TOKYO —Something many visitors to Japan notice is the abundance of overhead powerlines. Whether you're in the suburbs, city center, or even rural communities,it's rare to look up at the sky or towards the horizon without the view being criss crossed by thick, black cables.
东京——来日本旅游的游客可能会注意到日本天空中有大量的高压电线。不管是在郊区，还是在市中心，甚至在农村地区，当你抬头看天空或者遥望远处时总会看到这些厚黑的电线。

So why does Japan have so many above-ground power grids when so many other countries have gone subterranean? The easy answer is cost, but there're also somepurported advantages to stringing cables up on poles, and the country hasn'tquite reached a consensus on which is the better option.
在其他国家都把电线藏到地底的情况下，为什么日本的地表上面会有这么多的电网呢？简单的答案就是成本，但据说把电线绑在电线杆上还有其他的好处，而且日本还没达成共识到底那种方式更好。

Starting with the budgetary side of things, subterranean systems are a lot more expensive. With the added expenses of digging the ditches and properly installing thelines and conduits, the cost can balloon to ten times that of a comparablysized network of above-ground poles.
先从预算角度来说，将电网埋藏在地下成本更高。首先要挖沟，然后将电线和导线埋在里面，所以其成本甚至可以是地表电网成本的十倍。

Still, some contend that, economic advantages aside, this isn't the place to cutcorners. Since the mid-1980s, the Japanese government has been enacting initiatives to replace existing poles with underground lines. Not only do suchmoves please those who're tired of power lines marring the scenery, there areeven safety and durability benefits, as below-ground power grids are less exposed to the elements, making them resilient against wind and snow that candamage above-ground equipment.
然而有些人认为如果不考虑成本，埋在地底下其实更好。自80年代中期以来，日本政府采取措施用地下线路替代地表的电线杆。这样做不仅满足了某些人的审美需求（美丽的风景不再被这些电线所破坏），还有安全和耐用上的优势，因为地底线缆更少的暴露在恶劣天气中，所以风雪不会对其造成影响。

A further safety benefit has been observed during earthquakes, according to the NPONon-Pole Community. The organization says that during the Hanshin Earthquakethat struck Kobe in 1995, neighborhoods with above-ground power lines were muchmore extensively damaged. Non-Pole Community's Secretary Toshikazu Inoue alsoreferred to toppled poles blocking roads and preventing emergency vehicles fromswiftly reaching victims in the disaster's aftermath.
根据非营利性组织“不要电线杆社区”的看法，另外一个安全方面的好处是在发生地震时显露出来的。该组织称在1995年袭击神户的阪神大地震中，那些拥有地表电线的社区被破坏的程度更甚。这些倒地的电线杆阻碍了道路，并阻止了紧急车辆在地震后对灾民进行救援。

Still,the majority of Japan's power grid remains above ground. One argument against subterranean systems has been put forward by the Tokyo Electric Power Company,or TEPCO. While the company itself has publicized the superior aesthetics anddurability against wind and snow mentioned above, it also acknowledges certainadvantages to the more common above-ground system. “In the events of floodingor landslides, it's harder to isolate damaged areas of a subterranean system,”the company points out. “That can increase the amount of time necessary torestore power to damaged areas.”
然而，如今日本大部分的电网还是位于地面上空。日本东京电力公司也反对在地底建电网。该公司也承认说地底线缆不会对风景造成破会，也有利于抵御风雪，但是又称更加普遍的地上电网所具有的某些优势。“在发生洪水或者泥石流时，很难区分地底电缆系统的哪些部分遭到破坏，”该公司称。“这增加了抢救电力所需要的时间。”

TEPCO also mentions other, simpler roles performed by power poles, such as providing housing for street lights and posting space for maps or address markers, whichcan be extremely helpful in navigating towns in Japan, where only a minusculefraction of streets have names.
该公司还指出了电线杆所扮演的其他简单的角色，比如可以用来布置街灯，为地图和地址标记提供定位空间，这对于日本的村镇导航来说非常有帮助，因为在这些小地方只有一小部分街道有名字。