April 8, 2026, was the first class of my university Shakespeare seminar since January. (A seminar course lasts two years and the academic year begins in April in Japan.) We had studied Romeo and Juliet in the spring of 2025, so I reminded my students about the allegory1 of humans and the sun that I had discovered in the play and how I had predicted that the Tomb scene, the return of humans to using only the sun as an energy source, is probably decades away.
“But now … who knows?” I paused and said, “it might be closer than we think!”
The students sat in rapt attention. I think all professors, including me, must delight in such dramatic moments.
I continued:
“It almost seems like we may have just entered the Romeo and Juliet Tomb scene, as, due to the war on Iran started by America, many major oil production sites have been bombed and are out of commission, that there are high fuel prices, rationing, work from home orders, and so on.”
I went on to explain to them that peak oil (which I think is the same as exiting the Farewell scene and entering the Tomb scene) can happen not just due to geological depletion but also due to geopolitical impacts, such as wars, cascading financial failures, etc., which could also be affected by climate change disasters including crop failures. Certainly, I never expected that such a huge event, which seems to match up with the start of the Tomb scene, would arrive so soon, although more study and more time is needed determine this, to be sure.
“Careers of academics and analysts can be made on just such predictions,” I added, “and an event like this underscores the importance of rigorous literary interpretations.” This moment in the classroom felt surreal to me. It was not something I ever imagined experiencing!
I noticed that my TikTok videos on the allegories I had spotted in Shakespeare’s plays were getting more likes and views, that my TikTok followers increased by 20 or 30, and that my percentile ranking on Academia.edu went up from top 3% to top 2% as the war raged on. Again, I find this surreal. Some flowers may only bloom in adversity. Violets, for one, emerge from cracks in concrete, I have noticed.
Recently, I remembered visiting Kyoto in 2006 or 2007, almost a decade before we moved here. Takeshi and I and our two kids, (they were still small then), were in a taxi and barreling down Hanamikoji Dori. Peering out of the taxi window, I saw a gigantic banner made of white fabric that seemed like a large bedsheet fixed on the second-story windows of an old wooden machiya. The message, written in katakana, was in black paint or magic marker:
ストップマイカー！！
I puzzled over the message for a few seconds (Stop my car?). Then I remembered that a mykaa is a private automobile. The message was pleading with people to not drive; the owner of the machiya must have been tired of dealing with cars speeding up and down the little streets, the danger, the noise, the way pedestrians forced to scoot aside. History unfurled in my mind: Kyoto had experienced many centuries with no cars. It was built for walking and jinrikisha, or rickshaws. Its peaceful, gracious streets and alleys were unaccustomed to being disturbed by engines. My heart went out to the machiya owners. But who could stop the mykaas?
Now, watching the international problems with oil starting to (to my admittedly amateur eyes) overwhelm, I wonder if the owners of the machiya are still alive to see the world events, which might finally bring, in one way or another, the answer to their prayers.
- According to my research, Romeo and Juliet is an allegory containing scenes that spell out the history of humans and the sun.
Party scene: the lovers use religious language when they meet, signifying paganism.
Balcony scene: humans are separated from nature spirituality by monotheism (the Abrahamic religions’ god is not material at all). This is the scene where the famous line “Juliet is the sun” is also found.
Wedding scene: a meta scene representing how Shakespeare (allegorized by Friar Laurence) tries to bring humans and the sun (nature) together.
Farewell scene: humans say a rapid chaotic goodbye to the sun economy and sun spirituality as fossil fuels take over (this was happening already in Shakespeare’s era) the economy.
Tomb scene: Humans return to the sun economy and sun spirituality as fossil fuels start to become difficult to get. ↩︎