Posted by dballred on 02.02.2011, 12:38 PM:
quote:
Originally posted by Saddletank
You really should try and get to Britain where so much engineering was born. We have tons and tons of great museums and preserved industrial sites. And even the un-preserved derelict places are great, sometimes moreso because you have to tramp through undergrowth for half an hour to find them only to be presented with a vast derelict mineworking or something.
Our canal network is amazing even today reduced to about 1/4 of its original size, there are some great finds to be made in the middles of fields like tunnel mouths and lonely bridges. There's something awe inspiring and spooky and sad about great structures left to rot and forgotten by men thaat you come across alone on a damp autumn day.
American freight trains are cool too. I love the idea of such huge machines and the vast amount of minerals or grain or oil or car body parts they carry for a thousand miles. Stunning.
Speaking of canal systems, a 1988 joint Miyazaki-Takahata documentary about one in Yanagawa gave me a newfound appreciation for the level of engineering that goes into these deceptively primitive-looking transportation systems. If you go to the Google maps section, center the map over Kyushu Island and search for Yanagawa, Fukuoka Prefecture, the map will go to the center of town. Zoom in and pan around--the system is massive.
Canal systems were used extensively in Japan during the feudal era and Yanagawa's was impressive even in their heyday. The documentary goes into the story of an engineer who was brought in to cover over the system, which had fallen into disuse and was becoming an eyesore, with concrete. The engineer had a different idea: clean up and restore the entire system. You've seen the story in its condensed form--a mere few minutes versus the three-hour documentary. The Mayor of the town is Yubaba, the Yanagawa townsfolk are the bathhouse employees, the engineer is Chihiro and the canal system is the "stink spirit." All the metaphors fit so perfectly that I'm sure Miyazaki used the Yanagawa experience as the template for that one scene.
A good part of the documentary covers the technical and engineering aspects of the hundreds of years old system. It was fed by a river and a clever series of gates kept the flow regulated so that the system could be navigated in both directions without going stagnant. Also, it had to protect the town against seasonal extremes of river flow.
EDIT:
This is a map of the town. The blue lines you see are NOT roads!
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