Modern Myths: Cold Cellar

As the snow really piles up in Furubira, I see the ‘ba-chans dealing with it by dumping it down into the crevase-like open storm drains. The drains run along the roads on either side and are covered by concrete slabs with slots between them to allow drainage.

However, the slabs aren't so large that you wouldn’t be able to, say, drag one of them off to expose the deep, trough-like drain below. And this is exactly what the ‘ba-chans do. They prop the slabs up, like giant cement trap doors, at the edges of the square, black holes in the otherwise perfectly uniform whiteness of the hard-packed streets and sidewalks. I watched as whole snowplows full of white powder vanish down the square voids with the efficiency of those Acme-brand, moveable black holes from the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

There’s something arcane about it for me: the dumping of all that snow down those holes; out of sight, out of mind, and with no indication that it’s piling up or that there will ever be any end to those cavernous spaces under the streets.

I picture a massive cold cellar; an icy furnace beneath Hokkaido that is stoked with snow by the shovelful throughout the long winter.

And, at the height of the hot Japanese summer—when the people of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu are quickly turning to puddles in the oppressive, humid heat—in Hokkaido cooling breezes blow forth from forest caves and river beds. They link up to the expansive ice caverns beneath the island, where there is still snow that has sat unmelted since the times of the Ainu—ice that is older still, from down dark paradigms of time, to back when these islands were ruled by something other than men.