2023/01/12 English

BGM: b-flower - Both Sides, Now

It was a day off today. I read Tetsuya Furuta's "Do philosophy the usual words", and I thought that we can learn how to write Japanese once again from this book. I was attracted by the part where he tries to write "Easy Japanese", which means the Japanese for foreigners. I know a few teachers of Japanese so thought this is good for them to read. Furuta tells us that he actually accepts the possibility of "Easy Japanese", but also writes its possibility of becoming like the concept "Newspeak" that appears in George Orwell's "1984". Thinking about the violence which is in "re-written words to be too easy". It really impressed me.

If I understand that "Newspeak" is "the words that are too easy violently" or "the words that are too simple not to misread" (although this is embarrassing I have never read "1984"! so tell me if I am misunderstanding), then I can understand how different "Newspeak" and "Easy Japanese" are. Because "Easy Japanese" is not the concept that denies other styles of writing by saying "this is the absolute one" so "we must write things like this". "Easy Japanese" understands various "poor writings" (like this writing I am doing). But it actually does its role as the trial of "alternative writing".

So I understand that "Easy Japanese" has a fresh essence that cultivates the Japanese language itself. Of course, it shouldn't avoid an alternative way of writing as Furuta worries, but I never feel that danger in "Easy Japanese". But I won't say that Furuta's discussion is nonsense. The worries Furuta tells me in this book appear as other phenomenons as "violently easy writings". For example, the subtitles which say personalities talking too clearly in Japanese TV programs or on YouTube (I feel that they are schizophrenic). Or a lot of Katakana that describe foreign words (this topic is also written in Furuta's book). I want to think about them again. It is a good book as Furuta's other works.

This evening I attended an online meeting on ZOOM, and I did a presentation about the word "Time Performance" or "Taipa" and Michael Ende's book "Momo". Saving time and avoiding various waste is the meaning of "Taipa". But my life actually has a lot of wasteful time ("I have never learned anything in my college life" "I drank a lot of alcohol and spent an enormous time and money" etc). But regretting them products nothing. The grey gentlemen in "Momo" would blame me for saying "your life itself is wasteful". But I learned that wasteful time with this body therefore can understand how it is wasteful. Then it wasn't wasteful for me completely. I could learn this so it was a great time.