Train to Nara

Ruffy Magbanua

NARA City, Japan–Nothing can beat the one-hour smooth train ride to this iconic city of Nara, just a little bit south of Osaka and Kyoto, long celebrated as the cradle of Japanese culture and Japan’s oldest capital.

It makes me wonder how Japan was able to build its mass railway system after WWII, crisscrossing the country’s urban and rural communities with the most efficient and punctual trains ever–without compromising safety and the environment.

Trains symbolize modernity in Japan. High-speed railways, known as the Shinkansen (“new mainline”), cut journeys between Tokyo and Osaka by only two hours, instead of the usual six, a known record envied and copied by European countries.

This made it competitive with air travel, an industry which Japan had eschewed after the second world war, to avoid inadvertently stoking fears of rearmament.

Geography also influenced Japan’s rail network development: most of the 128 million inhabitants live in a few densely populated parts of the country.

By linking those dense populations together–nearly 40 million people in greater Tokyo with 20 million residents of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto–Japan’s railway system helped shift business patterns, making day trips between Tokyo and Osaka and the rest of domestic routes possible, accessible, fast and efficient.

And this leads me to think squarely albeit sadly the proposed 2,000-kilometer Mindanao Railway that would supposedly connect the island’s growth centers from Davao to Butuan, Cagayan de Oro and onward to Zamboanga.

But up to this day, this Mindanao mass transport project remains a pipe dream, thanks but no thanks to the government’s tenacity of “surgical application” of development with Imperial Manila getting the plum of infra funds.

With Mindanao’s peace consistently hanging on thin air,  the government’s  “build, build, build”  mantra may turn into a nightmare, a bad dream for the island, known far and wide as the Land of Promise.

But not anymore. This precious island is slowly breaking its name into a land of  uncertainty and fear with the siege of Marawi leading the pack of prolonged, bloody trouble courtesy of the Isis-inspired Maute terror group.

But there’s a reason to entertain   optimism with a liberal dose of caution. The long-festering Mindanao peace and order problem could perhaps be moved toward achieving a lasting peace but with no ifs and buts:  pour all the government’s resources en masse down south!

Today, not tomorrow.

E-mail: ruffy44_ph2000@yahoo.com