The following is an essay that I wrote as an assignment for an English school AEON:
Topic: Childhood
Style: Casual
Let me start with one picture of Tusguharu Foujita (Leonard Foujita) that I found in his exhibition held in September:
The picture was drawn in 1958 and 1959 and was titled “The Machine Age”.
It may draw nostalgic reaction from people born in around that time. (I was born in 1961.) Most toys shown in this picture are quite familiar to me, such as tin toys (I had one of Astro Boy at home), remote-controlled cars, toy cars (in Japan they were called “minicars”), HO scale train models, and so on.
As the title of the picture shows, the 1960’s were really “the machine age”, and Japan was just in the midst of high-speed economic growth. In my childhood, I believed so many things were common knowledge without any doubt such as:
(1) Economics will grow eternally.
(2) No music, no life (sorry Tower Records)
(3) Human beings will soon reach Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn.
(4) Flying cars will be available within several decades, at the latest by the 21st century.
(5) Animation films or dramas are mostly Sci-Fi based.
(6) Students are attending universities not to study, but to join political movements or some protests.
(7) The whole world will perish soon with nuclear weapons.
All of these expectations were revealed to be untrue, in the 1970’s or later. (The last one was fortunately proven to be not true.) I gradually started to think that the 1960’s were actually very unique, strange, but energetic periods that are completely different from the 1970’s, 80’s, or later. I also knew that there had been some “spiritual” people claiming that the 1960’s had been the start of “new age”.
I am currently addicted to watch Sci-Fi based old TV dramas from the 1960’s. I have so far bought DVDs or Blue-rays: the four series of Irwin Allen dramas (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of The Giants), two of Gerry Anderson’s (Thunderbirds, UFO), and the original series of Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry. By watching them, I can now understand how I was brainwashed or imprinted during the 1960’s as a then kid. In 2018, very few people care about cold war (except concerns for the start of “new” cold war with China), only limited people talk about possible “doomsday”, but such topics were quite seriously considered in many of the above dramas.
Honestly to say, I’m living 50% of my life still in the 1960’s. You can check out any time you like, but you can NEVER leave!
本日のNHK杯戦の囲碁は、黒番が余正麒8段、白番が今村善彰9段の対局です。布石は黒が外廻り、白が実利という進行でしたが、余8段は単純な模様を拡げていく手ではなく、左辺に打ち込んでいき、白がケイマしている所の切りをにらみながら、戦いに持ち込んで厚みを働かせようとしました。この過程で、左辺で左下隅にかかった黒の一段が攻められた時、白の下辺からのハネに対し単に延びると封鎖されますが、左辺の白にノゾキを打ってハネたのが好手で、はっきりこの一団が活きた上に左辺の白と下辺の白の連絡を絶ち、原形から考えると黒の大成功でした。更に黒は左上隅から延びる白と中央の白の分断を狙い、結果としてそれに成功しました。白は上辺左の黒の一段の連絡の不備を突いていく手を狙っていましたが、それを実行しない内に取られてしまったのは誤算でした。白は取られた上辺の石を捨て石にして締め付け、左辺から中央の白を厚くしましたが、黒の上辺の地は50目近くあり、黒の大きなリードとなりました。次に白が残された右辺に打ち込んでいった時、黒は手堅く打っていれば勝ちでしたが、右辺の白を厳しくせめて中央の黒の薄みをカバーし、左辺から中央の白の大石を取るという、一番厳しい道を選びました。しかし白からの上手い反撃の手をうっかりし、黒3子が取られて右辺と中央の白がつながって両方が安泰になりました。これは黒にとって最悪の結果でしたが、それでもそれまでのリードが大きく、しばらくヨセを打ち進めた後、白の投了となりました。