Word: mihara
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...Oshima, outside Tokyo Bay, stands the active volcano Mihara. It bubbles with sulphurous vapor and at irregular intervals shoots out molten rock. Japan has many active volcanoes, but Mihara is specially famed because of the romantic lovers who frequently kill themselves by jumping down its throat. Before World War II, 80 to 90 did this each year, and the steamship company that serves Oshima got rich on tourists who flocked to the island, they said, to watch the volcano, but really to watch the suicides...
...Mihara's suicide score has fallen since the war, but the volcano may become famed as the first whose eruptions can be predicted scientifically. Five years ago. Assistant Professor Tsuneji Rikitake of Tokyo University's Earthquake Research Institute started prowling around the warm rocks on its top crater, carrying apparatus to measure earth magnetism. Whenever he approached the hot crater, the strength of the magnetic field de creased appreciably...
Rikitake reasoned that the basaltic lava forced up through Mihara's throat is strongly magnetic when it is cold. Like other materials, however, it loses its magnetism when it gets hot. Therefore, the region near the volcano's white-hot core should be less magnetic than other places a little farther away. Rikitake checked this theory by circling the mountain with his instruments. A chart of the magnetic field also showed the shape of the hot and hidden core...
Rikitake set up a permanent observation station in an old air-raid shelter dug into Mihara's western slope. In October 1951 his instruments showed that the vol cano's magnetism was slowly weakening...
...suicide. Last week a young Japanese lover named Satoru Takayanagi, ill with tuberculosis, journeyed with his true love, Waitress Setsumi Endo, 59 miles south of Tokyo to the island of O Shima, site of famed "Suicide Point." As they climbed to the edge of the volcanic crater of Mount Mihara, they were met by a suspicious detective, who asked what was on their minds. "If you want to pry into our private lives," answered young Takayanagi, "get a warrant." When the detective had gone, the young lovers joined hands and leaped into the sulphurous cauldron where so many before them...