Environment: Fuji's Frightful Example

For centuries, the Japanese reverently visited the fabled village of Fuji. Set between snowcapped Mount Fuji and the shimmering Pacific, the place inspired poets and printmakers to create misty images of man's harmony with nature. Today Fuji is a small city (pop. 183,000), and tourists still come by the busload. Instead of beauty, they find man-made blight.

Ripped by two superhighways and three railway lines, the city is now a jumble of smoky factories whose fumes often shroud Mount Fuji in a brown pall. The port area of Tagonoura, once famed for its dazzling...

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