Ideal and Reality

Board the Tokaido Shinkansen and you reach Shin-Osaka in two and a half hours. In that instant of flowing time, there is no sense whatsoever of being somewhere far from Tokyo.

What a convenient world it has become, I think—and yet, on the other hand, I feel a certain harshness to it, too.

The scenery streaming past as if in flight, the roughly intensity-3 sway inside the car, the ringing in my ears born of the pressure as trains pass each other—none of it, for me, could be called comfortable.

Why do people work themselves into such a frenzy over making things faster and smaller?

I feel a keen nostalgia for the days when, enjoying station bento and the passing scenery, the joy of meeting strangers and our conversations came into full bloom.

Wouldn’t it be fine to think about where our civilization is headed a little more leisurely, slowly, and generously?—musing thus, having finished my business in Osaka, I am being rocked once again, at a twilight hour before the date has changed, toward a Tokyo that is far and yet near.

Little of this year remains; everyone, please have a good year’s end and New Year. My heart, too, is running on ahead.