Living in Tokyo, a gentle city
Actually, electronic media has not been chosen as a new topic of research. It became an object of my intense interest when I left for Tokyo as an eighteen year-old. To tell the truth, I have been ruminating over this topic since my late teens. When my job took me to Kyoto and my life became a bit more settled, I was able to concentrate more on my studies and firm up my thinking on issues, leading, finally, to a more productive output. I was also struck by the thought in my early thirties that if I did not produce something on this issue, I would never be able to do so. As one gets older and more mature, he can no longer write on these topics. Furthermore, I needed to write while still moved by the impulses of Eros.
While living in Tokyo for 12 years, I became convinced of the idea that the field of electronic media was something especially appropriate for Tokyo, a “Tokyo-like” phenomenon. I came to Tokyo from the countryside to begin life on my own. I had no real desire to make friends at university, and what’s more I had no money with which to play around. Soon after arriving, I stopped attending class. Before long, I was staying up late in my room, gnawing on bread, laughing by myself at the late-night TV and radio shows. I used to hit the movie houses, PIA movie magazine in hand, out until dawn, when at last I would sleep the days away. I lived in poverty and solitude. However, the city called Tokyo possessed an atmosphere that would soothingly envelope the loneliness of the college student. Tokyo was a gentle city. That gentleness is the facility of an “information” metropolis. Late-night television, radio, news magazines, movie houses, the convenience stores that, even in the wee hours of the morning, don’t sleep, the melodious sound of the trucks on Loop Seven, the porn-selling vending machines, the white, floating telephone booths. It is like a lively flood of “information” into which you can thrust yourself, and ever since I started living in that fanciful world, the city of Tokyo has never failed to kindly welcome me.
>> To read more please visit:
The Structure of the Inner Life of a Philosopher (1998)
(You can read the entire text)
While living in Tokyo for 12 years, I became convinced of the idea that the field of electronic media was something especially appropriate for Tokyo, a “Tokyo-like” phenomenon. I came to Tokyo from the countryside to begin life on my own. I had no real desire to make friends at university, and what’s more I had no money with which to play around. Soon after arriving, I stopped attending class. Before long, I was staying up late in my room, gnawing on bread, laughing by myself at the late-night TV and radio shows. I used to hit the movie houses, PIA movie magazine in hand, out until dawn, when at last I would sleep the days away. I lived in poverty and solitude. However, the city called Tokyo possessed an atmosphere that would soothingly envelope the loneliness of the college student. Tokyo was a gentle city. That gentleness is the facility of an “information” metropolis. Late-night television, radio, news magazines, movie houses, the convenience stores that, even in the wee hours of the morning, don’t sleep, the melodious sound of the trucks on Loop Seven, the porn-selling vending machines, the white, floating telephone booths. It is like a lively flood of “information” into which you can thrust yourself, and ever since I started living in that fanciful world, the city of Tokyo has never failed to kindly welcome me.
>> To read more please visit:
The Structure of the Inner Life of a Philosopher (1998)
(You can read the entire text)
posted by Masahiro Morioka at 1/30/2005 01:21:00 AM
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