(From Narita to Tokyo Central)Hammering out High-Tech Bullet Train
Last night I realized that I had one wrong notion for a very long time since I first got on a "Shinkansen" super-express train decades ago to come to Tokyo from the west.
The curved outside design of the first car of the Shinkansen train was actually hand-made.
I thought the round shape and complex curve of the surface were created with some automatic tools, which was not right.
The hull at the nose of the train was made of metal plates curved and bent by craftsmen who used an iron hammer for this formation process.
Craftsmen of a small company hit each plate with a hammer to bend it following a design specified by engineers of Japan National Railways. Each plate was then welded together to form a head car where a train operator sits.
The Shinkansen express train, one of the fastest train since early 1960's, was thus formed manually, which I have never realized for 40 years. And, they say that even today head cars of the newest model of the Shinkansen train are processed this old way.
The president of the small company was 26 years old when he received an order from Japan National Railways. He thought that if he had failed to whatever degree in making precise curved surfaces for the first Shinkansen train, there would have been no orders after it. Under extreme pressure, however, his work was qualified and accepted. Since then his company has been in charge of hammering out the external, delicate surface of the driving car of the Shinkansen train, a Japanese symbol of its high technology of the 20th century.
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Craftsmen are not respected in Korea, China, India, the Middle East, and Europe traditionally.
But, Japan is exceptional in this regard, too.
Ordinary people who are neither rich, noble, nor physically strong but work honestly and diligently to make manually art works, artifacts, or tools for daily use are respected as much as or more than rich merchants, landlords, bureaucrats, and sometimes samurais and noblemen in Japan from a thousand years ago.
Even there have been less stringent distinction between upper-class engineers and ordinary laborers in a workshop.
So, if a boy says that he wants to be a craftsman in future instead of a rich merchant, nobody thinks the boy is a fool.
That is why Japanese are very Buddhistic and more Judaistic, Christian, and Islamic than those who claim themselves to be in the world.
It is so, since it is said that Japanese workers have traditionally put his soul into his work if working in a small factory for wages, which no Chinese and no Americans can do for mere meager wages.
(http://midistudio.com/midi/Barclay/TellMe_RollingStones.mid
Source:http://midistudio.com/midi/RB_NZ.htm)
Joh 7:25 Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he, whom they seek to kill?
Joh 7:26 But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?
Joh 7:27 Howbeit we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is.
Joh 7:28 Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not.