The Japan Times: Dec. 27, 2005
(C) All rights reserved
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20051227jk.htm

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Words to live by

By JUDIT KAWAGUCHI

One of the greatest scholars of Japanese literature, 83-year-old Donald
Keene has spent the past 52 years in Japan, with the exception of his time
spent teaching at Columbia University in New York, where, in 1986, The
Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture was established in his honor. So far
he has published about 40 books in English and 50 or so in Japanese,
received countless awards and has been named a Person of Cultural Merit
(Bunka Koro-sha) by the Japanese government.

Donald Keene Photo by Judit Kawaguchi

I forget that I am not Japanese. I don't feel like a stranger here, but then
someone asks me if I can eat sashimi and I feel as shocked as any Japanese
would be. Of course, most Japanese don't know that Emperor Meiji never ate
sashimi because he disliked it immensely.

I am a missionary of Japanese culture. I propagate it in the West to people
who might never have heard of anything Japanese. I believe that it could be
an important part of their life.

The sooner you begin learning languages, the better. Growing up with two or
three languages must be very good. Unfortunately, my family was too poor to
hire a private tutor so I only began studying French in junior high school,
and followed it with Spanish, classical Greek, Latin, German, Mandarin and
Japanese.

Aristotle was wrong and Chikamatsu right: tragedy and great love affairs
could happen to anyone. Aristotle said in the "Poetics" that the hero of a
tragedy must be a person of higher social status than ourselves, otherwise
we think this is a poor, hopeless individual. But Chikamatsu recognized that
even people with low social status have strong emotions and those are just
as pure and important as a prince's feelings.

People sometimes take the easy way out. They might say that the reason they
don't know Japanese literature is because it is so strange, so foreign, so
unlike their own. That is such a disgraceful thing to say because if you are
a cultured human being, you should be aware of other cultures, not only your
own.

Some Americans love seeing their own country abroad. They travel and feel so
happy to see a KFC in Beijing or Moscow because for them it is evidence that
American culture is widespread. Going abroad for this is such an unworthy
purpose.

For me, there is constant stimulation in being in Japan. I'm a scholar of
Japanese and being here I can learn something new everyday. Since 1942, when
I began to study Japanese, I have not spent a single day without thinking of
some aspect of Japan, no matter where I am.

Japanese have a masochistic attitude. When a Japanese troupe performs abroad
and two people from the audience leave, the media will focus on those two
and not the hundreds who stayed.

I decided that I liked living by myself. I was involved in such demanding
study that things always got put off, and then I thought that after my Ph.D
or my next book would be the time to make a family. That day never came but
I might still marry -- who knows?

A good translation must be faithful to the original and it must read well in
the language it is translated into. Attempts to insist in the translation on
how different the original language is are bound to be unsuccessful, though
some Japanese enjoy reading a literal translation because it makes them feel
they have read the work in the original.

Japanese may know more about foreign countries than they know about Japan.
The education here tends in that direction. Some of this is natural -- if
you are into economics, you will learn Western economics and not what the
17th-century Japanese thought. But considering that Japan has 1,000 years of
great literature, this Westernized education system is nothing but a huge
sacrifice.

Among the Japanese, the general attitude and basic assumption is that
Japanese culture is too difficult so only the easy things like origami and
dolls are sent abroad. In Brazil, people asked the Japanese government to
send a group of noh performers there to show one of Japan's highest cultural
forms, but the politicians here thought this was idiotic and replied that
Takarazuka* was better for the Brazilians. The Brazilians refused and
insisted on noh. The result was that they got both because the Japanese
could not abandon the idea. Stop sending only the easy stuff!

My biggest mistake in life is not keeping a diary, especially once I came
here. I wish I had written one, describing my everyday experiences, what I
saw, whom I met, what I ate, conversations I had.

Japanese talk about the weather because they love it! I enjoy Japanese
letters describing the seasons. We Westerners only mention the weather when
we have nothing better to talk about.

The Japanese are very flexible and love new gadgets. In New York educated
people shun mobile phones, but here everyone uses them. They have no barrier
for science and technology so I am not surprised they are the world leaders
in robot technology. Americans see robots as a tool for warfare, but the
Japanese think of them as cute companions. I prefer the Japanese way.

I'm not aware that I have changed since, let's say, age 45, but I realize
that people have another way of looking at me. Yesterday in a restaurant I
wanted to go to the second floor but the waitress said, "Oh, the stairs must
be too much for you so you had better sit on the first floor." I recognized
the goodwill there, but I was surprised because before her warning it hadn't
occurred to me that I was old.

*Melodramatic musical performed by an all-female cast.

- Judit Kawaguchi loves to listen. She is a volunteer counselor and a TV
reporter on NHK's "Weekend Japanology"
http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/japanology_e.html

The Japan Times: Dec. 27, 2005
(C) All rights reserved

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20051227jk.htm

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