BGM: Ryuichi Sakamoto - aqua
Today I worked early. Now we are in March, and it seems like Springtime and can't feel that we were troubled once in a serious cold wave. Something nice would happen... and I wish I could meet the next soul mate in this life. At lunchtime, I started reading Haruki Murakami's "After The Quake". This is a collection of short stories influenced by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and I can remember that once I read and enjoyed deeply this book just after that big earthquake. And now, in other words after Great East Japan Earthquake, I read this and found another things. I have run with Haruki Murakami through this long life (I even tried to be apart from him because I have been too influenced). This is just my opinion, but he is a great popstar like Yukio Mishima and Bob Dylan for me (or I should recall Kurt Cobain because of the generation I belong to). As I wrote this once, I adored almost everything he has done.
But "After The Quake" is not describing Kobe, the place that earthquake happened, directly. The characters in this short stories are just the people who live far apart from the place of earthquake. They are living in a peaceful life from there although they learn what is happening on TV. The place of earthquake shows terrible scenery. But "here", the place far from there, shows a peaceful daily life... both is in the same one world. But there must be a clear gap/difference. I think that Haruki writes that kind of an unreal situation in this short stories. And I also have lived as the "watcher" like them about two big earthquake (Hanshin-Awaji and East Japan). But I admit that I have certainly been influenced or blown by those earthquakes' after waves (probably like other residents in this Japan). I remember that.
Remembering about that, those huge earthquakes let us made various artificial creations. Maybe this is from thinking too much, but I can remember instantly that Makoto Shinkai's "Your Name." is that kind of creation. In a way, that stance is the one of accepting the national problem of earthquake and creating serious arts from it. Maybe it can be "using" earthquakes to express themselves. Therefore, creators have to have a responsibility of "using" them (they have to create great arts as movies and novels). So I thought that it was a really difficult challenge. And, this is just my opinion again, I accept this short stories as a great and lovely one, and also I feel the fact that I am living a hard time, apart from that era.
This evening, I attended an online meeting on ZOOM. My personal computer got really aged so we have a weak connection (poverty hurts us), so I used my smartphone to attend. This time, we had a lecture about the influence to the Japanese food culture by black beans, and it was really impressing because of its detail. Yes, it was a really deep one might enable the days in Edo era, or I should say that it was almost great classical novels which appear samurai (indeed, I am not a good fan of those kind of novels therefore I might make a mistake). Next week, I have to do a presentation in this meeting. I want to talk about aphorism as I wrote once. Life has many waves, but I want to look up the sky as Oscar Wilde says. Or I want to talk about the experience of being embraced by Isaac Bashevis Singer's quote "Life is God's novel. Let him write it" when I was really a terrible bottom of my life.
