It was a warm middle day on the equinoctial week, as the word “No heat or cold lasts over the equinoctial week”.  The temperature has exceeded 20 degrees Celsius, which is the highest this year, and is about the same as mid-April to late April. Somei Yoshino cherry blossoms in Osaka bloomed at the temperature ahead of the season, which was the earliest flowering since the start of statistics.  Now that I think about it, 26 years ago today, indiscriminate terrorist attacks using chemical weapons occurred in Tokyo, which is rare in the world with 14 dead and 6,000 injured.  It was the case of the richest era after the war before the burst of the bubble economy, and the distortion hidden in the richness was exposed.  Together with the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that occurred two months before that, it became an incident that seemed to foresee the subsequent natural disasters and man-made disasters.  With that in mind, I unconsciously joined hands in the beautiful sunset over the sun on the middle day of the equinoctial week.

「暑さ寒さも彼岸まで」の言葉通り暖かい彼岸の中日になりました。気温も20度を超え4月中旬から下旬並みで今年最高だということです。季節先取りの気温で大阪のソメイヨシノが開花し、統計開始以来最も早い開花になりました。思えば26年前の今日、東京で死者14人、負傷者6,000人という世界でも稀に見る大都市圏における化学兵器を利用した無差別テロ事件が起こりました。バブル崩壊前の戦後最も豊かになった時代の事件で、豊かさの中に潜む歪みが露呈する事件になった訳です。その２か月前に起こった阪神淡路大震災と合わせ、その後の天災、人災を予見するかのような事件になりました。そんなことを思い起こしながら、お彼岸の中日に沈み行く綺麗な夕日に思わず手を合わせた次第です。