Shinichi Hoshi's short story “He-y, Come Ou-t” can be seen as an illustration of the old adage “what goes around, comes around.” In other words, there's a causal connection between what we do and what happens to us. So, if we do something bad, we'll get something bad in return—maybe not straight away, but at some point down the line.

That's precisely what happens to the community depicted in Hoshi's story. The people who live here think that they can dump all their garbage in the giant hole that's opened up in their village and forget all about it. As far as they're concerned, once they've dumped all their unwanted stuff in the hole, then that's the last they'll see of it.

But they couldn't be more wrong if they tried. Because, as the workman discovers right at the end of the story, everything that was put into the hole is about to come out again.

There is clearly a causal relationship here; had all that stuff not been put into the hole in the first place, then of course nothing would come out of the hole. It's only because people saw the giant hole as a dumping ground that an enormous ecological catastrophe is about to unfold.