November 5
A sample of our December issue arrives from the printer. It’s the second ever that comes with a CD, following this year’s January edition that included a CD containing Furukawa Hideo’s recitals of works of modern and contemporary Japanese poetry picked by himself. This one is a posthumous release of a recording of Kobayashi Hideo’s (1902-83) lecture. Kobayashi Hideo is adored by some as the king of criticism in Japan, while others know his work from Japanese language tests. His reading skills were so outstanding that he even used to be compared to (rakugo artist) Kokontei Shinsho. In other words, his performances were profoundly funny. In the highlight of this CD, a 27-minute-long, previously unreleased recording of "On magatama" (1972), magatama collector Kobayashi is discussing this clothing accessory that dates back to the Jomon period seemingly by using the magatama in his hand to communicate with the ancient people. When hearing him say that beauty is a form of experience, but certainly not a form of knowledge, I catch myself thinking whether I am experiencing works of art (including those that involve language, I suppose) unbiased by information and preconceived ideas…
November 8
For some private reason I'm checking out the current state of computer-based music production (or more precisely, sound editing) technology. Terribly behind in such things, I feel like an old man when seeing what a great variety of products are available, and at what amazingly low prices! I tried some music editing software that I could download for free, and first thing I thought was how great it would have been to have that back when I was in high school. At the same time I remembered shogi (Japanese chess) player Habu Yoshiharu’s impressive comment in IT consultant Umeda Mochio’s "Web shinkaron (Evolution of the Internet)": "The greatest change the evolution of IT and the Internet introduced to the world of shogi is that we players have been given an expressway for getting to the top much quicker. However, at the end of that expressway there’s now a massive traffic jam." The same goes of course also for the realm of music. On the other hand, I was quite impressed by the excellence of the "KORG DS-10" synthesizer simulation software for Nintendo DS that I bought a while ago, but at the same time I thought it was odd that the software’s self-contained design didn't allow me to transfer the data of the music I made with it to a computer. Speaking of "the changing relationship between creating things and making them public" would be a bit too simple, but it made me, an editor of a magazine that onerously publishes the printed works of professional writers, feel slightly uneasy.
November 10
The September issue of "Shincho" included a critical text by novelist Mizumura Minae, titled "The Fall of the Japanese Language in the Age of English (Nihongo ga Horobiru Toki - Eigo no Seiki no Nakade)", and a significantly expanded version (the part included in "Shincho" marked the first three of a total of seven chapters) was just published in the form of a book by Chikuma Shobo. The following is a totally outrageous summary, but in a nutshell it’s about how the wisdom of mankind is being distilled to the English language, which has become an "universal language" comparable to what Latin once was, in dimensions far beyond the power of America (and under the strong influence of the Internet), and about how the Japanese "national language" has been loosing its originally abundant expressive power while turning more and more into a local language since the Meiji Restoration (whereas the author stressed especially the development in Japanese modern literature).
On November 7, two days after going on sale, Umeda posted an enthusiastic review on his blog. Another three days later, there were both rave reviews but also criticism all over the Internet. I decided to include the first part in "Shincho" primarily because I want to stimulate a discussion of Japanese language and Japanese literature. In this sense it worked out as expected, but what I didn't expect at all is that it would end up number one best-selling book on amazon.co.jp (as of November 10). Once again, that was only five days after it went on sale! It appears to me as if something that has been smoldering in the triangle of nationality, language and Internet in contemporary Japan, has suddenly erupted…