The "matsu-kui" (pine bark beetle) exterminators once again came to my door this morning. "We're going to be spraying for matsu-kui bugs," they said. Every year they come to my door and say this. And every year I try to tell them that this is not necessary. "The pine bark beetles are already gone," I tell them. "We threw them all off the island in the Mushi Okuri ceremony last week."

Mushi Okuri is a Shinto ceremony where we march around the island carrying a wooden boat, and call all the bad insects to come and get on the boat. After we've been through every part of the island, and collected all the bad insects, we march down to the beach and set the boat out to sea. This has been the islanders' effective way of getting rid of bad insects, such as leaf-eaters and root-eaters, for hundreds of years. I always wonder, though, what happens to the insects after that? After all, we've just given them a boat! These insect pirates could be landing on other islands and wreaking havoc on the entire Seto Inland Sea.

At any rate, we don't need exterminators. If the pine bark beetle exterminators must come, due to bid-rigging contracts or something, perhaps they should just try to exterminate any rogue insects that manage to avoid getting on the boat. The problem with the exterminators is that they kill the good insects as well as the bad.