My haiku poem at this season
万緑の輝く日なり父逝けり
平成26年6月22日、父・砂山勝治（俳号・孤帆）81歳にて永眠。
おやじ、これまでありがとう。
【遺句】
建前や棟で一服朴の花
マカオとは男のロマン春の風
砂山孤帆
☆ 生前、故人が賜わりました皆さまからのご厚情に深く感謝申し上げます。
2014年6月26日木曜日
2014年6月22日日曜日
Memorandum
The Japan Times
JUN 21, 2014
Abe hijacks democracy, undermines Constitution
BY JEFF KINGSTON
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
By short-circuiting the democratic process, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is abusing the trust put in him by the people. His initiative to reinterpret Article 9 of the Constitution to lift constraints on the Japanese military and permit collective self-defense is the most recent example of how Abe is trampling on Japanese democracy. He and his supporters both in Japan and the U.S. assert that Article 9 is outdated and it is essential that Japan take on a more assertive military role to deal with rising regional threats. These advocates of a more muscular Japanese security posture point out that Japan lives in a dangerous neighborhood and that the limits on Japan’s military actions will undermine the U.S.-Japan alliance. Thus in their view there is an urgent need to allow Japan to participate in military action involving collective self-defense.
Fine. If Abe has such a strong case then by all means make it and work toward revising the Constitution. The procedures to do so are laid out in the Constitution, requiring two-thirds approval in both houses of the Diet and a majority of voters in a nationwide referendum. The hurdles are high as they should be so that the fundamental ground rules of Japan’s democratic system are not unduly politicized or changed capriciously; this is serious business.
Instead, Abe is ramming through a reinterpretation of the Constitution, cynically undermining the rule of law and the Constitution by sneaking in the back door like a thief in the night. This is undemocratic, setting a dangerous precedent in bypassing and making a mockery of constitutional procedures. Abe seeks to overturn the interpretation of Article 9 barring collective self-defense that numerous Liberal Democratic Party-led Cabinets have supported for more than three decades. He and his supporters believe the ends justify the means and seek to avoid the time-consuming procedures of revising the constitution. They have found a devious way to circumvent the Constitution, an artful ploy to tweak its meaning in the name of being a responsible ally of the United States.
Paradoxically, Abe has long advocated revision of the U.S.-written Constitution, asserting that it was aimed at keeping Japan weak and subordinate. So why is he backing away from revision when he is so popular and the LDP dominates the Diet? Because Abe knows he would lose. But this is a fight he should not shy away from if he has the courage of his convictions.
Abe initially went through the motions of acting as if he would patiently consult various actors to seem like he was not just bulldozing ahead. He appointed a blue ribbon panel stacked with people who agree with him. Surprise, surprise it made recommendations supporting Abe’s plans to unleash the Self-Defense Forces (SDF). The political theater then shifted to Washington as Abe dispatched a Diet colleague to consult with the band of Washington insiders that has long prodded Japan to get with the program and he dutifully reported that they also support Abe on collective self-defense. Wow, so Abe got the endorsement of everyone who already agreed with him. But the public isn’t buying this farce and strongly opposes his reinterpretation sleight of hand. And there is also a mutiny in the ranks of the LDP as the Gifu chapter complained about Abe’s haste and the lack of public discussion, a rare dressing down that suggests even his base is ambivalent.
Team Abe has also gone through the motions of consulting coalition partner New Komeito because it can deliver the votes he needs in the upper house. In this charade, New Komeito is putting up a surprisingly robust fight to slow the Abe express, questioning the various scenarios that have been ginned up to sell collective self-defense. By prolonging the drama, the public has seen the LDP squirming as it explains how it plans to keep the SDF on a short leash. Right.
Soka Gakkai, New Komeito’s affiliated religious organization, insists that Abe should respect the Constitution and revise it rather than sneak through a reinterpretation. But this is all political theater as New Komeito stated at the outset of this “battle” that it would not resign from the coalition over this issue, meaning it planned to cave in from the get go.
One of Abe’s top advisers, Isao Iijima, recently threatened New Komeito, saying in Washington that it may be necessary for the Cabinet Legislative Bureau (CLB) to re-examine previous rulings that the relationship between it and Soka Gakkai does not breach Article 20 of the Constitution regarding separation of the Church and state. Come again? The notorious media spin master is now threatening a political party that is giving Abe a hard time because it disagrees with his agenda and underhanded manner of achieving it? Sorry, but isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work? And, since when does the CLB take its marching orders from dubious enforcers?
Yes, Abe did try to co-opt the CLB where the constitutionality of laws are determined by parachuting a sympathetic ambassador into the director’s role last year, but he has had to resign for health reasons and has been replaced by a CLB man. The CLB values its independence and is wary about overturning precedents just because the prime minister would like them to.
Abe is suddenly in a rush to seal the deal on collective self-defense as he senses the media and public opinion is increasingly hostile to his project and wants to get this bad news out of the way before tackling the tax increase in the next Diet session. He also wants the furor to die down before the Okinawan gubernatorial elections in November because it would inflame public opinion and help the antibase candidate.
In deliberately subverting the Constitution and bypassing a referendum, Abe demonstrates yet again he doesn’t trust the people just as he did in ramming the special secrets legislation through the Diet at the end of 2013. Abe’s downsizing of democracy also means ignoring Okinawan sentiments about U.S. bases and overwhelming public opposition to nuclear reactor restarts. One expects a certain amount of craven cozying up to those in power, but recent cringe-worthy examples of international scribes twerking Abe set new lows. In gushing about resolute Abe, they avert their eyes from his undemocratic ways, and towering pile of unfulfilled pledges and promises.
☆ 国民投票も行わないで、よくやると思うわ。憲法でさえ、安倍氏の閣議決定でどうとでもなるなら、それ以下の法規範であるすべての法律も同氏の閣議決定でどうとでもなりますわな。国会（つまり国民）もバカにされたものだ。
☆ 払うべき代償は小さくないと思われるが、いずれにせよ、すべては今後の地方選挙、国政選挙で明確な数字として結果が出ますわ。
☆ プラス、日本中で、憲法訴訟が湧き起こると思う。通常、訴訟は、事実認定に時間を要することから訴訟が長びくが、これ、立証無用の公然の事実なので、比較的早く結審すると思われる。結審後の法解釈も早いのではないか。今の地裁裁判官クラス（以上）は、既に芦部信喜憲法訴訟理論を学んできている。「投票箱と民主政の過程」がキーワード。この人は芦部信喜教授のお名前もご存知なかったようでオメデタイ。近時、裁判所は、一票の格差訴訟で「違憲」判決、「違憲状態」判決を連発したが、その理論的支柱だと言えば、少しはお分かりになるか。
☆ あとは、この人が、ある朝、突然、「今般、憲法で定める国民主権の理念の解釈を変更し、私の内閣の閣議決定において、国民の皆さまには投票権がない、と決定しました。」などと言い出さないことを願うばかりた。憲法の理念を自分の内閣の閣議決定で変えられるというこの人のリクツが通るなら、こういうことも言えるということになる。世界に通用しないブラック・ユーモアと言うしかない。
The Japan Times
JUN 21, 2014
Abe hijacks democracy, undermines Constitution
BY JEFF KINGSTON
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
By short-circuiting the democratic process, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is abusing the trust put in him by the people. His initiative to reinterpret Article 9 of the Constitution to lift constraints on the Japanese military and permit collective self-defense is the most recent example of how Abe is trampling on Japanese democracy. He and his supporters both in Japan and the U.S. assert that Article 9 is outdated and it is essential that Japan take on a more assertive military role to deal with rising regional threats. These advocates of a more muscular Japanese security posture point out that Japan lives in a dangerous neighborhood and that the limits on Japan’s military actions will undermine the U.S.-Japan alliance. Thus in their view there is an urgent need to allow Japan to participate in military action involving collective self-defense.
Fine. If Abe has such a strong case then by all means make it and work toward revising the Constitution. The procedures to do so are laid out in the Constitution, requiring two-thirds approval in both houses of the Diet and a majority of voters in a nationwide referendum. The hurdles are high as they should be so that the fundamental ground rules of Japan’s democratic system are not unduly politicized or changed capriciously; this is serious business.
Instead, Abe is ramming through a reinterpretation of the Constitution, cynically undermining the rule of law and the Constitution by sneaking in the back door like a thief in the night. This is undemocratic, setting a dangerous precedent in bypassing and making a mockery of constitutional procedures. Abe seeks to overturn the interpretation of Article 9 barring collective self-defense that numerous Liberal Democratic Party-led Cabinets have supported for more than three decades. He and his supporters believe the ends justify the means and seek to avoid the time-consuming procedures of revising the constitution. They have found a devious way to circumvent the Constitution, an artful ploy to tweak its meaning in the name of being a responsible ally of the United States.
Paradoxically, Abe has long advocated revision of the U.S.-written Constitution, asserting that it was aimed at keeping Japan weak and subordinate. So why is he backing away from revision when he is so popular and the LDP dominates the Diet? Because Abe knows he would lose. But this is a fight he should not shy away from if he has the courage of his convictions.
Abe initially went through the motions of acting as if he would patiently consult various actors to seem like he was not just bulldozing ahead. He appointed a blue ribbon panel stacked with people who agree with him. Surprise, surprise it made recommendations supporting Abe’s plans to unleash the Self-Defense Forces (SDF). The political theater then shifted to Washington as Abe dispatched a Diet colleague to consult with the band of Washington insiders that has long prodded Japan to get with the program and he dutifully reported that they also support Abe on collective self-defense. Wow, so Abe got the endorsement of everyone who already agreed with him. But the public isn’t buying this farce and strongly opposes his reinterpretation sleight of hand. And there is also a mutiny in the ranks of the LDP as the Gifu chapter complained about Abe’s haste and the lack of public discussion, a rare dressing down that suggests even his base is ambivalent.
Team Abe has also gone through the motions of consulting coalition partner New Komeito because it can deliver the votes he needs in the upper house. In this charade, New Komeito is putting up a surprisingly robust fight to slow the Abe express, questioning the various scenarios that have been ginned up to sell collective self-defense. By prolonging the drama, the public has seen the LDP squirming as it explains how it plans to keep the SDF on a short leash. Right.
Soka Gakkai, New Komeito’s affiliated religious organization, insists that Abe should respect the Constitution and revise it rather than sneak through a reinterpretation. But this is all political theater as New Komeito stated at the outset of this “battle” that it would not resign from the coalition over this issue, meaning it planned to cave in from the get go.
One of Abe’s top advisers, Isao Iijima, recently threatened New Komeito, saying in Washington that it may be necessary for the Cabinet Legislative Bureau (CLB) to re-examine previous rulings that the relationship between it and Soka Gakkai does not breach Article 20 of the Constitution regarding separation of the Church and state. Come again? The notorious media spin master is now threatening a political party that is giving Abe a hard time because it disagrees with his agenda and underhanded manner of achieving it? Sorry, but isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work? And, since when does the CLB take its marching orders from dubious enforcers?
Yes, Abe did try to co-opt the CLB where the constitutionality of laws are determined by parachuting a sympathetic ambassador into the director’s role last year, but he has had to resign for health reasons and has been replaced by a CLB man. The CLB values its independence and is wary about overturning precedents just because the prime minister would like them to.
Abe is suddenly in a rush to seal the deal on collective self-defense as he senses the media and public opinion is increasingly hostile to his project and wants to get this bad news out of the way before tackling the tax increase in the next Diet session. He also wants the furor to die down before the Okinawan gubernatorial elections in November because it would inflame public opinion and help the antibase candidate.
In deliberately subverting the Constitution and bypassing a referendum, Abe demonstrates yet again he doesn’t trust the people just as he did in ramming the special secrets legislation through the Diet at the end of 2013. Abe’s downsizing of democracy also means ignoring Okinawan sentiments about U.S. bases and overwhelming public opposition to nuclear reactor restarts. One expects a certain amount of craven cozying up to those in power, but recent cringe-worthy examples of international scribes twerking Abe set new lows. In gushing about resolute Abe, they avert their eyes from his undemocratic ways, and towering pile of unfulfilled pledges and promises.
☆ 国民投票も行わないで、よくやると思うわ。憲法でさえ、安倍氏の閣議決定でどうとでもなるなら、それ以下の法規範であるすべての法律も同氏の閣議決定でどうとでもなりますわな。国会（つまり国民）もバカにされたものだ。
☆ 払うべき代償は小さくないと思われるが、いずれにせよ、すべては今後の地方選挙、国政選挙で明確な数字として結果が出ますわ。
☆ プラス、日本中で、憲法訴訟が湧き起こると思う。通常、訴訟は、事実認定に時間を要することから訴訟が長びくが、これ、立証無用の公然の事実なので、比較的早く結審すると思われる。結審後の法解釈も早いのではないか。今の地裁裁判官クラス（以上）は、既に芦部信喜憲法訴訟理論を学んできている。「投票箱と民主政の過程」がキーワード。この人は芦部信喜教授のお名前もご存知なかったようでオメデタイ。近時、裁判所は、一票の格差訴訟で「違憲」判決、「違憲状態」判決を連発したが、その理論的支柱だと言えば、少しはお分かりになるか。
☆ あとは、この人が、ある朝、突然、「今般、憲法で定める国民主権の理念の解釈を変更し、私の内閣の閣議決定において、国民の皆さまには投票権がない、と決定しました。」などと言い出さないことを願うばかりた。憲法の理念を自分の内閣の閣議決定で変えられるというこの人のリクツが通るなら、こういうことも言えるということになる。世界に通用しないブラック・ユーモアと言うしかない。
2014年6月18日水曜日
Impressive work
Tokyo Shiodome Building Installs Bloom Energy Server
June 17, 2014
SoftBank Group
Bloom Energy Japan Limited
The SoftBank Group (Tokyo, Japan, Representative Director: Masayoshi Son) and Bloom Energy Japan Limited (Tokyo, Japan, Representative Director and CEO: Shigeki Miwa, hereafter “Bloom Energy Japan”) today announced the installation of the “Bloom Energy Server,” an innovative and clean electricity generation system, at Tokyo Shiodome Building on June 17 in Minato Ku, Tokyo Prefecture. The Bloom Energy Server installed at Tokyo Shiodome Building, home to SoftBank Group headquarters, can produce 200 kilowatts of power and provides 14% of the buildings’ overall electricity needs.
The Bloom Energy Server is a breakthrough solid oxide fuel cell technology that generates clean electricity from multiple fuel sources such as city gas and biogas at over 60% efficiency*. Bloom Energy Servers have been installed in many locations that require uninterrupted power supply such as data centers, manufacturing operations, communications, and facilities with high energy loads including refrigeration and critical services in the U.S.A.
*Initial performance.
To contribute to disaster preparedness in Tokyo, Bloom Energy Japan can supply electricity generated by Bloom Energy Servers to streetlights and free power outlets in emergencies. Furthermore, to contribute to the clean energy urban development of Tokyo, Bloom Energy Japan is also supplying electricity for EV stands installed on the underground parking floor of Tokyo Shiodome Building.
“I am delighted that we have installed the Bloom Energy Server at Tokyo Shiodome Building. I believe that this installation at our SoftBank Group headquarters greatly enhances our business continuity capabilities in the event of an emergency. We will continue to promote this innovative, reliable, and safe on-site electric generation method as a clean energy solution for future generations.” said Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Group Representative, and main tenant of the Tokyo Shiodome Building.
Dr. KR Sridhar, Principal Co-Founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, commented, “Bloom Energy is pioneering a new energy vision and SoftBank is at the forefront of this transformation in Japan. By installing the first system in Tokyo, SoftBank is setting an example for other businesses to take control of their energy and contribute to clean and reliable energy future for Japan.”
“Bloom Energy Japan brings a proven on-site electricity generation product that is ideally suited for places that are prone to large scale natural disasters,” commented the honorable General Colin Powell, the former United States Secretary of State and a member of Bloom Energy’s Board of Directors. “The product offers resiliency, cost predictability for the future and sustainability benefits. I hope that the Japanese Government and Commercial sector take a serious look at the unit we are unveiling today and consider using the product for their own energy needs.”
“I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all those who made it possible for us to start operating the first Bloom Energy Server in Tokyo.” said Shigeki Miwa, Representative Director and CEO of Bloom Energy Japan. He added, “We will work to empower Japan’s adoption of the Bloom Energy Server, highly efficient on-site power generation system for business and industrial field, to contribute to the stable power supply of Japan.”
By selling electricity generated by the Bloom Energy Servers, Bloom Energy Japan will contribute to sustainable and stable energy provision and economic development in Japan.
About Bloom Energy Server at Tokyo Shiodome Building:
Location 1-9-1 Higashi Shimbashi, Minato Ku, Tokyo, Japan
Area 60m² (approx.)*1
Power Capacity 200kW (approx.)
Rated Electric Efficiency 60%+ *2
Size（Width x Height x depth）/Weight 9.1m x 2.1m x 2.6m / 19.9t (approx.)
Date of operation June 17, 2014（Tuesday）
*1 Including maintenance space.
*2 Initial performance.
↑
☆ この発表の今後の影響は、もしかすると、現時点で計り知れないくらいのものになるのではないか。ちょっと、ただごとではない予感が・・・。
早速、慶應義塾大学
↓
[プレスリリース]
慶應義塾大学湘南藤沢キャンパス（SFC）で燃料電池発電システムを導入
「Bloomエナジーサーバー」の運転を開始
2014/06/17
慶應義塾大学
Bloom Energy Japan株式会社
慶應義塾大学（所在地：東京都港区、塾長：清家篤）とソフトバンクグループで発電事業を行うBloom Energy Japan株式会社（ブルームエナジージャパン、所在地：東京都港区、代表取締役社長：三輪茂基、以下「BloomEnergy Japan」）は、クリーンで高効率な業務用・産業用燃料電池発電システム「Bloomエナジーサーバー」を慶應義塾大学湘南藤沢キャンパスΔ館（以下「デルタ館」）に設置し、2014年6月17日より営業運転を開始します。今回導入する「Bloomエナジーサーバー」の出力規模は200kWで、1年を通してデルタ館および隣接の大学院棟τ館（以下「タウ館」）の電力需要の90％以上を賄うことができます。
Tokyo Shiodome Building Installs Bloom Energy Server
June 17, 2014
SoftBank Group
Bloom Energy Japan Limited
The SoftBank Group (Tokyo, Japan, Representative Director: Masayoshi Son) and Bloom Energy Japan Limited (Tokyo, Japan, Representative Director and CEO: Shigeki Miwa, hereafter “Bloom Energy Japan”) today announced the installation of the “Bloom Energy Server,” an innovative and clean electricity generation system, at Tokyo Shiodome Building on June 17 in Minato Ku, Tokyo Prefecture. The Bloom Energy Server installed at Tokyo Shiodome Building, home to SoftBank Group headquarters, can produce 200 kilowatts of power and provides 14% of the buildings’ overall electricity needs.
The Bloom Energy Server is a breakthrough solid oxide fuel cell technology that generates clean electricity from multiple fuel sources such as city gas and biogas at over 60% efficiency*. Bloom Energy Servers have been installed in many locations that require uninterrupted power supply such as data centers, manufacturing operations, communications, and facilities with high energy loads including refrigeration and critical services in the U.S.A.
*Initial performance.
To contribute to disaster preparedness in Tokyo, Bloom Energy Japan can supply electricity generated by Bloom Energy Servers to streetlights and free power outlets in emergencies. Furthermore, to contribute to the clean energy urban development of Tokyo, Bloom Energy Japan is also supplying electricity for EV stands installed on the underground parking floor of Tokyo Shiodome Building.
“I am delighted that we have installed the Bloom Energy Server at Tokyo Shiodome Building. I believe that this installation at our SoftBank Group headquarters greatly enhances our business continuity capabilities in the event of an emergency. We will continue to promote this innovative, reliable, and safe on-site electric generation method as a clean energy solution for future generations.” said Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Group Representative, and main tenant of the Tokyo Shiodome Building.
Dr. KR Sridhar, Principal Co-Founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, commented, “Bloom Energy is pioneering a new energy vision and SoftBank is at the forefront of this transformation in Japan. By installing the first system in Tokyo, SoftBank is setting an example for other businesses to take control of their energy and contribute to clean and reliable energy future for Japan.”
“Bloom Energy Japan brings a proven on-site electricity generation product that is ideally suited for places that are prone to large scale natural disasters,” commented the honorable General Colin Powell, the former United States Secretary of State and a member of Bloom Energy’s Board of Directors. “The product offers resiliency, cost predictability for the future and sustainability benefits. I hope that the Japanese Government and Commercial sector take a serious look at the unit we are unveiling today and consider using the product for their own energy needs.”
“I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all those who made it possible for us to start operating the first Bloom Energy Server in Tokyo.” said Shigeki Miwa, Representative Director and CEO of Bloom Energy Japan. He added, “We will work to empower Japan’s adoption of the Bloom Energy Server, highly efficient on-site power generation system for business and industrial field, to contribute to the stable power supply of Japan.”
By selling electricity generated by the Bloom Energy Servers, Bloom Energy Japan will contribute to sustainable and stable energy provision and economic development in Japan.
About Bloom Energy Server at Tokyo Shiodome Building:
Location 1-9-1 Higashi Shimbashi, Minato Ku, Tokyo, Japan
Area 60m² (approx.)*1
Power Capacity 200kW (approx.)
Rated Electric Efficiency 60%+ *2
Size（Width x Height x depth）/Weight 9.1m x 2.1m x 2.6m / 19.9t (approx.)
Date of operation June 17, 2014（Tuesday）
*1 Including maintenance space.
*2 Initial performance.
↑
☆ この発表の今後の影響は、もしかすると、現時点で計り知れないくらいのものになるのではないか。ちょっと、ただごとではない予感が・・・。
早速、慶應義塾大学
↓
[プレスリリース]
慶應義塾大学湘南藤沢キャンパス（SFC）で燃料電池発電システムを導入
「Bloomエナジーサーバー」の運転を開始
2014/06/17
慶應義塾大学
Bloom Energy Japan株式会社
慶應義塾大学（所在地：東京都港区、塾長：清家篤）とソフトバンクグループで発電事業を行うBloom Energy Japan株式会社（ブルームエナジージャパン、所在地：東京都港区、代表取締役社長：三輪茂基、以下「BloomEnergy Japan」）は、クリーンで高効率な業務用・産業用燃料電池発電システム「Bloomエナジーサーバー」を慶應義塾大学湘南藤沢キャンパスΔ館（以下「デルタ館」）に設置し、2014年6月17日より営業運転を開始します。今回導入する「Bloomエナジーサーバー」の出力規模は200kWで、1年を通してデルタ館および隣接の大学院棟τ館（以下「タウ館」）の電力需要の90％以上を賄うことができます。
2014年6月15日日曜日
2014年6月11日水曜日
From the Latest News
Unpublished haiku by Soseki Natsume found at ex-colleague's home
WAKAYAMA -- Unpublished haiku poems by Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), one of Japan's most celebrated writers, have been discovered at his former colleague's home here.
The haiku were found attached to a letter Natsume wrote to his former colleague Takehiko Ikai at a secondary school in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, today's Matsuyama Higashi High School, according to Ikai's great granddaughter Tomoko Matsuda, 55, who held a news conference on June 10. The school is known as the setting for Natsume's 1906 novel "Botchan."
Natsume had written a letter to Ikai in 1896 as he was leaving Matsuyama to teach at a high school in Kumamoto Prefecture. In the letter, Natsume apologized for his absence when Ikai visited him to say farewell and expressed his gratitude for Ikai's tanka poems he had received.
"Natsume's unpublished haiku are rarely found. It shows the writer's polite manner that he took time to write a heart-felt letter just before he moved," said Mariko Noami, an assistant professor of modern Japanese literature at the National Institute of Japanese Literature, who confirmed the handwriting on the letter.
Three haiku were found in the Wakayama house. The one written at the end of the letter and another one on a separate paper strip are believed to be unpublished.
June 11, 2014(Mainichi Japan)
☆ 漱石さんのお人柄が偲ばれるエピソードだ。「he took time to write a heart-felt letter just before he moved」が暖かい。
☆他方、漱石さんは、肩書きや権力で理不尽なことを言う者に対しては、ほとんど容赦がなかったと言っていい。次の日記など、痛烈を通り超して爽快感さえ覚えますよ、漱石さん。
「文科大学にて神話を科目に入れんとするの議を起す。総長浜尾新「神話」の神の字が国体に関係ある由にて抗議を申し込む。明治四十二年の東京大学総長の頭脳の程度はこの位にて勤まるものと知るべし。」（夏目漱石・明治42（1909）年7月26日）Super！
Unpublished haiku by Soseki Natsume found at ex-colleague's home
WAKAYAMA -- Unpublished haiku poems by Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), one of Japan's most celebrated writers, have been discovered at his former colleague's home here.
The haiku were found attached to a letter Natsume wrote to his former colleague Takehiko Ikai at a secondary school in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, today's Matsuyama Higashi High School, according to Ikai's great granddaughter Tomoko Matsuda, 55, who held a news conference on June 10. The school is known as the setting for Natsume's 1906 novel "Botchan."
Natsume had written a letter to Ikai in 1896 as he was leaving Matsuyama to teach at a high school in Kumamoto Prefecture. In the letter, Natsume apologized for his absence when Ikai visited him to say farewell and expressed his gratitude for Ikai's tanka poems he had received.
"Natsume's unpublished haiku are rarely found. It shows the writer's polite manner that he took time to write a heart-felt letter just before he moved," said Mariko Noami, an assistant professor of modern Japanese literature at the National Institute of Japanese Literature, who confirmed the handwriting on the letter.
Three haiku were found in the Wakayama house. The one written at the end of the letter and another one on a separate paper strip are believed to be unpublished.
June 11, 2014(Mainichi Japan)
☆ 漱石さんのお人柄が偲ばれるエピソードだ。「he took time to write a heart-felt letter just before he moved」が暖かい。
☆他方、漱石さんは、肩書きや権力で理不尽なことを言う者に対しては、ほとんど容赦がなかったと言っていい。次の日記など、痛烈を通り超して爽快感さえ覚えますよ、漱石さん。
「文科大学にて神話を科目に入れんとするの議を起す。総長浜尾新「神話」の神の字が国体に関係ある由にて抗議を申し込む。明治四十二年の東京大学総長の頭脳の程度はこの位にて勤まるものと知るべし。」（夏目漱石・明治42（1909）年7月26日）Super！
2014年6月10日火曜日
From the Latest News
夏目漱石:未発表の直筆俳句発見
毎日新聞 2014年06月10日 20時02分（最終更新 06月10日 20時51分）
夏目漱石（１８６７〜１９１６年）が１８９６（明治２９）年に熊本県の旧制第五高等学校（現熊本大）に教師として赴任する際、前任地の愛媛県尋常中学校（現県立松山東高）時代の同僚に宛てた未発表の直筆俳句が和歌山市内の同僚の親族宅で見つかった。書簡に添えられていた。漱石研究者で国文学研究資料館（東京都）の野網（のあみ）摩利子助教（日本近代文学）が筆跡を鑑定した。野網助教は「未発表の俳句が見つかるのは珍しい。引っ越し間際でも書簡を出して心を込めた対応をしており、丁寧な人柄がうかがえる」と話している。
同僚は、小説「坊っちゃん」（１９０６年）の舞台として知られる同尋常中で漱石と同時期に国文などを教えていた猪飼健彦（たけひこ）さん（故人）。ひ孫の松田智子さん（５５）が１０日、記者会見して明らかにした。松田さんの父で猪飼さんの孫、猪飼弘直さん（８６）が自宅押し入れに、便箋１枚と短冊２枚、封筒をいずれも掛け軸に貼った状態で保管していた。
便箋には健彦さんが漱石に別れのあいさつに訪れた際、不在にしていたことへのおわびと、健彦さんから贈られた短歌への謝辞が記されている。
俳句は３句あり、このうち未発表は便箋末尾の「花の朝 歌よむ人の 便り哉（かな）」。短冊にしたためた「死にもせで 西へ行くなり 花曇」も未発表とみられる。残りの短冊の「其（その）夜又 朧（おぼろ）なりけり 須磨の巻」は全集に収められている。
野網助教によると、「花の朝〜」は惜別のつらさを詠んだ健彦さんに対する礼を、「死にもせで〜」は東京から西へ西へ離れる複雑な心境が「花曇」に込められている。
また、漱石が熊本赴任から３年後の１８９９年、旅先の大分県から送ったとみられる年賀状も見つかった。２人が交流を続けていたことがうかがわれる。
漱石は１８９５年から１年間は尋常中で、翌年から４年３カ月間は五高でそれぞれ教べんをとった。「坊っちゃん」など小説を書く前は句作に励んでおり、近代俳句の祖といわれる正岡子規（１８６７〜１９０２）とも交流を深めた。【入江直樹、倉沢仁志】
俳人で佛教大教授、坪内稔典さんの話 今回見つかった句は、漱石が俳人として世に知られるようになった頃のものだろう。彼は３０歳前後に盛んに俳句を作り、知己だった正岡子規に批評してもらっていた。句の末尾に、松山時代の下宿先の名と俳号を兼ねた「愚陀佛（ぐだぶつ）」を使っているのもそのため。漱石の俳人としての気配をうかがい知ることのできる資料といえる。
☆ おお、坪内先生！！お久しぶりでございます。かつて俳句で楽しいご指導を長期にわたっていただきました上に賞もいただきまして、ありがとうございました。
☆その後、ご無沙汰の限りで申し訳ございません。なかなかネンテン先生の「うふふふふ」句のような「かろみ」にまでは到達できないですが、その後も、ぼちぼち苦吟を続けております。
☆しかし、これは、大きなニュースが出ましたね。とりあえず、先生ご注解になる岩波書店『漱石全集 第17巻』に書き加えさせていただきましたが、改訂版も視野に入ってきますね。
夏目漱石:未発表の直筆俳句発見
毎日新聞 2014年06月10日 20時02分（最終更新 06月10日 20時51分）
夏目漱石（１８６７〜１９１６年）が１８９６（明治２９）年に熊本県の旧制第五高等学校（現熊本大）に教師として赴任する際、前任地の愛媛県尋常中学校（現県立松山東高）時代の同僚に宛てた未発表の直筆俳句が和歌山市内の同僚の親族宅で見つかった。書簡に添えられていた。漱石研究者で国文学研究資料館（東京都）の野網（のあみ）摩利子助教（日本近代文学）が筆跡を鑑定した。野網助教は「未発表の俳句が見つかるのは珍しい。引っ越し間際でも書簡を出して心を込めた対応をしており、丁寧な人柄がうかがえる」と話している。
同僚は、小説「坊っちゃん」（１９０６年）の舞台として知られる同尋常中で漱石と同時期に国文などを教えていた猪飼健彦（たけひこ）さん（故人）。ひ孫の松田智子さん（５５）が１０日、記者会見して明らかにした。松田さんの父で猪飼さんの孫、猪飼弘直さん（８６）が自宅押し入れに、便箋１枚と短冊２枚、封筒をいずれも掛け軸に貼った状態で保管していた。
便箋には健彦さんが漱石に別れのあいさつに訪れた際、不在にしていたことへのおわびと、健彦さんから贈られた短歌への謝辞が記されている。
俳句は３句あり、このうち未発表は便箋末尾の「花の朝 歌よむ人の 便り哉（かな）」。短冊にしたためた「死にもせで 西へ行くなり 花曇」も未発表とみられる。残りの短冊の「其（その）夜又 朧（おぼろ）なりけり 須磨の巻」は全集に収められている。
野網助教によると、「花の朝〜」は惜別のつらさを詠んだ健彦さんに対する礼を、「死にもせで〜」は東京から西へ西へ離れる複雑な心境が「花曇」に込められている。
また、漱石が熊本赴任から３年後の１８９９年、旅先の大分県から送ったとみられる年賀状も見つかった。２人が交流を続けていたことがうかがわれる。
漱石は１８９５年から１年間は尋常中で、翌年から４年３カ月間は五高でそれぞれ教べんをとった。「坊っちゃん」など小説を書く前は句作に励んでおり、近代俳句の祖といわれる正岡子規（１８６７〜１９０２）とも交流を深めた。【入江直樹、倉沢仁志】
俳人で佛教大教授、坪内稔典さんの話 今回見つかった句は、漱石が俳人として世に知られるようになった頃のものだろう。彼は３０歳前後に盛んに俳句を作り、知己だった正岡子規に批評してもらっていた。句の末尾に、松山時代の下宿先の名と俳号を兼ねた「愚陀佛（ぐだぶつ）」を使っているのもそのため。漱石の俳人としての気配をうかがい知ることのできる資料といえる。
☆ おお、坪内先生！！お久しぶりでございます。かつて俳句で楽しいご指導を長期にわたっていただきました上に賞もいただきまして、ありがとうございました。
☆その後、ご無沙汰の限りで申し訳ございません。なかなかネンテン先生の「うふふふふ」句のような「かろみ」にまでは到達できないですが、その後も、ぼちぼち苦吟を続けております。
☆しかし、これは、大きなニュースが出ましたね。とりあえず、先生ご注解になる岩波書店『漱石全集 第17巻』に書き加えさせていただきましたが、改訂版も視野に入ってきますね。
Memorandum
jurimetrics 計量法学
「法の諸問題について、実験と観察という科学的、経験主義的な方法によって解答を求めようとする法学的アプロウチの一つ。この言葉は、1949年、Lee Loevingerによって提唱され、その手法は、おもに法的デイタの記録と検索、判決の行動科学的分析、記号論理の使用などの領域で試みられた。」
（田中英夫編著『英米法辞典』）
という言葉が、手元の『リーダーズ英和辞典』にも、
「jurimetrics 計量法学（社会科学の科学的分析法を用いて法律問題を扱う）」
と簡潔に登載されていることに驚く。
両辞典とも、まことに「舟を編む」人々の汗と涙の感動物語が想われたことであった。
jurimetrics 計量法学
「法の諸問題について、実験と観察という科学的、経験主義的な方法によって解答を求めようとする法学的アプロウチの一つ。この言葉は、1949年、Lee Loevingerによって提唱され、その手法は、おもに法的デイタの記録と検索、判決の行動科学的分析、記号論理の使用などの領域で試みられた。」
（田中英夫編著『英米法辞典』）
という言葉が、手元の『リーダーズ英和辞典』にも、
「jurimetrics 計量法学（社会科学の科学的分析法を用いて法律問題を扱う）」
と簡潔に登載されていることに驚く。
両辞典とも、まことに「舟を編む」人々の汗と涙の感動物語が想われたことであった。
2014年6月8日日曜日
2014年6月7日土曜日
Memorandum
ギタリストの松本孝弘さん、先ほど、12年ぶりにMusic Stationに出演。
松本さんのソロ演奏をTVでリアルタイムで拝見できたのは、もしかすると初めてかもしれない。
素晴らしい、とか、すごい、という形容詞だけでは説明がつかないので、折に触れ本ブログで取り上げさせていただいた松本さんの言葉をまとめてみたいと思う。
日頃からカテゴリー作業をしていないものだからこういうことになるのだけど、まとめてみて驚くのは、かなりの長期スパンでの言葉なのに、この間、松本さんの言葉にブレや濁りがないということ。
日本人ギタリストとして、ギター1本で、よくぞここまで、と驚嘆するしかない。感謝の念さえ覚えます。
松本さん、ありがとう。
（再掲）
「トータルなサウンド作りのうえで、僕はギタリストだから、ギターで情景や感情を表現したいってこと。それが自然なんだから。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
☆1988年、ミュージシャン・小室哲哉さんとの対談で
In 1988, Tak Matsumoto, one of my favorite guitarists, said in a talk with Tetsuya Komuro, who is a famous popular musician in Japan and other countries, as follows:
”I am a guitarist, so I’d like to express scenes and feelings with my guitar when creating sounds as a whole. That’s because it’s natural for me to think like that as a guitarist.”
「87年にTMが武道館でコンサートをやったでしょ。あのとき、僕の役目は終わったな、と思いました。オープニングが『GET WILD』で、そこで感じましたね。なぜか、宇都宮さんの背中を見ている時に、”自分だけのバンドを作ろう”と思いました。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
☆「松本孝弘（B’z）が語るTM NETWORK」その他より
Tak Matsumoto, the guitarist of B’z, once said about an important moment as follows：
”TM NETWORK gave a concert at Nippon Budokan in1987. The opening number was ”GET WILD.” I thought that my role as a backup guitarist of TM NETWORK was completed at that time. When I accompanied the vocalist Utsunomiya-san on the guitar with seeing his back, I decided to form my own band for some reason.”
「たまに、アルバイト雑誌とか見るんですけど、時給、今、高いですよね。1000円を超えたりとか。僕らの時代、僕、ハンバーガーショップでバイトしていたんですけど、当時、350円とかで。そのあと、楽器屋でバイトしていた時、時給500円もくれるの？って思っていたから。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん、一昨日、インストルメント・ニューアルバム『New Horizon』をリリースした日にラジオ番組で。）
Tak Matsumoto, the first Grammy Award-winning guitarist in Japan, talked about part-time jobs and others in a radio program the day before yesterday when he released his new album, New Horizon.
"I sometimes page through part-time job magazines. I think the hourly wages shops offer have increased. I can see many part-time jobs more than 1000 yen per hour in the magazines. In those days when I worked part-time in a hamburger shop, I earned as little as 350 yen an hour. After that, when I worked at a musical instrument store, I was surprised that the store paid me 500 yen an hour."
「英語が好きだったので、高校を卒業して、まず、英語専門学校に入りました。」
（ギタリスト•松本孝弘さん）
Tak Matsumoto, one of my favorite guitarists, once said in a TV program:
"English was my favorite subject during my school days, so I first entered an English vocational school after high school."
「メロディと言葉、歌・・・一番ベースになるものがキッチリしていれば、極力、余計なものは取っ払ったほうがいいと思うな。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
Tak Matsumoto, the first Grammy Award -winning guitarist in Japan, once said, ”I think that you should take away extras as much as possible if the most fundamental bases such as melodies, words, and songs are solid.”
「いつ死ぬかわかんないけど、死ぬまでリタイアってないと思うんだよね。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
Tak Matsumoto, a Japanese guitarist, once said, ”I don’t know when I may die, but I don’t think I will retire from my work till the end of my life.”
ギタリストの松本孝弘さん、先ほど、12年ぶりにMusic Stationに出演。
松本さんのソロ演奏をTVでリアルタイムで拝見できたのは、もしかすると初めてかもしれない。
素晴らしい、とか、すごい、という形容詞だけでは説明がつかないので、折に触れ本ブログで取り上げさせていただいた松本さんの言葉をまとめてみたいと思う。
日頃からカテゴリー作業をしていないものだからこういうことになるのだけど、まとめてみて驚くのは、かなりの長期スパンでの言葉なのに、この間、松本さんの言葉にブレや濁りがないということ。
日本人ギタリストとして、ギター1本で、よくぞここまで、と驚嘆するしかない。感謝の念さえ覚えます。
松本さん、ありがとう。
（再掲）
「トータルなサウンド作りのうえで、僕はギタリストだから、ギターで情景や感情を表現したいってこと。それが自然なんだから。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
☆1988年、ミュージシャン・小室哲哉さんとの対談で
In 1988, Tak Matsumoto, one of my favorite guitarists, said in a talk with Tetsuya Komuro, who is a famous popular musician in Japan and other countries, as follows:
”I am a guitarist, so I’d like to express scenes and feelings with my guitar when creating sounds as a whole. That’s because it’s natural for me to think like that as a guitarist.”
「87年にTMが武道館でコンサートをやったでしょ。あのとき、僕の役目は終わったな、と思いました。オープニングが『GET WILD』で、そこで感じましたね。なぜか、宇都宮さんの背中を見ている時に、”自分だけのバンドを作ろう”と思いました。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
☆「松本孝弘（B’z）が語るTM NETWORK」その他より
Tak Matsumoto, the guitarist of B’z, once said about an important moment as follows：
”TM NETWORK gave a concert at Nippon Budokan in1987. The opening number was ”GET WILD.” I thought that my role as a backup guitarist of TM NETWORK was completed at that time. When I accompanied the vocalist Utsunomiya-san on the guitar with seeing his back, I decided to form my own band for some reason.”
「たまに、アルバイト雑誌とか見るんですけど、時給、今、高いですよね。1000円を超えたりとか。僕らの時代、僕、ハンバーガーショップでバイトしていたんですけど、当時、350円とかで。そのあと、楽器屋でバイトしていた時、時給500円もくれるの？って思っていたから。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん、一昨日、インストルメント・ニューアルバム『New Horizon』をリリースした日にラジオ番組で。）
Tak Matsumoto, the first Grammy Award-winning guitarist in Japan, talked about part-time jobs and others in a radio program the day before yesterday when he released his new album, New Horizon.
"I sometimes page through part-time job magazines. I think the hourly wages shops offer have increased. I can see many part-time jobs more than 1000 yen per hour in the magazines. In those days when I worked part-time in a hamburger shop, I earned as little as 350 yen an hour. After that, when I worked at a musical instrument store, I was surprised that the store paid me 500 yen an hour."
「英語が好きだったので、高校を卒業して、まず、英語専門学校に入りました。」
（ギタリスト•松本孝弘さん）
Tak Matsumoto, one of my favorite guitarists, once said in a TV program:
"English was my favorite subject during my school days, so I first entered an English vocational school after high school."
「メロディと言葉、歌・・・一番ベースになるものがキッチリしていれば、極力、余計なものは取っ払ったほうがいいと思うな。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
Tak Matsumoto, the first Grammy Award -winning guitarist in Japan, once said, ”I think that you should take away extras as much as possible if the most fundamental bases such as melodies, words, and songs are solid.”
「いつ死ぬかわかんないけど、死ぬまでリタイアってないと思うんだよね。」
（ギタリスト・松本孝弘さん）
Tak Matsumoto, a Japanese guitarist, once said, ”I don’t know when I may die, but I don’t think I will retire from my work till the end of my life.”
2014年6月6日金曜日
Memorandum
GRANTA
04 JUNE 2014 | INTERVIEWS | FRAN BIGMAN, MOTOYUKI SHIBATA
Interview: Motoyuki Shibata
Although he’d just flown in from a trip to Toronto, San Francisco and New York City to launch the English translation of the third issue of his literary journal, Monkey Business, Professor Motoyuki Shibata was kind enough to sit down with me in his office at the University of Tokyo last September for a chat about Western writing on Japan as well as Japanese literature today. Below is a transcript of our conversation.
Fran Bigman: So many American and British novels seem obsessed with imagining Japan, from Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle to David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I’ve read some arguments that these Western depictions of Japan follow a chrysanthemum-and-sword pattern, meaning that they cycle between romantic images of a feminized Japan and images of a masculine, aggressive, devious nation that provokes anxiety in the West. I’m interested in how these depictions have changed from the years of ‘Japan Panic’ – the period from the early 1980s until around 1995 when the West made a lot of noise about how Japan was going to take over the world – to the post-bubble world of today.
Motoyuki Shibata: I translated Richard Powers’s first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, a book that came out in 1985. My translation came out in 2000 and I talked to the author, Richard, about it, and the book hasn’t really dated except for one thing. In that book, Japan is depicted as a menace, economically. ‘America in the ’80s produced ten lawyers for every engineer . . . Japan, on the other hand, produced ten engineers to each lawyer,’ so Japan is sort of taking over. I am a specialist in American fiction, so I can only think of American examples, but do you know Don DeLillo’s novel Mao II? There is a description of Midtown Manhattan early on, and most neon signs have the names of Japanese companies.
FB: And in White Noise the main character’s daughter repeats the words ‘Toyota Celica’ in her sleep, and it’s quite menacing, so he seems to have a thing about that. I’m interested especially in literary depictions, because there seems to have been a lot of work written on pop culture, like Rising Sun and Back to the Future, that depicts Japan as a menace.
MS: So in popular fiction the depiction of Japan is simpler, you think?
FB: It’s more straightforward, or at least people might assume that the same blanket stereotypes that are presented in popular fiction might not apply to literary fiction, but it would be interesting to see how literary fiction reflects some of the same anxieties in a subtler way. I think that if you look at Ishiguro, for example, themes of suicide and reticence and other stereotypes of Japan are still really present in his work.
MS: That’s true. Even after he stopped writing about Japan, there were still possibly Japanese elements in his novels. These could also be seen as British elements. This idea that everyone is a butler and serves someone else at the top, that could be called a very Japanese idea too.
FB: It would be interesting to look at how British and American writers see Japan – if they see Japan differently.
MS: Certainly writers like Ishiguro couldn’t have appeared from the US. Well, maybe.
FB: The form of his works is so similar; no matter what the topic is, you have an unreliable narrator.
MS: False memory, too. I feel he’s moved on to new forms now, though.
FB: Even though the protagonist of Audrey Hepburn’s Neck, a 1996 novel by American novelist Alan Brown, is Japanese, and the story is set in Tokyo, the narrator refers to dorayaki, a common Japanese sweet, as ‘damp cake filled with red bean paste’. This sounds like the way a Westerner who doesn’t like dorayaki might describe it. In this case, translation creates distance between a Western author and the Japanese protagonist he is attempting to write. For you, when you translate, how do you manage elements that a Japanese reader might not know about? Some novels leave the foreign word and include an explanation – like ‘mochi, a rice powder cake’ – but those translations are often awkward. Also, Ruth Ozeki’s recent novel A Tale for the Time Being, which is supposed to be the diary of a Japanese girl, uses Japanese words normally, but then has footnotes to explain things to the Western reader.
MS: A writer like Junot Díaz uses Spanish words in his novel, and he doesn’t bother to explain them. And that seems to be one of his points, that this is told from a Dominican point of view. And that seems to work, more or less, even though American readers don’t get some of these words, they can mostly tell from the context. As a translator of American fiction, those kinds of problems I have are mostly quite mundane, words like ‘driveway’ . . . or ‘porch’; mostly about houses. And usually they are not that important, so not worth a footnote. Footnotes break up the rhythm, so you like to do without them as much as possible. But if it’s a crucial term or concept you’ll of course have to explain it in some way. I don’t encounter that difficulty all that often. Probably because I translate only fiction. Poetry might be something else.
FB: I was noting that in Monkey Business there are some footnotes to explain, for example, a kanji (Japanese character) being used in a slightly different way. Or as a kind of pun.
MS: Aha. Like in the tanka poems of Mina Ishikawa.* I think translators of Japanese literature into English would encounter these difficulties much more often. Like in Japanese fiction, you see a depiction of a room with six mats of tatami, or eight mats, or 4.5. In Japanese, 4.5 feels small, six is regular, eight slightly bigger, but that’s of course lost in translation. That kind of thing must occur quite often.
FB: I’m interested in Western writers creating Japanese characters, and the politics of that. Do you come across Japanese writers who make American characters their protagonists sometimes, or is that quite rare?
MS: I think that’s quite rare. I think in Japan, traditionally, Japanese have been learning from the West, so we have been looking up to the West. So the Westerners are the Other to be learned from and in that kind of context it’s very hard for a Japanese writer to create an American or British narrator.
FB: For a Western writer to put himself or herself in the position of a Western traveller in Japan makes a lot of sense, but there is something slightly uncomfortable for me about their Japanese characters. I guess I feel divided about it.
MS: When I read the David Mitchell book, his Nagasaki novel (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet), I thought that the last hundred pages were excellent. I thought Mitchell did a really wonderful job. Usually if you’re Japanese, you feel kind of condescending towards Western writers trying to write from a Japanese point of view. And sometimes, they give themselves away. But in that novel, Mitchell is really thorough, and it reads like a wonderful English translation of a Japanese novel.
FB: I have a British friend, Laurence Williams, who’s a postdoc at the University of Tokyo, and he’s looking at British cross-cultural contact with Japan during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There’s this idea, of course, that Japan was so isolated before it ‘opened up’ to the West, or ‘was opened up’. But Laurence thinks that’s prevented scholars from looking at the relationships that did exist between Britain and Japan in this period. 2013 saw lots of events to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the first English ship to reach Japan, but even though the trade post established in 1613 closed just ten years later, Britons carried on buying Japanese goods, and even visiting the country from time to time. Writers carried on thinking about Japan, as a fellow ‘island nation’ on the far side of the world. Jonathan Swift describes Japan in Gulliver’s Travels (1726), of course: even Robinson Crusoe tries to reach Japan, in the sequel Daniel Defoe wrote to the first novel. So a more interesting thing for a novelist to do might be to look at the actual encounters that took place between the two nations, and show that Japan was not as closed off as people imagine.
MS: Do you know the novel The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn by Roger Pulvers? Roger is an interesting character. In fact, Roger is the reason I went to New York this time, because he received this translation prize and I was the judge. He received the award for his translations of the poet Kenji Miyazawa, and the collection is called Strong in the Rain and came out two or three years ago from the British publisher Bloodaxe. The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn was published by Kurodahan Press, a small publisher in Fukuoka, in the southern part of Japan. It’s written from the viewpoint of Lafcadio Hearn, who, as you know, came to Japan 150 years ago and collected Japanese folk tales and didn’t speak any Japanese but heard all the tales from his Japanese wife and left a wonderful collection of stories. He actually taught English here, in the English department of the University of Tokyo, so we have his photo on the fifth floor. And in Roger’s novel, Hearn is not really in love with Japan any more. He is disappointed by so many things like bureaucracy, arranged marriage and a lack of freedom, especially on the part of women. As the title suggests, he’s in Japan but he’s not really of Japan. He’s sort of looking at people and the country from a distance.
FB: Hearn also seems part of a pattern of romanticizing the past Japan. So everyone seems to do that when they come, from Aldous Huxley to Alex Kerr. I think it does create this pattern of a retreat from a Japan that is seen as the future into this idyllic past. But I also think it’s a way of containing the threat of Japan, if you accept the idea that some threat remains after the 80s. It’s a very narrow perspective to see everything contemporary as a betrayal of the past.
MS: This is a very broad question, but do you think Westerners in general still see Japan as a threat?
FB: It does seem, of course, that a lot of that fear has transferred to China. I heard an interview with a female Chinese astronaut on an American radio station recently and the interviewer asked her, ‘Should Americans feel threatened by the Chinese space program?’ But there are instances in the post-bubble years where Japan-bashing has come back, like when Japan was blamed for the 1997 economic crisis. Some American commentators even said that the decline of the 1990s was an elaborate deception and that Japan was actually doing fine. So I think even after the circumstances changed, people’s ways of thinking continued. I also think that even if Japan isn’t seen as a threat at this moment, there’s still a sense of distance, so Japan is still seen as somehow really very different, or even the most different. I was interested in a recent Roland Kelts piece in the New Yorker that suggested that Japanese and English are so far apart linguistically that translation is futile. I wonder what you think.
MS: That’s the kind of feeling you encounter at one point or another if you translate, and it’s certainly a viable starting point, but I’m sure Roland would have wanted to elaborate on it had he had more space.
FB: The article he wrote really focused on Murakami, and I know that in past interviews you’ve mentioned that the popularity of Murakami in the West represents a really good opportunity for Japanese literature in the West. I can understand, but I also wonder if it doesn’t narrow the kinds of narratives that get translated. There is this focus on Japan as a source of the surreal, you get horror films and anime and manga, and I wonder about other writers who don’t fit into that pattern.
MS: Haruki identifies with the Japanese baseball player Hideo Nomo, and the other Japanese baseball players who came after him, like Ichiro or Matsui, did a greater job, probably, as ballplayers. But Haruki respects Hideo because he created a path where there wasn’t any path for Japanese baseball players to play in the major leagues in the US. Haruki is a bit like that. It’s true that so many publishers are looking for the second Murakami, but, you know, the second Murakami doesn’t have to be exactly like Haruki. Even if this new Japanese writer is quite different from Haruki, simply because he or she is Japanese, maybe the American audience will be quite receptive, or at least there will be fewer barriers for him or her.
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GRANTA
04 JUNE 2014 | INTERVIEWS | FRAN BIGMAN, MOTOYUKI SHIBATA
Interview: Motoyuki Shibata
Although he’d just flown in from a trip to Toronto, San Francisco and New York City to launch the English translation of the third issue of his literary journal, Monkey Business, Professor Motoyuki Shibata was kind enough to sit down with me in his office at the University of Tokyo last September for a chat about Western writing on Japan as well as Japanese literature today. Below is a transcript of our conversation.
Fran Bigman: So many American and British novels seem obsessed with imagining Japan, from Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle to David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I’ve read some arguments that these Western depictions of Japan follow a chrysanthemum-and-sword pattern, meaning that they cycle between romantic images of a feminized Japan and images of a masculine, aggressive, devious nation that provokes anxiety in the West. I’m interested in how these depictions have changed from the years of ‘Japan Panic’ – the period from the early 1980s until around 1995 when the West made a lot of noise about how Japan was going to take over the world – to the post-bubble world of today.
Motoyuki Shibata: I translated Richard Powers’s first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, a book that came out in 1985. My translation came out in 2000 and I talked to the author, Richard, about it, and the book hasn’t really dated except for one thing. In that book, Japan is depicted as a menace, economically. ‘America in the ’80s produced ten lawyers for every engineer . . . Japan, on the other hand, produced ten engineers to each lawyer,’ so Japan is sort of taking over. I am a specialist in American fiction, so I can only think of American examples, but do you know Don DeLillo’s novel Mao II? There is a description of Midtown Manhattan early on, and most neon signs have the names of Japanese companies.
FB: And in White Noise the main character’s daughter repeats the words ‘Toyota Celica’ in her sleep, and it’s quite menacing, so he seems to have a thing about that. I’m interested especially in literary depictions, because there seems to have been a lot of work written on pop culture, like Rising Sun and Back to the Future, that depicts Japan as a menace.
MS: So in popular fiction the depiction of Japan is simpler, you think?
FB: It’s more straightforward, or at least people might assume that the same blanket stereotypes that are presented in popular fiction might not apply to literary fiction, but it would be interesting to see how literary fiction reflects some of the same anxieties in a subtler way. I think that if you look at Ishiguro, for example, themes of suicide and reticence and other stereotypes of Japan are still really present in his work.
MS: That’s true. Even after he stopped writing about Japan, there were still possibly Japanese elements in his novels. These could also be seen as British elements. This idea that everyone is a butler and serves someone else at the top, that could be called a very Japanese idea too.
FB: It would be interesting to look at how British and American writers see Japan – if they see Japan differently.
MS: Certainly writers like Ishiguro couldn’t have appeared from the US. Well, maybe.
FB: The form of his works is so similar; no matter what the topic is, you have an unreliable narrator.
MS: False memory, too. I feel he’s moved on to new forms now, though.
FB: Even though the protagonist of Audrey Hepburn’s Neck, a 1996 novel by American novelist Alan Brown, is Japanese, and the story is set in Tokyo, the narrator refers to dorayaki, a common Japanese sweet, as ‘damp cake filled with red bean paste’. This sounds like the way a Westerner who doesn’t like dorayaki might describe it. In this case, translation creates distance between a Western author and the Japanese protagonist he is attempting to write. For you, when you translate, how do you manage elements that a Japanese reader might not know about? Some novels leave the foreign word and include an explanation – like ‘mochi, a rice powder cake’ – but those translations are often awkward. Also, Ruth Ozeki’s recent novel A Tale for the Time Being, which is supposed to be the diary of a Japanese girl, uses Japanese words normally, but then has footnotes to explain things to the Western reader.
MS: A writer like Junot Díaz uses Spanish words in his novel, and he doesn’t bother to explain them. And that seems to be one of his points, that this is told from a Dominican point of view. And that seems to work, more or less, even though American readers don’t get some of these words, they can mostly tell from the context. As a translator of American fiction, those kinds of problems I have are mostly quite mundane, words like ‘driveway’ . . . or ‘porch’; mostly about houses. And usually they are not that important, so not worth a footnote. Footnotes break up the rhythm, so you like to do without them as much as possible. But if it’s a crucial term or concept you’ll of course have to explain it in some way. I don’t encounter that difficulty all that often. Probably because I translate only fiction. Poetry might be something else.
FB: I was noting that in Monkey Business there are some footnotes to explain, for example, a kanji (Japanese character) being used in a slightly different way. Or as a kind of pun.
MS: Aha. Like in the tanka poems of Mina Ishikawa.* I think translators of Japanese literature into English would encounter these difficulties much more often. Like in Japanese fiction, you see a depiction of a room with six mats of tatami, or eight mats, or 4.5. In Japanese, 4.5 feels small, six is regular, eight slightly bigger, but that’s of course lost in translation. That kind of thing must occur quite often.
FB: I’m interested in Western writers creating Japanese characters, and the politics of that. Do you come across Japanese writers who make American characters their protagonists sometimes, or is that quite rare?
MS: I think that’s quite rare. I think in Japan, traditionally, Japanese have been learning from the West, so we have been looking up to the West. So the Westerners are the Other to be learned from and in that kind of context it’s very hard for a Japanese writer to create an American or British narrator.
FB: For a Western writer to put himself or herself in the position of a Western traveller in Japan makes a lot of sense, but there is something slightly uncomfortable for me about their Japanese characters. I guess I feel divided about it.
MS: When I read the David Mitchell book, his Nagasaki novel (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet), I thought that the last hundred pages were excellent. I thought Mitchell did a really wonderful job. Usually if you’re Japanese, you feel kind of condescending towards Western writers trying to write from a Japanese point of view. And sometimes, they give themselves away. But in that novel, Mitchell is really thorough, and it reads like a wonderful English translation of a Japanese novel.
FB: I have a British friend, Laurence Williams, who’s a postdoc at the University of Tokyo, and he’s looking at British cross-cultural contact with Japan during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There’s this idea, of course, that Japan was so isolated before it ‘opened up’ to the West, or ‘was opened up’. But Laurence thinks that’s prevented scholars from looking at the relationships that did exist between Britain and Japan in this period. 2013 saw lots of events to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the first English ship to reach Japan, but even though the trade post established in 1613 closed just ten years later, Britons carried on buying Japanese goods, and even visiting the country from time to time. Writers carried on thinking about Japan, as a fellow ‘island nation’ on the far side of the world. Jonathan Swift describes Japan in Gulliver’s Travels (1726), of course: even Robinson Crusoe tries to reach Japan, in the sequel Daniel Defoe wrote to the first novel. So a more interesting thing for a novelist to do might be to look at the actual encounters that took place between the two nations, and show that Japan was not as closed off as people imagine.
MS: Do you know the novel The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn by Roger Pulvers? Roger is an interesting character. In fact, Roger is the reason I went to New York this time, because he received this translation prize and I was the judge. He received the award for his translations of the poet Kenji Miyazawa, and the collection is called Strong in the Rain and came out two or three years ago from the British publisher Bloodaxe. The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn was published by Kurodahan Press, a small publisher in Fukuoka, in the southern part of Japan. It’s written from the viewpoint of Lafcadio Hearn, who, as you know, came to Japan 150 years ago and collected Japanese folk tales and didn’t speak any Japanese but heard all the tales from his Japanese wife and left a wonderful collection of stories. He actually taught English here, in the English department of the University of Tokyo, so we have his photo on the fifth floor. And in Roger’s novel, Hearn is not really in love with Japan any more. He is disappointed by so many things like bureaucracy, arranged marriage and a lack of freedom, especially on the part of women. As the title suggests, he’s in Japan but he’s not really of Japan. He’s sort of looking at people and the country from a distance.
FB: Hearn also seems part of a pattern of romanticizing the past Japan. So everyone seems to do that when they come, from Aldous Huxley to Alex Kerr. I think it does create this pattern of a retreat from a Japan that is seen as the future into this idyllic past. But I also think it’s a way of containing the threat of Japan, if you accept the idea that some threat remains after the 80s. It’s a very narrow perspective to see everything contemporary as a betrayal of the past.
MS: This is a very broad question, but do you think Westerners in general still see Japan as a threat?
FB: It does seem, of course, that a lot of that fear has transferred to China. I heard an interview with a female Chinese astronaut on an American radio station recently and the interviewer asked her, ‘Should Americans feel threatened by the Chinese space program?’ But there are instances in the post-bubble years where Japan-bashing has come back, like when Japan was blamed for the 1997 economic crisis. Some American commentators even said that the decline of the 1990s was an elaborate deception and that Japan was actually doing fine. So I think even after the circumstances changed, people’s ways of thinking continued. I also think that even if Japan isn’t seen as a threat at this moment, there’s still a sense of distance, so Japan is still seen as somehow really very different, or even the most different. I was interested in a recent Roland Kelts piece in the New Yorker that suggested that Japanese and English are so far apart linguistically that translation is futile. I wonder what you think.
MS: That’s the kind of feeling you encounter at one point or another if you translate, and it’s certainly a viable starting point, but I’m sure Roland would have wanted to elaborate on it had he had more space.
FB: The article he wrote really focused on Murakami, and I know that in past interviews you’ve mentioned that the popularity of Murakami in the West represents a really good opportunity for Japanese literature in the West. I can understand, but I also wonder if it doesn’t narrow the kinds of narratives that get translated. There is this focus on Japan as a source of the surreal, you get horror films and anime and manga, and I wonder about other writers who don’t fit into that pattern.
MS: Haruki identifies with the Japanese baseball player Hideo Nomo, and the other Japanese baseball players who came after him, like Ichiro or Matsui, did a greater job, probably, as ballplayers. But Haruki respects Hideo because he created a path where there wasn’t any path for Japanese baseball players to play in the major leagues in the US. Haruki is a bit like that. It’s true that so many publishers are looking for the second Murakami, but, you know, the second Murakami doesn’t have to be exactly like Haruki. Even if this new Japanese writer is quite different from Haruki, simply because he or she is Japanese, maybe the American audience will be quite receptive, or at least there will be fewer barriers for him or her.
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2014年6月4日水曜日
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