Couldn't swallow the pills.

When I was a kid, I found it really difficult to swallow the pills. It was not that the pills were particularly large. These were ordinary pills for the kids, prescribed by the doctor when the child had a cold, stomachache, etc.

When I got sick, I would go to see Dr. Hishikawa, who had the office near my parent's house. When Dr. Hishikawa said "I am going to give you some pills", I would wince, as I knew that I was going to have a hard time swallowing one.

From the perspectives of adulthood, it is difficult to explain why it was so difficult for me as a child to swallow the pills. It was partly psychological. I simply could not take the pills down the throat, no matter how hard I tried.

My mother would say, "what if the doctor told you that you are going to die if you don't swallow this pill?"

I could not figure out what I should do in such a circumstance. The plain fact was that I simply could not swallow the pills.

As a result, I always had to take powder medicine. Oh boy, these were bitter. My mother would say again and again, half jokingly and half reproaching, that I was inviting my own misfortune by being unable to take the pills.

Many years later, when I read "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Friedrich Nietzsche, I came across the famous narrative of a man who was bitten by a snake in the throat. Then I remembered my childhood miseries, and felt that the whole experience was rather like this episode in the philosophical novel.

I was six or so when I was finally able to swallow a pill down the throat. I remember the sensation quite vividly.
In Zarathustra, the unfortunate man finally rises by biting of the snake head, and stands, with his eyes glittering like the blazing sun. The new man is born.

As I look back, it feels as if I saw the burning flame of life by being able to swallow the pill finally, at the mature age of six.

Typhoon No. 18.

Without even knowing it, one becomes a prisoner of one's own prejudices, I thought.

I was in a Tokyo bar as the typhoon number 18 approached the Honshu island.

Why cant we break it. How come we can't let free of the chains we are just imagining?

As my compatriots are in general rather restrained, I sometimes feel as if the imprisonment is mirrored into my own system. Implicit connotations are good thing for a culture, but sometimes it can also suffocate one.

The typhoon number 18 was approaching. It brought with it the tremendous energy of the south sea, where the temperature is high.

As I left the bar, a gush of wind blew against my umbrella. I almost wished that the umbrella would be destroyed, exposing me to the brutal forces of nature.

But it wasn't to be.



The typhoon No.18 approaching Honshu island.
From a Japanese weather forecast, 8 a.m., 8th October 2009.

Wall that be.

I went to the Superdeluxe club in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. I was late, having finished my work for a broadcaster at 22 hours.

As I arrived at the scene, a young artist started fighting against the wall. He first scribed unintelligible words involving "peace" and " will", and then painted them all over in blue. He used the hands and pressed them very hardly against the wall, as if rebelling against it.

When young, you are naturally surrounded by many walls, both real and imagined. When you get older and become mature, being able to keep seeing the wall that be is one of the manifestations of a creative mind.

In life, you've got to face the wall, more or less, and it becomes incumbent to decide your attitudes toward it.

Painting. What fantastic way to come to terms with the wall. You don't destroy it. You dance with it. By becoming one with the wall, feeling its physical brutality, you can give birth to a monster that is art. And then the monster breathes beautiful air.



A young artist fighting the wall in Superdeluxe.

Watershed

The return of Soseki Natsume from the two years' stay in London, in retrospect, was a watershed in the cultural history of modern Japan.

Records show that he was an excellent writer of English. His knowledge of the English literature was vast and deep, reinforced by intensive readings of volumes of the genre during his stay in the United Kingdom. Had he chosen to do so, he could have started a successful career in English prose, rather like Mr. Kazuo Ishiguro of contemporary times.

However, history had it that Soseki chose to write novels in Japanese, much to the benefit and enrichment of the Japanese literature for sure, but effectively closing the Japanese mind at the same time.

To date, considering the significant presence of Japanese economy, it is astonishing that Japanese intellectuals have produced so little in English writings. Surely, natural scientists do write papers, but then the expressions tend to be dry and do not reflect the subtle nuances of living on the island. It is a remarkable fact that there has not been an active English voice based in Tokyo, The Japanese scholars, especially in the humanities, have been primarily importers rather than exporters.

The result is a void in which the inner visions have never found a channel for expression. Such novels as "Memoirs of a Geisha" has strange connotations seen from a insider's viewpoint, as if the proportions are distorted and feelings were trodden on. The film "The Last Samurai" was in many ways a joke in facts and sensitivities.

These misrepresentations are all due to the lack of vigor in Japanese intellectuals in expressing the insider's viewpoint in the lingua franca, to the loss of both the island inhabitors and people at large.

Stream of consciousness

It is often said that the stream of consciousness was discovered by the great American psychologist William James. Needless to say, the stream has been with us always, ever since our birth, before WJ. It is only that the particular way of looking at our own experience, in its phenomenological dimensions in particular, solidifies and defines itself only with the explicit introduction of this concept.

Once in a while, during the course of the day, I would think about the stream of consciousness. How subtle are its manifestations. The ups and downs, the subtleties, multitudes of nuances, anticipations, apprehensions, sweets and bitters.

Even for a brief period of, say, one minute, it is not possible to give a full description of the stream of consciousness. We can only witness in helpless promised amnesia its magnificent processions before our own eyes.

The phenomenology of subjective experience is then a hopeless battle of the ever losing and being lost, rather like the explosive grandeur of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie.

What solace and disappointment to this mortal soul!

Full moon

I have been up and doing recently, for quite a long time. Galloping has to stop somewhere and sometime. Now seems to be the time for reflection.

Took a deep dip in the hot spring. Tasted the water from the bathtub. Pondered how divine is every thing. Between earth and heaven.

In the Okinawa Islands, there is a saying.

The moon is beautiful on the thirteenth night.

The girls are beautiful in the seventeenth year.

When I look up at a beautiful moon, I am wont to think of this poetic song. I first heard it when I was 10. I have been missing its touch ever since.

When you do too much typing, you feel as if you were starving, as if your inner words reservoir was getting low. Then you read a beautiful essay written by a lonely soul. You feel replenished. You can go on again.

You have a full moon in your soul again.

The burning heart

(Continued from yesterday's entry of "Tiger Jeet Singh".)

I hear that Tiger Jeet Singh is now a successful business person based in Canada. His real self is a rational man with cool judgments. Once on the ring, he becomes a wild beast, with a very unique fighting style.

In professional wrestling there are certain protocols. Beautiful girls dressed in kimonos would present flower bouquets to the fighters. The referee will explain the rules, and the fighters shake hands. Tiger Jeet Singh would have none of that.

Before the gong sounds, Tiger Jeet Singh is already on the offensive. Everything occurs out of the blue, without hesitation, with full vigor. He would swing his saber towards Anotonio Inoki, and the two fighters would fall out of the ring. Once out of the ring, it is a total chaos. Chairs would fly. Tiger Jeet Singh would chase Antonio Inoki, and the spectators would flee. The spotlight follows the fighters. The announcer would shout "Please take care! Please take care!". The announcer's cries of warning add fuel to the excitement.

After a while, the gong rings. Then the announcer would calmly say "now the match has begun". It is a very strange announcement. It is as if the nasty doings of Tiger Jeet Singh, clearly violating the rules, are being blessed in retrospect. It has been all O.K. The match is already in full motion.

The fighting style of Tiger Jeet Singh, in which he ignores the preparatory protocols of the match and just "goes for it" the moment he springs onto the ring, fascinated and thrilled me as a child. I have been trying to imitate the style in real life ever since.

When you are attending a conference, or on a committee, there are people who like to say polite but meaningless things. I ignore the mannerism, and just go straight to the essence of matters. The spirit of Tiger Jeet Singh is in me. I don't have a saber, but I have the burning heart.



Classic. Tiger Jeet Singh showing his emotions.

He really means it!

When I was 10, my then best friend Toshikazu Shimamura took me to see a Professional Wrestling match. The fight was between Antonio Inoki and Tiger Jeet Singh.

We were waiting for the arrival of wrestlers in front of the Koshigaya City Gymnasium. Toshikazu was a great fan of wrestling. He would give me many advises towards the appreciation of this genre.

As we were standing with great expectations, Toshikazu warned me:

"The other wrestlers are just make-believers. Tiger Jeet Singh, alone, is different. He really means it! If you meet him in the eye, he is sure to attack you. So don't you ever look him in the eye. I adviser you on this, for your life."

So I had serious apprehensions as Tinger Jeet Singh himself got out of the minibus and stormed towards the gymnasium. As Toshikazu was warning me, he seemed to "really mean it". His countenance was menacing, with his trademark saber in his mouth.

When I look back, I wonder why his act did not violate Japanese swards and guns control law. It certainly looked like he was violating it.


Tiger Jeet Singh with his trademark saber.

Turner Island

In the suburb of Matsuyama, off the coast, there is a small island. It is famous as Soseki Natsume referred to it as the "Turner Island" in his novel Botchan.

On Tuesday I was on the boat off Matsuyama, being gently swayed by the waves. There it was, a chunk of rocks with pine trees growing on it. Its beauty struck me immediately. The impression deepened with the lapse of beholding time.

So this is the Turner Island, I thought.

Soseki named the island as such because it appears to be a scene fit for a depiction in a work by the great painter. Two antagonists in the novel, nicknamed "Red Shirt" and "Field Drum", go fishing on the boat with the protagonist "Botchan". The Red Shirt and Field Drum discuss the Turner Island, to the amusement of Botchan. It is a very memorable passage in the novel.

I did not expect that the island would be so lovely. Soseki certainly had an eye for the beautiful, even when the affection was expressed with wit and sarcasm.

Now my mind's image storage has curated the Turner Island in its collection.


The "Turner Island" off the coast of Matsuyama.

Friendship

My second day in Matsuyama, and I have been pondering the friendship between Soseki Natsume. and Shiki Masaoka.

Soseki is the father of modern Japanese literature, and Shiki is the founder of modern Haiku poems.

Shiki was born in Matsuyama, and Soseki came to teach in the city after graduating from University of Tokyo. Soseki based his novel Botchan on his experiences in this southern city on the Shikoku island.

That Soseki and Shiki both went on to achieve great things in literature is not independent of their friendship. Soseki and Shiki knew each other in the preparatory school for the university already. They exchanged views on literature. Soseki wrote many Haiku poems which Shiki read and made comments on. During a particularly intensive period of 50 days, Soseki and Shiki stayed at the same house, now reconstructed in a park in Matsuyama.

The friendship between people of the same sex is one of the most beautiful things in life. Records suggest that Shiki and Soseki were attracted to each other from the beginning, acknowledging the special qualities of the counterpart.

Shiki died at the premature age of 35. Three years later, Soseki wrote his first novel "I am a cat". Shiki had an ambition to be a novelist himself, but his short life under the shadows of tuberculosis did not allow a full development of his aspirations.

One could only imagine how Soseki felt as he looked back on his soul mate, who shared literary ambitions in the youth.

Soseki himself died at the age of 49. His last novel, Mei an (Light and Darkness) , was left unfinished.

A brain the size of Kent

I am in Matsuyama, for matters concerning the great writer Soseki Natsume.
On the way to Matsuyama airport, I was reading the book "Oscar Wilde. Nothing...Except my genius. A celebration of his wit and wisdom' (Penguin books, 1997). A quite lengthy essay 'Playing Oscar' by Stephen Fry in the book was very enjoyable.

-----------

And what of Wilde the man? He stood for art. He stood for nothing less all his life. His doctrine of art was so high that most people thought he was joking. The English, who to this day believe themselves quite mistakenly to be possessed of a higher sense of humour than any other nation on earth, have never understood that a thing expressed with wit is more, not less, likely to be true than a thing intoned gravely as solemn fact. We, British, who pride ourselves on our superior sense of irony, have never fully grasped the idea of fiction--of ironism. Plain old sarcasm is about our mark. When Wilde made an epigram, it was at best, 'clever'. Clever, like funny, is an English insult of the deepest kind.

'Playing Oscar' by Stephen Fry
-------------------

I love Stephen Fry. He was once described as "a man with a brain the size of Kent." I appreciate Stephen's effort to come to terms with the phenomenon that was Oscar Wilde.

High tension

I had an interesting dialogue with my best chum Takashi Ikegami, at the Aoyama Book Center in Tokyo.

It was meant as a launch event for my latest book (translated as "Symposium of the Brains"), but we talked out of the context as always.

I tend to judge people by the high tension. Takashi's tension is as lofty as ever. It flies sky high. His day time job is professor at the prestigious University of Tokyo, but he wears Aloha and jeans during office time all the same. Fashion statement is a wonderful channel of philosophy. I have weathered this whole year with only a single pair of trousers and jacket, augmented by a collection of T-shirts.

I am always looking for a person with high tension. When your counterpart is earnest, full of energy, and committed, through the dialogue one can fly high up in the air. Last night, with Takashi, the whole audience witnessed lofty mountains and distant oceans. The cityscapes of Tokyo diminished into the background.



High tension professor in aloha. Best chum Takashi Ikegami.

Audience laugh

Giving a talk is part of my life. I am invited to give a talk from various quarters, but I cannot comply with most of them. I have to say no to ~95% of the invitations, much to my regret.

I gave a talk in Hakata this Saturday, to an audience of about 1700. The lecture was organized by Mainichi Shimbun, one of the largest newspapers in Japan.

When I give a talk to the public, I naturally touch upon my own expertise, namely the brain sciences. At the same time, I try to make the talk as entertaining as possible. To that end, my experiences in childhood attending the Yose comic shows prove useful.

At the Yose, several entertainments are provided. The most staple form is Rakugo, Japanese traditional sit-down comedy. My father and grandfather liked listening to Rakugo at the Yose, and I was often taken to the performances in my childhood.

Although I did not realize it for a long time, when I give a public lecture to the general audience my childhood sojourns to Yose help me very much. I feel happy when the audience laugh.


Myself giving a talk this Saturday in a theater in Hakata.

At the Imperial Hotel

I gave a talk at the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. The hotel is preparing itself for its 120th anniversary. I was invited to speak on serendipity, which has been chosen as the ethos word for the special occasion by the president of the hotel, Mr. Tetsuya Kobayashi. After the talk, I had a lively dialogue with Mr. Kobayashi on the nature of making most of the chance meetings we have during the course of our life.

Mr. Kenichiro Tanaka, the chief chef of the hotel, prepared a special dinner for us. Mr. Tanaka has been a guest on The Professionals program that I host, so that I am familiar with his warm ways of communicating with people. It was a pleasant evening.

The Imperial Hotel is a national institution. Initially organized as a Western style hotel to welcome foreigners to Tokyo after the opening of the country to the outside world after the Meiji Restoration, it represents the finest in the tradition of deep-running hospitality. Although on the surface it is very western, in spirit the finesse remains uniquely Japanese.

This particular blog is in part an experimentation on expressing the world view and sensitivities of someone who was born and brought up in Tokyo, in the lingua franca that is English. In a sense, I feel the Imperial Hotel is trying to do the same thing.



At the Imperial Hotel main entrance. With president of the hotel Mr. Tetsuya Kobayashi and the chief chef Mr. Kenichiro Tanaka.

The brat element

I think I was a dirty brat. During the elementary school days, I used to take a bath with a book in my hand. Often, I did not wash at all, and would get out of the bath where the only difference was that I have progressed with the reading of the book by several pages. My mother used to accuse me of "a crow's bathing", after a popular expression in Japan referring to a bath taking without the cleansing elements.

As a result, my hair would often get oily, as if a natural additive was applied to the head shrub. I was literally an oily boy.
Nowadays, I take shower and wash my hair every morning. And yet, I do not distinguish between soap and shampoo. Most often, I wash my hair with a bar of soap. The brat element has not left me.

Dinner party

I was invited to a dinner party in honor of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, at the British Embassy in Tokyo.

I was introduced to the Archbishop by the British Ambassador to Japan, Mr. David Warren. Mr. Warren is a warm man with a robustness of quick wit and sound judgments. It was a great pleasure to accept Mr. Warren's kind invitation to this special dinner.

Dr. Williams was educated at Cambridge and Oxford, and is known for his liberal views on the role of the Anglican Church. He is an poet in its own right. Before the dinner, some of his poems were set to beautiful music by members of British Embassy choir.

At dinner, I sat next to The Bishop of Leicester, The Rt Revd Timothy Stevens. I had a lively conversation with Tim.

During the conversation, something struck me.

I said to Tim, "you know, something just struck me" "What is it?" "Well, it just occurred to me that in English culture, at a dinner table like this, people carry on talking as if the food on the table does not matter." "Yes, it is probably very much true." "My mentor was Prof. Horace Barlow at Trinity college, Cambridge, and I sometimes had dinner there. I remember well how people appeared not to pay any attention to the dishes on the table, which were actually excellent. Why is it?" "Well, as an English person, I probably don't realize the reasons for the particulars of my own culture. Probably the English people do not think what you eat is very important in your life."

After the dinner, during the port, I was discussing the London Underground, and a question arose. Mr. Jason James, Director of the British Council and the Cultural Counsellor at the British Embassy, told me he would send an e-mail later on why the underground card is called "Oyster".

Here's the e-mail from Jason.

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Subject: World is your oyster
From: Jason James
To: kenmogi

According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the expression "the world is his oyster" means 'the world is the place from which he can extract success and profit, as a pearl can be extracted from an oyster.'

A quote from Shakespeare is given:

Falstaff: I will not lend thee a penny.
Pistol: Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.

(Merry Wives of Windsor, II, ii (1600))

These days, it just means "You have complete freedom to do whatever you want.' It is usually used with reference to people's career prospects - e.g. we might say that if someone gets into Tokyo University "the world is his/her oyster."

Best regards,

Jason James
-----------------

On the way back on the taxi, I received a phone call from the Kabuki actor Ichikawa Ebizo, who has just returned from a successful performance in Monaco. Ebizo is going to Hakata this weekend for his performance there in October. I commented how super his Roppo action was during his performance of Ishikawa Goemon with his father Ichikawa Danjuro.

A good gardener

The brain is able to adjust its functions according to the particular context in which the subject is expected to do well. For example, cramming for the entrance examination is a context. Common sense tells us that those who do well in the cramming context do not necessary perform excellently in the general arena of life. It is simply because the contexts are different.

The orbitofrontal cortex, together with other related circuits in the brain, is responsible for the fine tuning of the coordination of brain's various circuits so that it functions properly in the context given.

It is one thing to do well in the particular context that one confronts at a particular time. It is another to choose the context in which one is supposed to perform, with minute care and unlimited imagination.

Many people, as life progresses, falls into a particular pattern of context, and learn to do well in it, but fails to have a metacognition of the context itself.

Choosing the context is an art of cultivating the vegetation that is the self, which can grow only slowly and by daily customs. One must be a good gardener in the "plantation" of the brain, making decisions on the context setting with wisdom.

The orbitofrontal cortex (from Wikipedia)

The magical transformation

Yesterday, there was a shooting for the "Untitled Concert" (Daimeino nai Ongakukai) program conducted and introduced by Yutaka Sado. The Untitled Concert program is broadcast by TV Asahi weekly. The venue was Opera City, in the metropolitan Shinjuku district.

The theme was the music of Antonín Dvořák.

I appeared as a guest, and had conversations with Yutaka Sado, accompanied by the master of ceremony Ms. Naoko Kubota.
Yutaka Sado is an extraordinary man.

A conductor, by the very nature of his job, remains silent. He is, in a sense, deprived of speech. The only way to express himself is through the baton, and the orchestra does the actual physical expression for him. Because of the deprivation of voice, the conductor becomes passionate. The volcanic fire comes from the non-existence of speech.

Therefore, it is an unusual and difficult job to alternate between being a speaking person on one hand, with all the friendliness that one can command, to reach the general audience, and being speechless on the other, putting all one's existential weight on the baton.

Yutaka Sado does exactly that. Now he is talking expressively about the charm of Dvořák. The next moment he is conducting, with the baton as his only way of expression. Yutaka is speechless, while the orchestra plays heavenly music. The magical transformation has been accomplished.



With Yutaka Sado and Naoko Kubota on the stage from an earlier broadcast.

Vulnerable for change

Being assertive is important in life. Without putting forward one's values and opinions in an explicit way, nothing changes in the tranquility of the universe. On the other hand, I think it is equally important to be a skeptic, being doubtful of one's own view.

From time to time, I encounter people who are quite positive about what they think and feel. When there isn't an accompanying element of self doubt, I feel a bit strange. I get suffocated even, having the sensation of being driven up against the wall. It is actually those people who are cornering themselves towards dead ends.

By being doubtful of the self, one opens the door for learning and growth. Looking back on my own past, I realize that I have never been completely sure of what I held to be my own opinion. There was always a remnant fluctuation, a vibrating center of the self swayed to and fro by the invisible wind.

I am very proud of my vulnerable nature. Being vulnerable for change is the only way of life.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

When I was around 10 to 15 years old, I really loved the musicals. As I recall, the film that kick-started the whole thing was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was shown in a local film theater when I was 10.

When you think about it, the way some memories are associated with a particular period of life is strange. I vividly recall that I was exactly a 5th grader when I saw the film in the darkness of my favorite film theater.

As one gets older, memories are not so well designated to a specific period. For example, it is sometimes difficult to temporally pin down the initial viewing of some memorable films (e.g. Solaris, El Sur, L'Albero degli zoccoli) that I encountered in my 20s. The childhood days are marked by vivid and colorful progressions of time. As one passes adolescence, the segmentation of time becomes less clear.

Back to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. There were some features of the film that captured my imagination. For example, the contraptions that the mad inventor father (played by Dick van Dyke) builds in the film fascinated me. One of them cooked an egg and made a sandwich at the breakfast table, with some disastrous results.

There were some lovely tunes, like "Doll on a Music Box", where Truly Scrumptious (played by Sally Ann Howes), pretending to be a mechanically constructed doll, dances on a music box, ostensibly presented as a special gift to the tyrant Baron Bomburst.

There is a clip of this beautiful scene on youtube.

Looking back, the whole film is lovely, as in it the adults endeavor to entertain the children and children-at-hearts very seriously.



A scene from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.