. 本文来自

On a hill overlooking a field of overgrown bushes, surrounded by the sounds of a running stream and a bush warbler (鸣鸟), Miyasaka pointed below with his right index finger. “I never imagined it would come to this,”he said. “I mean,those all used to be rice fields.”

本文来自

Japan is dotted with so many such communities that academics have coined a term ----“villages that have reached their limits”--- to describe those with populations that are more than half elderly. Out of 140 villages in Monzen, the municipality that includes Ogama, 40 percent have fewer than 10 households, inhabited mostly by ghe elderly. 本文来自

During his five years in office, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has reduced public works spending that yielded money and jobs to local construction companies.

Koizumi cut subsidies and tax redistribution to local governments, instead giving them the power to collect taxes directly But rural officials argue that with a decreasing population and few businesses, there are few taxes to collect.

In keeping with a nationwide movement to combine financially squeezed municipalities, Monzen merged with nearby Wajima City in February. In 2000, revenue from the national government to the two municipalities totaled $ 114 million, accounting for 50 percent of their overall revenue; in 2005, money from the capital fell to $ 90 million, or 44 percent of revenue.

Fumiaki Kaji, mayor of the merged municipality, said recent changes amounted to a “ simple logic of telling the countryside that it should die.”

Ogama lies in a valley in a mountain facing the sea, reached by a single-lane road that winds its way through a deep green forest where foxes and raccoon dogs are spotted regularly. The road ends here.

Bunzo Mizushiri, 81 ,a historian in Wajima, said Ogama (whose name means “Big Pot”) was the place where monks cleansed themselves before going up Takatusme, a sacred mountain.

After World War Ⅱ ，there were about 30 households here, each with eight or nine people. Today , three couples live in one corner of the village, and two women live alone in another corner. A small hill rises in the center, atop which stands a Shinto(日本的神道教) shrine whose gate was partly felled by an earthquake years ago.

Small streams flow from the surrounding mountains, keeping the ground here moist and covered with patches of moss. The expanding forest has begun reclaiming once cultivated land, hiding the ruins of abandoned housed, and blocking the sunlight.

“Our house is still standing, thankfully,” said Harue Miyasaka,the village leader’s wife and,at 61, Ogama’s youngest inhabitant. “But when you look at the houses collapsing one after another, you understand what’s ahead for your own house.”

“We’re at a dead-end here,” she said in front of her house, where the single-lane road reached its end. “Our children haven’t come back, so there’s no further growth. We’ll just keep getting older.”

Her husband first proposed the idea. After retiring as a seaman two decades ago and setting up a roof-waterproofing business, Kazuo Miyasaka said he foresaw Ogama’s shrinking future. So about 15 years ago, he began pursuing several possibilities, including turning the area into a golf course. None of the ideas went anyw