栄光の鉄道

　1991年初め、日本航空の国際線搭載版機内誌、WINDSは白井　昭氏と蒸気機関車について取り上げました。これに当たってはアメリカ人の著名なライターであるロバート・カッツ氏を起用しました。
　その成果は同誌の1991年３月号に４ページにわたり写真と共に紹介されました。
　これは白井氏の願うところのスピリットをよく捉え、リズミカルで美しい文体と共に欧米の読者に印象深く迎えられました。
　ここにその１ページを紹介致します。

Glory Trains

The Express Pleasure of Japan's Steam Locomotives

By Robert Cutts

In December 1975, steam locomotives were taken out of passenger service. By March of next year they had vanished from freight lines as well. But just 12 years later their smoke was filling the skies of Japan once again., as the nation's "nostalgia boom" demanded they be brought back.
Now, in 18 different places, steam locomotives are in service and old, powerful sounds can be hard. The SLs are healthy once more. It's like an old dream come true: sweet-and sour memories, from good days long gone by.

---Asahi Graph Magazine

There are certain subjects the experiences writer approaches with trepidation. Dogs and children, for example. Or sex. Or steam locomotives.
Because obvious as some things seem, no writer can be sure he had his audience feel same about anything no intimate.
What is about steam trains, then? Why do hundreds of thousands of Japanese reserves tickets weeks, months in advance every summer, travel hundreds of miles to see them, stand hours in rocky creekbeds below of yen and kiloliters of sweat to the painful work of restoring the rusting old buckets?
Is this about the history of the technology? About he symbology of power, or the romance of the rails? Is actually about Freud --- or Just about being little boys, and the fathers of little boys? Well, what the hell; let's go along for the ride. ...

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