As long as we have hands and feet and a mouth, it is possible for us, just as it is for wild animals, to nourish ourselves without bowls, chopsticks, pots and pans, propane gas, knives, chopping boards, oil, soy sauce, sugar, or even salt. Wild animals do not take in an especially large amount of salt, and yet I have never heard of wild animals damaging their health because of this. It is only human beings who take in abnormally large quantities, thereby suffering from arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure. It is said that human beings only require 0.1 grams of salt per day. But Japanese on the average take in 20 grams per day, and even those people who are on reduced salt diets ingest 10 grams a day, so this means that we are taking in between 100 and 200 times the needed amount. One-tenth of one gram is an amount naturally found in food, and that should be enough; human beings should not be any different from wild animals. The salt refining factories and the salt retailers can go belly up any time they like. It is idiotic to believe that people must ingest the same proportion of salt as is contained in the blood. One should consider that 0.1 gram of salt has accumulated in the blood. If you suddenly reduce the amount of salt you ingest you will experience a kind of "cold turkey" in which you feel tired, but this is just because the body is used to a lot of salt. If you put up for just one week, it will pass. One should require no warmup even in order to reduce one's salt intake to 1/100th of the usual. We have therefore seen the city's last bastion of control -- salt -- crumble before our very eyes. We do not need the city at all in order to live. It is the city that needs the country in order to continue its existence. Chapter VI Notes 36 The cause of the city's demise will be, for example, a lack of resources, the insufficiency of food, or the contamination of the environment. However, this all depends much upon the changes surrounding the city, so perhaps one should say that the city will perish from "without." Still, the entity responsible for engendering this cause from without is none other than the city (it is the city which squanders resources, brings ruin upon the farming villages, and contaminates the environment), so I think it is correct to say that the city will perish "automatically." 37 Buddhist monk and poet (1118-1190). (Translator's note) 38