The headmaster's platform.

I visited a couple primary schools on Uku island, an small island off Kyushu with a population of 3200.

In the school play ground, I found a very familiar platform.

Used to be that when there was a school gathering, usually in the morning, the headmaster would stand on the platform, and deliver a list of "dos and don'ts" to the pupils.

Other teachers and sometimes pupils would stand on the platform. When I occasionally stood on the platform, to make announcements as a representative of the pupil's body or to receive an award from the headmaster, I became very nervous. My legs would literally tremble.

Such a bittersweet nostalgia surges within one's bosom as one looks at such a object of sentimental values. The headmaster's platform.

All because a child has a magical power of imagination.



The headmaster's platform

In a nutshell, yes.

I am in Hakata right now, writing this entry. In the afternoon I am going off to Uku island, where an internet connection is not likely available. I am writing this entry in advance, and register it on the blogger system to be published on Monday morning JST, in order not to break the writing streak of the qualia journal, which would achieve 200 consecutive days in a row on 15th December 2009.

I am with Prof. Meguro of Kyushu University. We are discussing lunch. When I was asked what I would like, I answered "well, I would love to have something that comes in white, opaque soup, with a long thing made of flour, and a red fish roe which is rather spicy as topping, and you could have a second helping of the long flour thing if you wanted."

Mr. Atsushi Sasaki of Dentsu laughed, and simply said "you want a ramen noodle!"

In a nutshell, yes.

Prof. Meguro is giving directions as to where to find a ramen noodle restaurant. I am not sure if my wishes would come true.

I could not have been otherwise.

A few days ago I wrote about the Kaki (persimmon fruit). The sight of a tree standing against the blue sky, with its boughs full of kaki fruits, is one of the most striking and vivid in the seasons of autumn and early winter. As an inhabitant of the Kanto plane, I am so accustomed to it. When out in the suburbs, I am unconsciously seeking for the signs of season, the Kaki trees and Susuki (Japanese pampas grass), for example.

That sensitivities and feelings are products of the environment is not a striking observation. It is very much true nevertheless. We humans are products of the soil, just as the trees, which cannot move about by themselves, are products of the grounds on which they grow.

Spinoza, in his magnum opus "Ethica", argues that this universe could have been otherwise, due to the perfect nature of God. If so, we are products of this particular universe by necessity, and we could not have been otherwise.

To think that I could not have been otherwise brings a strange consolation.

The Orange Revolution.

When I was going to the Kindergarten there was only one drink that a kid loved. Fanta. In the children's gatherings, the adults would bring bottles of Fanta, as special treats.

First everybody seemed to love the grape flavor. When the pleasure time came, our small hands would invariably reach for the Fanta Grape bottles. There was actually a competition, in order to secure our own grape bottles, and not to be forced to accept the less desirable orange. It appeared as if the Reign of Grape would flourish for ever.

Then something extraordinary happened. One day somebody realized that the orange was not such a bad flavor. Maybe it was even better than the grape. A silent revolution was developing in front of our little eyes. Like a dramatic turn of events in a Reversi game, more and more kids would start preferring the orange flavor, until one day the little hands would reach only for the orange bottles. The grape bottles stood unattended. It was a sad sight.

To this day, I remember quite vividly how my world-view shook as the trend changed. Although it was a surely small shift in taste, I felt as if the ground on which my feet stood collapsed.

By the time I entered the elementary school, the Orange Revolution was complete. For some years, some of us small mortals did not forget how our sensitivities had been touched.

Eating Kaki

In Japanese, some words have double meanings. "kaki", for example, can indicate a persimmon fruit. It can also mean the "oyster". A strange property of natural language comprehension is that based on the context, one tacitly assumes that "kaki" is one or the other. When "kaki" is used in the context of the persimmon fruit, one almost never thinks of the other possible meaning.

There is a famous haiku poem which can be translated as "Eating kaki, The bells of the Horyuji temple, Ringing"

Kaki here obviously refers to the persimmon fruit, which is a fruit of the autumn. It is fitting. One remembers how beautiful Horyuji temple, one of the oldest surviving wooden buildings, appears when the leaves turn red in preparation for winter.

Yesterday, when walking in the street, it suddenly occurred to me, for the first time ever in my life, that based on the sound alone, "kaki" in the famous haiku poem can also mean "oyster".

"Eating Oyster, The bells of the Horyuji temple, Ringing".

The scene is changed dramatically. What a mismatch! A comical feeling is invoked, and the haiku poem is changed beyond recognition.

The strange thing is that it never occurred to me to interpret the poem in this way--until yesterday, that is. I wonder what struck my brain out of the blue. A strange combination of neural activities, perhaps.

Collision without prior knowledge

I came to a Haiku meeting ("Kukai") at Yugawara, a famous Onsen (hot spring) retreat, about one hour from Tokyo.

The meeting was organized by Madoka Mayuzumi, my good friend and a famous haiku poet.

I took the bath after a strenuous and yet enjoyable haiku session. A hot spring is a godsend for a schedule-pursued, overworked brat like me. I stretched my arms and legs, and took a deep sigh.

After thus bringing back life to my system, I was putting my clothes on. In Japanese Onsens, it is customary to have an official notice of the effective elements contained in the hot spring water in the room next to the hot spring. It is somehow required by law, I think. Anyway, I have somehow made it my custom to read the list of effective elements only after I have taken the bath.
It is just a matter of taste. I don't like to pre-configure my mind. I would like to dip myself into the hot water without consciously knowing what the experience is supposed to do for me. If I had preconceptions, it would "taint" the purity.

The philosophy is not just for taking the hot spring. Knowing the factual details only after the actual experience has become my way of life. Since we know so little about the conditions of life, collision without prior knowledge seems to be the only way.

Make me whole

De Prufundis, an essay in the form of a letter written during imprisonment by Oscar Wilde, has such a beautiful ending.

Wild imagines how he would feel on the day of release, and he thinks of the flowers that would greet him.

----------
I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me.
------------

Then the essay ends as Wilde ponders how he would still be rejected by society, but would be made whole by nature, who would cleanse him in great waters.

-----------
Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
------------

When I read this, I realized that all pieces of conventional reasoning about the famous "Mary's Room" thought experiment by Franck Jackson have been missing one crucial thing.

Mary, when she is released from her black-and-white world, and sees the wild flowers for the first time, would not only learn the color qualia but also weep, deeply moved, her very existence shuttered and them made anew, by her encounter with the brave new world.

She has been made whole.

Hideo Kobayashi

Close to midnight I had a phone call from Shinya Shirasu. He was drinking with his friends, and wondered if I could join them. I had my work, so I said regretfully that I could not make it.

Maybe Shinya's call had a strange effect on my unconscious. I had a dream. In it I was lecturing in a room. After the lecture, I realized that Hideo Kobayashi was among the audience. In a sudden pang of regret, I reproached myself for not noticing the legendary critic's presence. Then my heart started to appreciate how warm and embracing the smile of Hideo Kobayashi has been. Because of the warmth, it was now all right. I still thought I would have loved to talk to Hideo Kobayashi, but all was well as it was.

When I awoke, I realized that Hideo Kobayashi is dead for a long time.

Hideo Kobayashi is Shinya's grandfather. It is strange how a small experience can be wondrously interpreted in one's unconscious, reflected in the occasional manifestations in the conscious, while the vast ocean of the unconscious remains inaccessible.

Harking

I don't know what is happening, but I seem to be less interested in the physical testimonies of life such as photos, and sound recordings these days.

They are certainty useful. Without photography, for example, I would have never known how Albert Einstein looked. If even a second of Napoleon's voice was here with us, it would have changed our perception of history beyond recognition.

However, as far as I am concerned, I seem to have come to the realization that in my life, precious things are never recorded. These moments would remain within me as a faint trace of memory, if they retain their feeble presences at all.

I would certainly keep taking photos and making MP3 recordings. But at the same time I would be harking, attending to my inner traces, remembering the times that have been, which is possibly the only significant action, against civilization, in the continuation of an ancient spirit.

Squid

Right now I am in Kochi city, where the ENJIN 01 conferences are being held.

In the evening, after a long day of strenuous and yet enjoyable schedule, we went to a Sushi restaurant. We ordered some delicacies. The Aori Squid was one of them.

As I chewed the sweet and strongly-textured meat, I suddenly remembered how as a child it was hard to swallow a squid.

I always wanted to behave like an adult, so when the Sushi came I tried the squid like the grown-ups. However, as I chewed on, the squid in my mouth would start to have the texture of gum. I could not bite them into pieces. Gradually the squid would lose all tastes. A mouthful of culinary nightmare was in the making.

It may have been the junior high school days when I finally learned how to swallow a squid. Now I enjoy them hugely, accompanied by beer and sake.

Growing up is learning how to swallow a squid.

My canals

On a recent visit to an elementary school, I remembered one thing which has been cherished in my bosom for so many years.
I don't quite know how it started, but when I was a 2nd grader the fad among boys was to make "canals" on the desk in the classroom. The wood was soft, and you could cut tracks with the ball point pen. The ball would eventually come off the pen, which one used as a "vessel" which "voyaged" through the canals.

Needless to say, the vandalism was not particularly recommended by the school teacher. You were not supposed to damage the school property. In a strange twilight of illegal activities that is open only to a child, we competed who could make the most interesting map of canals on the desk.

It was a play in imagination. I developed a kingdom, named the places, and the network grew in my mind like a throbbing organization.

At the end of the semester, there was a desk shuffle, and I had to say goodbye to my beloved kingdom. The canals were still within my reach though. In March, when I became a 3rd grader, we moved to a new classroom. On the last afternoon, I went to touch the wood. I vividly remember my canals lit by the sunshine from the window.

I have not seen my canals since. How I miss them.

Flower-like life

I was reading Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, and came across this sentence, where Wilde refers to Jesus Christ.

"He was the first person who ever said to people that they should live 'flower-like lives.' He fixed the phrase. He took children as the type of what people should try to become. He held them up as examples to their elders, which I myself have always thought the chief use of children, if what is perfect should have a use."

How true. We should all try to become children. The children in us is the only hope in our lives on this earth.

Science tells us about neoteny. We retain that special gift of childhood, to learn new things, and integrate them into our system.
The everyday of a child is literally the succession of a flower-like life, where, with learning new things, flowers bloom and blossom. Without awakening to the previously unknowns, the plants in our heart perish.

Jealous

On the Shinkansen train back from Kyoto, I was returning to my seat after going to the deck. Passing by, I saw a traveler with his girlfriend, apparently an American.

The sight of him made me jealous. Not because of his beautiful girl friend. The reason lay in what he was doing.

He was reading something with his Amazon Kindle. I couldn't tell what he was reading, as I did not stop to confirm or anything. He was apparently enjoying himself, relaxed like a slug and smiling in the spring sunshine.

I had an Amazon Kindle in my backpack, too. It carried loads of things for me to read. Oh, the heavenly bliss for an absorbed bookworm! But the pleasure was not to be mine.

I had to finish manuscripts, papers, send e-mails. It was my destiny to work like a dog, even after I going through a strenuous work schedule in the ancient capital, devoid of a leisure time to enjoy the legendary autumn leaves of the Kyoto mountain. Once in Tokyo, another assignment was waiting for me.

How I wanted to dive into the vast ocean of alphabets on the digital ink, travel through time, and meet deceased people. I desired to hear distant voices, and watch strange forms. The wish was so strong. But alas, it was not to be. Not like this lucky guy!

These thoughts went through my central nervous system only for a very brief time.

With a sigh traveling at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour, I returned to my seat, and duly started typing, like a ferocious fox in the field.

Fighting with the floor

I have several masters whom I respect very much. The writer Makoto Shiina is one of them.

Makoto Shiina is known for his poignant novels based on his own experience, as well as humorous essays in the outdoors.
He is well-built, and yet smart, and keeps a good figure.

When I asked him how he kept fit, he said it was simple. "You fight with the floor once a day". "How do you mean?" I asked.

"You do 200 push-ups, 200 sit-ups, and 200 squats every day. You don't use a machine. You just fight with the floor. That's all."

"When do you do that?"

"Before I go to sleep."

Makoto Shiina is known for his love for beers.

"Even when you are drunk?" I asked.

"Yes, even when I am drunk. It is like brushing your teeth, you see. If you don't do it, you don't feel good".

So the master told me how he kept fit.

For some reasons, I love running outside, but I have never really accustomed myself to fighting with the floor. I try from time to time, but I can never continue the exercise. Thus, it is difficult to be true to the master.

One of these days I would try to be true to the master. But then 200 times each is a tall order. Maybe I should start from 30 times each.

Life is so hard.


With the writer Makoto Siina in a recent meeting.

Tokyo Sky Tree

I was going to a theatre for a practice, when the car passed by the Tokyo Sky Tree.

I stopped typing on my laptop computer and looked up at is looming figure in a mixture of expectation and appreciation.
The tower, planned to reach the height of 634 m when completed, is now under construction.

The postwar Japan experienced rapid recovery and economic growth. People were still poor, but there was much hope and the future was perceived as bright.

The Tokyo Tower, completed in 1958 was a symbol of that era, depicted in a popular film ("Always san-chome no yuhi") recently.

More than 50 years later, The Tokyo Sky Tree is constructed into a new symbol. What Zeitgeist would it be seen to represent in the years to come, I wondered. I am living in it, yet I do not see clearly. Maybe things can be seen clearly only with the benefit of hindsight.

The Tree disappeared into the rear. After a concealed sigh, I went back to typing. The car reached the destination however before I could do any meaningful chunk of work.


The Tokyo Sky Tree, to be completed in 2011.


The Tokyo Tower, symbol of the postwar recovery of Japan.

Bittersweet reflections

In Japan, the Meiji era is known as a great time of change. Under Western influences, Japan tried to catch up, importing many ideas and technologies from Europe.

At such a time, it is psychologically natural to focus on new things to come. The bright images of a new civilization. Steam locomotives. Brick and stone buildings. The electric lights. These novel sights astonished people and moved their hearts. They testify the irreversibility of time.

On the other side of the coin, however, there must have been people who looked on the past era with nostalgia and longing. The Edo era was a unique civilization in itself. Perhaps even more harmonious and balanced than the decades that followed from the aesthetic point of view.

Yesterday, a series of events made me wonder how the Edo era must have appeared to people in the Meiji era. This exercise in imagination led to reflections on my own life.

Naturally, I am concerned about my future, as future is the only available degree of freedom for a living organism. I also look back on the past. The bittersweet reflections. Things that are gone for ever into the enigma of time.

Amazon Kindle

A few days ago, my Amazon Kindle arrived. I have been purchasing several books on the online store since.

My friends know well that I am a gadget man. The possession of the e-book reader has added much sparkle and joy to my train rides in the capital of Tokyo.

It has also solved a practical problem. As I am a VERY disorganized man, in the course of reading a book, I am likely to leave the copy somewhere. Then I forget where I have left it. When I have the urge to read on, it is often the case that I have to do an extensive office searching before I can satisfy my bookworm urge. This delay is sometimes fatal, as the urge can become stagnant and dissolves as times fly.

With the Amazon Kindle, I can read several books in parallel, and never lose track of them. Theoretically speaking, of course, there is the chance that you misplace Amazon Kindle in the office, and you are obliged to organize a one man search party again. However, the enigma is that I am very good at holding to a digital devise. I almost never lose track of them. It's my digital instinct, perhaps.

Thus, the first few days of my partnership with Amazon Kindle has been just lovely. I have a very long list of books that I would like to read on this devise. My train rides and toilet times would continue to be enriched by it for many days to come.

Inner pictures

Nowadays, we are used to the idea of capturing moments of life with camera.

Needless to say, it used to be quite different in the old times.

Although photos do help us in recalling things in the past, most of the precious things in early life is remembered privately, without any photographic records to testify them.

When I was about 7 years old, there was a baby sparrow on the road in front of home. It was apparently feeble and helpless, unable to fly by itself.

I held it in my palms in an endeavor to give protection, and carried to the living room. Looking at the sparrow, my mother said, "maybe it wouldn't eat anything". I went to a pet shop with my sister, and bought some bird food. My mother was right. No matter how hard we tried, the baby sparrow would not swallow a thing. I knew that wild animals sometimes would refuse to eat in captivity. I was very worried.

Then things started to move very quickly. First there was a slight commotion outside. I heard the sound of wings. The baby sparrow started to react.

Before I realized that the mother sparrow have come to the rescue, the baby sparrow was already airborne. The strength left in it surprised me. Although I thought the windows were closed, there was this tiny gap. The baby sparrow flew straight to it, and went out into the open air with mother sparrow before I could do anything.

Thus all was well in the end. I was delighted, although there was a slight pang of loneliness.

To this day, I can recall the scenes of this incident very vividly. Although there are no photographic records, I still carry the inner pictures with me. I sometimes recall the gallery of images that made one of the most memorable experiences in my early life.

Precisely because it is absurd.

After writing about "Alice in Wonderland" yesterday, I remembered many different things.
The sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass", is also very delightful. I love, for example, the remark by the Red Queen.

-----------
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
-----------


Historically, this sentence has been giving inspirations to evolutionary biologists.
When I first read the Looking-Glass in the teens, the Jabberwocky poem struck me with its sensitive sense of humor.
------------

This was the poem that Alice read.


JABBERWOCKY

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's
RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, even
to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) 'Somehow it seems
to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are!
However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate--'
--------------

" However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate".
What a fine spirit of nonsense!

Nonsensical things lifts our spirit.
And the world is the merrier, precisely because it is absurd.



The Jabberwocky. Illustration by John Tenniel.

A picture or conversation, please!

The immortal "Alice's adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll begins thus:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?'

I really love the way Alice expresses her preferred condition for a book, namely "with a picture or conversation in it".
A picture or a conversation is like a scaffold which attracts a child's attention. As one is drawn deeply into the story, other things come to the rescue of the "keep going on", but there must be some initial inducers.

The necessity for a "spoonful of sugar" continues well into adulthood. There are things that makes our eyes gleam with kindled enthusiasm when we encounter a strange thing.

We are children deep inside, with things setting fire to our investigative mind in a manner like that "all in a golden afternoon".

Therefore, "a picture or conversation, please!"


Here's a picture. The white rabbit alluring Alice into Wonderland.