My mother and Hibari.

Hibari Misora is a legendary Japanese singer, sadly no longer with us. Hibari had a concert in the Tokyo Dome once, shortly before she passed away.

The thing is that my mother is a great fan of Hibari, and was lucky enough to go to the Tokyo Dome concert.

Yesterday, passing a Tokyo street, I happened to hear Hibari's voice, singing "Kawa no Nagare No Youni" ("Like the flow of a river"), and immediately remembered how my mother was enthusiastic about Hibari Misora and was overjoyed to be able to attend the concert. At that time, of course, mother did not know Hibari was to pass away so soon.

When I remembered the Hibari concert episode, I felt tremendously happy for my mother, who is up and well at the mature age of 75.

Well, that's all.


Hibari Misora singing at the now legendary 1988 concert.
(From a DVD cover)

Imagine no universities

I know a university is a good thing. You meet your mentor, friends, and colleagues. It nurtures human knowledge, and updates and creates concepts for future generations.

On the other hand, a university is an institution. It harbors its members, while rejecting others. I know people whose lives have been crushed because they could not enter the universities they wished. There are the pompous and self-important types who just pride themselves on being or having been a member of a particular university. Since any institution has its elements of malice, and since we are living in the internet era, let's do what we can to promote the goodies and discourage the vices.

Imagine no universities. On the internet, you can access to endless sources of academic information. Do we really still need institutions whose members are limited, due to physical constraints, which have no significance in the internet era? Why don't we tell the kids that they can explore the universe of knowledge without necessarily belonging to a particular institution? Why don't we encourage the crushed people that they don't have to feel inferior because of some stupid entrance exams taken at the age of 18?

Why don't we say loud that knowledge is open, for everyone, for someone from the street, as well as for those in the "ivory tower"?

Imagine no universities.

You just need to know how.

The tools are here and now.

Eight Below

Here it is getting colder and colder. In a metropolis like Tokyo, the time you spend inside is considerable. As a consequence, I don't wear a coat, even in the middle of winter. I don't like the feeling of being "suffocated" by heat as one enters a building, subway, or a taxi with one's coat on. I would rather bear the biting wind as I walk for a few minutes on the Tokyo street, in order to spend the indoors in comfort.

Things were quite different when I traveled to Germany in January. It was very cold. Actually, I later learned that Europe was experiencing an unusual freeze spell at that time, with the temperature reaching 20 below zero Celcius.

Here's a picture I took in Weimar, as we were walking on the street one late morning in that beautiful city. The sky was clear,
and the sun was out. Even so, the thermometer read eight below.

On the night of arrival in Weimar, I think it was 15 below or something. When it is cold as that, I discovered that your nostril
hairs would freeze.

"Paki paki". That is the Japanese expression for something that gets frozen and stiff. I remember quite well how my nostril hairs went "paki paki" as I walked through the Weimar night. Actually, that was not an unpleasant sensation.

Even a cold-stupid person as I had to wear a coat then. One could not simply survive otherwise. It seems that I have a high (or rather, a low) threshold for coat wearing, and in Weimar that threshold was reached.



The thermometer reading eight below, in Weimar, January 2009.

Gino Yu came to visit

Gino Yu came to visit Tokyo. Currently Gino is a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was kind enough to accept our invitation, at a very short notice, to give a lecture at a class room at Meiji University, which was arranged by Prof. Masato Goda.

I came to know Gino when I visited Hong Kong for a conference. His personality fascinated me immediately.
He talks with such gaiety that sunshine seems to emanate from him. Gino is a "natural" in grasping what are salient and finding deep connections between things. Listening to his ideas is a delight for the soul.

I was glad that my students were exposed to his good influence. When you give a talk, the manner is as important as the content. A dull speaker bores the audience not necessarily because of poor ingredients but often due to a bad attitude.

Had a fun time afterwards in a Izakaya near the university.

Many thanks for your time and inspirations, Gino.



Gino Yu giving the lecture in Tokyo

Tree house

When I made my pilgrimage to Bayreuth this last summer, there were several things besides Wagner that I captured my imagination.

I remember one house on the street vividly, on my way to the Festival house from the hotel. There was a tree house in the garden.

And it was just a private house. Imagine a tree house in your backyard! What fantastic child years you would have!
I have always been fascinated by the trees. Staying high up among the boughs for a prolonged time has been one of my unfulfilled dreams.

We noisy brats used to climb the trees, to the horror of the onlooking adults, and do various things. Somehow the tree time liberated our spirit.

From evolutionary point of view, it might be that one is more at ease and relaxed when one is on the tree, avoiding the hazard that comes from being on the ground, which makes one vulnerable to the attacks by predators. Climbing the tree, needless to say, gives one a magnificent view.

Books are made of trees, and the spiritual effects are accidentally similar to those by the trees. Reading books gives you the vantage point of a wider vista, where you can breathe more freely and without restraint.

Reading books on a tree bough becomes thus a fascinating combination. Something I haven't done to my satisfaction yet in my life.



The lovely tree house in Bayreuth.

Pub time in London

As the year comes near to the end, I remember things that have passed me. One of the highlights of my sojourn this round of the earth's sun-wise orbit was the visit to London with Shinya Shirasu in summer.

Although it was a short visit (only a crazy two nights stay), some things stand vividly in my memory. The Pub time for example. My favorite memory is facing Shinya in the London Pub, especially the one in Kensington, where we sipped the typically lukewarm liquid of English pride in that golden afternoon. I would have liked to spend more time like that. In actuality, our heavenly pastime lasted only for one hour, at the most.

I always say that one can "grow" the past if you return to it repeatedly in your memory. The pub time in London with Shinya is one of the precious mnemonic seeds that I would like to nurture as I close my eyes and escape into the kingdom of recollections and imaginations.

The lights corridor

The Meiji Shrine is one of my favorite places. I would like to stroll this haven in the heart of Tokyo.

The lights are never the same, as they come through the leaves of the trees, which have grown into mature shapes 100 years after they were transplanted from many places across the island. Before the transplantation, the shrine site used to be a grassland, I hear.

I would like to ponder and weigh, as I pass through the lights corridor. I come face to face with my unconscious, where I find many strange animals and vegetations.

And my whole body including the brain is the only recording devise. Photography has a limited power in capturing the moment. As I stroll, I vividly sense the environment and myself. I hark, remember, and project.

Before long I find myself in the busy Tokyo streets again. The magic is over.


The Meiji Shrine forest on a recent visit.

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.