““Leo Rubinfein over to ask questions for his book. He asked me what I most regretted, having lived half a century here, and witnessed all the change. I said that I most regretted the loss of a kind of symbiosis between people and where they lived, a kind of agreement to respect each other. I again mention the paradigm—the builders make a hole in their wall to accommodate the limb of a tree. No more now. It is more expensive to make a hole than it is to cut down the tree, just as it is cheaper to raze than to restore. And since the environment is now so different, the people are different. This is symbiotic, too, degraded environment makes degraded people who make more degraded environment. And with it I regret the loss of a kind of curiosity. People used to be curious about each other. Now they have their hands full with their convenient and portable environment—Walkman in the ears, manga for the eyes, and the portable phone (which now contains their lives) in the palm of their hands. Many Japanese no longer look at each other, or those they talk to—those on that select menu of known voices on their phones they cannot see. These robots, I regret.””
