The last Nagasaki mudskipper

Mutsumi has a chat with a mutsugoro.

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Mutsumi: You live here alone?

Mutsugoro: Sure. I was the only one that moved.

Mutsumi: You like it in this bay?

Mutsugoro: It’s not easy living here. The water’s deeper than the mudflats I grew up on.

Mutsumi: I know they turned the mudflats into farmland, but couldn’t you have protested?

Mutsugoro: “Mudskippers don’t pay tax. Therefore they don’t have any right to protest.” That’s what the Nagasaki farmers who wanted more land said.

Mutsumi: But they don’t need more land. The population is aging. They won’t need as much food in future.

Mutsugoro: The ODA had to spend the money on something.

Mutsumi: How long had you lived on the mudflats?

Mutsugoro: Oh, several hundred million years.

Mutsumi: I feel so guilty. Humans have only been here a few thousand years.

Mutsugoro: I know we’re not much to look at but there aren’t many of us left. We were amphibians, a living fossil. A sort of intermediate species between fish and land animals. Know a nice mudflat where I could stop swimming and rest for a bit?

Mutsumi: I’ll ask.

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