Power of small things.

I had a dialogue with the artist Rei Naito for a digital radio program by NHK. We have had several conversations before. Some of them has been published in Japanese. This was to be our first dialogue to be put "on air".

I have the highest admirations for Rei Naito's works. My first encounter with Naito's work was when I visited the "Being given" installation in Kinza. There, after some minutes of bewilderments, I knew that I was experiencing something quite extraordinary and new in life.

During the radio time, Rei Naito said that during the process of making something, the "intensity" of the spirit is the key element. Unless she can maintain that intensity, while being relaxed so that she can be flexible with the hand movements, she cannot infuse life into the small items that she produces with strings, metal wires, glasses, and papers.

Rei Naito confided that her creations are concerned with the question: "Can we regard the existence as life in the earthly word as a blessing?"

The power of small things. All life form, whether powerful or weak, are small compared to the world we inhibit. The size of the universe is 13.7 billion light years.

The president of a world's superpower is very small compared to it. The question of life translates into infusing strength into small things.

Rei Natio's magical art makes us realize that, as instantiations of life, we are ever blessed by the power of small things.



Rei Naito's work. From Monty DiPietro's review of the artist.

That crucial water flow

I continued to stroll in the beautiful region of Takashima.

In the Harie district, many houses are equipped with Kabata, a natural water pool where people cool watermelons and vegetables in summer. Carps swim around. They are fed with leftovers from the kitchen. Some of them are tens of years old.

So water is the essential ingredient of life's circulation. No matter where you are on land, water is the single most important and invigorating element for life. Other things such as minerals, sunshine, and background biomass are equally important. Water turns these elements finally into life. Thus, the water flow determines the thriving and interdependence of life.

A kabata is a striking visualization of that crucial water flow.


A scene from Kabata. Tranquility and harmony.

From a Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries webpage.

Something in us becomes dumb

Computers are wonderful things, but to the extent that we associate with them, something in us becomes dumb.
It is especially true for the internet.

That was my conviction as I strolled in the beautiful rural town of Takashima, Shiga Prefecture, which I visited for a symposium on anti-aging.

There was a special ceremony going on in the small temple, where local people gathered, with children running joyously in the gardens. The old ladies and gentlemen chanted softly Buddhist prayers. It was the perfect visualization of a harmonious life.
You had to open your sensitivities, and witness the happenings, beyond any prescribed meaning, no technical structure. The scenery had nothing to do with the modern technologies. There was something in your mind, quite sacred and vibrant, that became active only when you cut your central nervous system from these wondrous things we call "modern computing technologies."

Apart from these gibberishes, I simply loved the beautiful Satoyama of Takashima.


Lost in the harmony. In Takashima, Shiga.

Freedom to work

I had a dialogue with the political scientist Kang Sang-jung in the Hilltop Hotel in central Tokyo. The conversation was held for a woman's weekly magazine.

The hilltop hotel is famous for its literary connotations. Many famous writers have resided there. Today, it is often used for interviews and literary meetings by the publishers of books and magazines.

I hugely enjoyed discussing with Professor Kang Sang-jung. One of the major topics that emerged was freedom. People generally regard the world history as a gradual progression of freedom for the people. However, in order to enjoy freedom and make use of it fully, one needs to have certain conditions in terms of knowledge, faculties, and social resources. For those who are equipped with the necessary elements, freedom becomes a blessing. Otherwise, freedom can be a curse.

What are the conditions for freedom to work? Our conversations were mingled with references to Soseki Natsume and Max Weber.

Kang Sang-jung is a warm and sincere man.

Shock discovery

I think The Carpenters was the first pop singer group that captured my imagination when I was a kid. I guess I was about 10.

"Top of the world", "Yesterday once more", "Close to you", "Please Mr. Postman", and other great songs from the duo gripped my heart, although at that age I did not understand the English lyrics very much.

I fell in love with the voice of Karen Carpenter. The vocal qualia is a given gift. The particular form and strength, dynamics of Karen's vocal chord must have produced the sensuous qualia that my consciousness receives when she sings.

20 years passed, and I was about 30, when I went to a Karaoke room with my best friend Yoshi Tamori (mathematical whiz kid).

I discovered that Yoshi liked the Carpenters songs, too. To my utter bewilderment, when he sang, his voice sounded a bit similar to Karen's. It was a shock discovery. Karen and Yoshi look so different. And Yoshi is a man. Karen was so delicate and thin. Yoshi is, ....well.....

I have kept the enlightenment by this mysterious coincidence as a secret, and have not told anybody, until today that is.

Now Yoshi has something to boast apart from incredible rose origami.....


Myself (left) and Yoshi Tamori at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

The true roots

I and Ms. Sumiyoshi Miki had a conversation with the manga artist Takehiko Inoue for "The Professionals" program broadcast by NHK. The conversation, together with the documentary films, will be broadcast on the 15th September on NHK general.

Mr. Inoue stuck me as a fundamentally honest person. Mr. Inoue said that his works are in a sense mirrors which reflect his true self. He said that one needs to get free from self-delusions and pretensions, in order to reach the true roots within oneself. Once the root of one's spirit is reached, one finds there what is universally human. This self-digging of the soul is a necessary process for the creation of works which are at once high quality and popular.

One needs to be courageous to come face to face with the true root of the self. Self-delusion is such a sweet poison. But the courage finally is rewarding.

Mr. Inoue's manga books (notably "Slam Dunk" and "Vagabond") have sold nearly two hundred million copies in Japan alone.

I did not even dream

When I am hungry at night, having been unable to take a respectable bite, at the bed time I am faced with a dilemma. Should I eat something or not? When I succumb to the temptation, I would perhaps put the kettle and make some hot water. I would make one of the instant noodles in the cup, and eat it, with a feeling of guilt on my heart. You are not supposed to eat miso soup noodles in the small hours.

Last night, I had that kind of temptation again, but resisted it. It is not that I had an iron will. I was simply too exhausted.

The feeling of exhaustion translated itself into a need to watch one of my favorite British comedies, Father Ted. I did not last even for a few minutes.

When I awoke this morning, I found the DVD having gone to the very end, with the computer making the characteristic fan sound when it has been on for a long time. It was heat that accompanied my finally sweet sleep. I did not even dream.

Colors

When I was a kid, I used to love to eat white thin noodles ( Somen ) in the summer.

After being boiled, the noodles would be put into ice cold water. You pick the noodles with hashi (chopsticks) and put it into a soy source flavored soup.

It used to be that there would be a few colored noodles in one "bouquet" of somen noodles. The noodles would be normally white, but a few would be colored in yellow, red, blue, and green.

Although exactly the same in taste, the colored noodles fascinated me as a kid. When my mother brought a bowl of noodles, I would dash to pick the colored ones, in competition with my sister, who was 2 years younger than me. The height of our competition for the colors was when I was 6 and she was 4. I remember we had several bitter fights, and my mother would complain "what's all this fuss about colors? They are all the same in taste."

We actually knew that.

As years passed, I somehow grew out of the colors. When I was about 9, I remember vividly saying to my sister "you can have all the colored noodles you want." It was a sign of my maturity. It was also an end of my childhood enchantment by the colors.

And we follow the light.

My native and resident country, Japan is a nation of islands. Going abroad used to and remains to have a special connotation for its inhabitants.

I went abroad for the first time when I was 15. I still remember the shock as the airplane descended to Vancouver international airport. I happened to observe what later turned out to be quite an ordinary residential area by Canadian standards. However, at that time, the spacious greens in which the houses, some of them with pools in the backyard, seemed to be a scene from another planet.

Now, when I travel out of and into the Tokyo International airport, the shocks still persist more or less, albeit in a diminished manner. On the other hand, I seem to begin to discern a more universal and global pattern common to all world regions, no matter how different the languages and habitats might appear on the surface.

As time passes, I seem to be more concerned on what is universally human.

I never took a serious interest in nationalism, or in people who advocate it.

As the shock of differences fade away, the light of universality emerges. And we follow the light.

Solace to the soul of a nation

Parsifal is the final opera of Richard Wagner. It seems to be a fitting end to the career of a composer who pursued the theme of Erlosung durch Liebe (redemption through love) for life.

It was fitting that my first experience of the Bayreuth festival came to a conclusion on Saturday with the performance of Parsifal, conducted by Daniele Gatti and directed by Stefan Herheim (Bayreuth Festspiele, 15th August 2009).

During the Vorspiel (overture), the stage curtain was already open, and we saw a woman with long blonde hair dressed in white lying on a bed. Apparently she is in death agony. In Sehnsucht (yearning), she calls for her boy child. The boy, not understanding the nature of maternal emotion, refuses to be hugged by her and goes away into the garden with a bough in his hand.

Soon after the boy left, the mother dies. The doctor declares the death, and puts a sheet over her body. They leave the room, and the dead woman sinks into the bed and disappears.

When the boy returns, the room is empty. He looks at the bed where his mother has been lying. Still not comprehending what has been going on, he faces with unconscious misgivings a platform in the front of the stage which turns out to be an alter en effect throughout the performance. He lays bricks there, apparently forming a wall. However, the wall remains incomplete and in translation.

This brief description of what happens, in outline, during the course of the overture would do justice, I think, to the multitudes of possibilities that a stage director can put into a contemporary Wagner performance.

It was a production with a heavy resonance with the sometimes tragic modern history of Germany, with vivid and unforgettable images. The fact that an opera can bring solace to the soul of a nation by facing its history without any self deception is once again a testimony of the forces of a great piece of art.



Image from Parsifal directed by Stefan Herheim from Wagneropra.net

Booings and bravos

In order for a work of performing art to be maintained in a living condition, it needs to be refreshed in the styles of times. The concerns close to people's heart, the joys and fears of the common man change with the passage of eras. A presentation of a work, no matter how vivid and appropriate within the context of a particular time, tends to fade away in relevance in the face of a new period.

These were the thoughts invoked as I left the theatre after attending the performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Bayreuth Festspiele, on 14th August 2009), conducted by Sebastian Weigle and directed by Katharina Wagner.

Katharina Wagner's Meistersinger premiered in July 2007. It was heavily booed. The fact that people boo certain productions is a testimony that opera is taken very seriously. The production of Der Ring der Nibelungen directed by Patrice Chéreau and conducted by Pierre Boulez, for example, was booed on the first night to such an extent that it became a scandal. The perception of the audience can then go through a dramatic transfiguration. In its final staging in 1980, on the night of Götterdämmerung, Chéreau and Boulez's Ring received 101 curtain calls which lasted for 90 minutes.

It remains to be seen how Katharina's production will be finally received. It is certainly a very interesting production. It is, which is important more than anything else, also very courageous. The fact that the great granddaughter of Richard Wagner is bold enough to try this brand new philosophy of staging is reassuring for the future of the Bayreuth festival.

Katharina herself says thus. “Being booed belongs to the job description of a director.” ( New York times, July 31, 2007)

The progress of the human spirit is a very complex and dynamic process. Booings and bravos are the fuels that propel its procession.



Image from Katharina Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, from Wagneropra.net

Eternal solitude

The performance of Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Peter Schneider and directed by Christoph Marthaler (Bayreuth Festspiele, on 13th August 2009), left a very vivid and stinging aftertaste.

At first, during the 1st and 2nd act, the intentions of Marthaler was not apparent to this observer. The singers kept a very detached stature overall. At the end of the 1st act, for example, apprehending the approach of King Marke the four (Tristan, Isolde, Brangane, and Kurwenal) try to compose themselves by sitting stiff in geometrically arranged chairs.

The contrived and restricted manner in which everyone acted transfigured into significant and moving meaning, as, at the end of the 3rd act, after singing the final words assigned to each, first Kurwenal, then Marke, and finally Brangane turned away from the world, standing in an upright position, face to the wall.

Isolde herself, after singing the beautiful Liebestod alone in the bed that Tristan has been lying, finally lies on the bed, covering her body and face with the white sheet.

So the opera ends with people encapsulated in the isolation of each, distanced from other people, no matter dead or alive. And the love itself, glued by the poignant word "und", is emancipated and lost for ever in the ocean of eternal solitude.



Image from the final act of Marthaler's Tristan und Isolde, from
Wagneropra.net

Tristan und Isolde

On 13th August 2009, I attended a performance at the Bayreuth Festspiele for the first time in my life. It was Tristan und Isolde.

Repetition leads

So I have come to Munich, in translation to Bayreuth.

I have visited Munich many times. Whenever I can, I listen to operas, preferably Wagner, in the National Theatre. Compared to the dense metropolis in other nations, German capitals tend to be more sparsely inhabited, reflecting, perhaps, the character of the German people. Always keeping a proud distance.

Repetition leads to the realization of life's continuity. Visiting a familiar city reminds one of the former times, how you were young, innocent, and ignorant. With age one gets some chunks of wisdom, but the ignorance persists in a different form.

I bought three books on Wagner in the Hauptbahhof. Reading them would give me the much needed opportunity to refresh my German.

Today, I travel to Bayreuth, to meet my long waited fate. I would be listening to Tristan und Isolde. The greatest and most intensely romantic piece of art ever.

And there will be life

Lands in Tokyo, like in any cotemporary city of big lights, are heavily utilized. It was a rare occasion that a space near my house, after the demolition of buildings that occupied the land, was left unattended for the summer.

At first, it looked like a barren land. Soon the weeds began to grow. Now, it is like a jungle of miscellaneous vegetations. Flowers bloom here and there. Butterflies and dragonflies take advantage of the sudden growth of wilderness in the busy cityscape by flying over the green extension.

It is a testimony again that nature, when given sufficient space and time, can take care of itself. It does not require an active intervention on the part of humans. Just let nature go its own way, and there will be life.

I suspect that some essential parts of nature are victimized by our shortsighted meddlings. The unconscious is like the nature, and too much interference by the conscious can disrupt its carefree dynamics.

I take the scene of green apparitions that emerged in the rare open land as a testimony of the importance of autonomy, natural and unconscious.

Expectations

This summer, within a few days, I would be traveling to Bayreuth for the first time in my life.

I will be listening to the performances of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, and Parsifal.

Naturally I am filled with great expectations. Wagner was, has been, and is the creative genius of my love, and attending the Bayreuth festival has been one of my dreams.

I am 46 now. To think it took more than 30 years to realize one's wish inspires one with strange emotions.

There are many spiritual creatures lurking in one's expectations. They have their own life forms, timelines for development. Sometimes they bear fruit, and other times perish. To come to something in actuality has nothing to do with the fulfilment of one's expectations. Expectations have their own territory, where Queens and Kings with no parallels in the real world reign in the darkness and mist.

When I am seated in the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, and the lights go out, as the first notes resound, I will have finally found a restful tomb for all these wonderful creatures that have been lurking in my expectations.

Tears of onceness.

When the onceness of life touches us, tears drop from the eyes.

Yesterday, there was a wedding party. Shinichi Nozawa, a Ph.D student in my laboratory at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Emiko Ito, an editor at the publishing house Chikumashobo, were married.

In Japanese wedding festivities, it is customary that the newly-wed couple present flower bouquets to their parents at the end of the party, expressing gratitude.

As the pair approached the parents, they already appeared to be on the verge of crying.

The childhood days when they clung to the knees of their parents. The entrance ceremonies of elementary school. The cherry blossoms. The sports meeting, with parents watching the child run. The graduation of universities. Parents treated by the first salary of life.

All these things, with the inevitable procession of time, surround the couple. Shinichi and Emiko cry. The tears are the crystals of their happiness, the epitome of passage of life.

Here's to the the tears of onceness.



Shinichi and Emiko preparing to present the bouquet.
In Joshui Kaikan party room, Tokyo.

NHK Saga

NHK is the national public broadcasting organization in Japan. I host, with Ms. Miki Sumiyoshi, "The Professionals" program broadcast weekly since January 2006 by NHK.

One of the characters of NHK which is distinguishing compared to the commercial broadcasters is that it has branches in local cities all over Japan. Since broadcasting by NHK has a designated public role, it is expected to cover local issues and news as well as national and global trends.

I have been visiting the city of Saga for the last couple of days, and sure enough, there was a NHK branch in Saga, too.
Interestingly, a NHK branch is usually situated near the Old Castle site. After the Meiji restoration in 1867, the new government buildings were built in or the near the old castle sites, which were considered to be symbols of the "ancien regime". The fact that the NHK branches are usually at the Edo-era castle sites indicates the public nature of NHK. It is part of the institutions of modernized Japan.

I sometimes feel that it is those idiosyncratic and scattered facts about a nation that constitute the implicit experience of living in that country. The location of NHK branches, for example.



NHK Saga building, near the old Saga Castle site.

Dragon.

I was in the car on the way to the conference site in Saga. We have just been to the old Saga castle site. As we left the Saga Castle History Museum, I noticed that black clouds have gathered in the sky. It was a very hot afternoon. In the newspaper "Saga Shimbun" next morning, it was reported that the temperature reached 37.8 degrees Centigrade, the second highest in recorded history.

In the car, we heard rumbles in the distance. A thunderstorm has come. As I witnessed the first thunderbolt running zigzag in the sky, I suddenly thought of the dragon.

The human brain sometimes plays such funny tricks. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the intensive hour of being immersed in history in the museum. Perhaps the hot air affected me. I am not sure what combination of elements led to that hallucination, but at that very moment, it seemed so natural to me to associate the thunderbolt with the magnificent existence of the imaginary creature.

The moment was gone quite as rapidly as it came. We arrived at the auditorium, and I was again in the practical world of attending to the tightly made conference schedule.

The dragon had disappeared.

El Sur

"El Sur" by the Spanish director Victor Erice is one of my all-time favorite films. In it, el sur ("the south") is depicted as an attractive and mysterious land. In the film, there is a special connotation about the south, as the father of the girl appears to have a mistress in that far-off land.

The film ends as the girl prepares herself for her very first trip to the south, where, hopefully, she would find out her father's secret life.

There is something about the south that is life invigorating. Those were the thoughts as airplane flew southwards from Tokyo, and landed on Saga airport.

I have come to attend a two day session which I chair.

The sunshine on my mother's native island of Kyushu was mild and serene.