3 August 2001 (14 Av 5761)
The elections for the Japanese Upper House took place this Sunday. In spite of the optimistic estimate by the mass media, the turnout was less than 60%. As I think that to vote is not only our right but also responsibility, I cannot believe that in such important elections almost four people out of ten did not vote. I am even angry with these irresponsible people for their indifference and lack of public awareness. I do not accept any kind of excuse for failing to fulfill this responsibility except for a minority of people who have physical problems to go to polling stations. Actually all the excuses I have heard from those who do not vote are just childish nonsense, and show nothing but their political ignorance.
Politicians are often blamed for the mismanagement of Japan, but the most responsible are, I think, these irresponsible people and others who vote only nominally without knowing one party from another. Who elects politicians after all? In spite of the fact that Japan is in such a critical condition now, these people seem to be busy pursuing only their own materialistic pleasure. There are countries like Australia that legally oblige their citizens to vote. Such law may make the situation in Japan less bad, but I am afraid that with so many people who do not have their own opinions even about their own lives and live out of inertia there may be a danger of populism worse than now.
Actually the lack of public awareness is not restricted to the failure to fulfill the right and responsibility to vote, but unfortunately is rampant elsewhere. For example, no average university student in Japan can talk about Japanese politics, to say nothing of international politics, for more than one minute. I was surprised to find some time ago that only one out of about forty students in one of my English courses reads a newspaper regularly! I notice more and more egocentric actions in public such as vandalism, discarding cigarettes and garbage on the street, making noise on the street after midnight, etc., not only by the youth but also by adults.
A single person cannot of course change the whole society in an instant, but this should not discourage people from doing even the tiniest things they can for the society. I believe that the true social change is nothing but a long-term accumulation of tiny efforts by each and every individual, and voting is one of them. We should also remember that until not so long time ago the right to vote was a privilege for the select few.
10 August 2001 (21 Av 5761)
Since this Tuesday I am staying in Jerusalem. Although this is my tenth visit here since I left Israel in the summer of 1993, I do not remember more tense and pessimistic atmosphere than now due to a series of brutal Palestinian terrorist bombings targeted indiscriminately at Israeli civilians including children. In a sense this is worse than a conventional war in that nobody knows for sure where the next "battlefield" is as the potential terrorists are brainwashed and sanctified under the name of Islam to make themselves suicide bombs anywhere they can to kill as many civilians as possible. Every time there is a terrorist bombing, the normal life of many Israelis is paralyzed, and the whole country is affected not only emotionally but even economically. On the Palestinian side many people go out to the street in cheers after suicide bombings of this kind.
Around 2 PM yesterday there was one of the worst suicide bombings in the very center of Jerusalem with the death toll of 15 people including children and tourists. Before I returned in the evening to the flat I am renting during my one-month stay here, I happened to be in the city center and wondered why all the restaurants and stores were so empty. It was not until I returned home and turned on TV that I knew the tragedy. I realized again how crucial it is in Israel to keep up with the news as it may concern your very life.
Compared with Israel, Japan is definitely a peaceful country, but witnessing the harsh reality in Israel, I also realize the heavy price Japan and its citizens have paid in exchange for peace. First of all, this seeming peace has made many people totally indifferent to everything but the pursuit of their personal materialistic pleasure. I see that this indifference has been eroding Japanese society, which has largely become a spiritual desert. I am afraid that only some national disaster would be able to wake up the majority of these indifferent people.
I also feel how pathetically naive all the "leftists" are in Japan, including their "organ" Asahi Newspaper. They believe so naively that to recite the word "peace" as a mantra is enough to bring peace to the whole world, denying even the existence of self defense forces. And if someone tries to legitimize these forces in Japan, they hastily accuse them as "militarists" and "chauvinists". They should come to Jerusalem and see how detached they are from reality. What bothers me more than their naiveness is their hypocrisy and double standard. On the one hand, they accuse what they call "militarists" and "chauvinists" in Japan, but on the other hand, they are quite sympathetic to a couple of neighboring countries which are militaristic superpowers infringing the rights of their own citizens. Reading the Asahi Newspaper, especially about the present controversy over textbooks of Japanese history, I cannot help feeling as if it were an official organ of some other country, denigrating Japan with malice.
17 August 2001 (28 Av 5761)
The 13th World Congress of Jewish Studies, the "Olympic Games" of the academic Jewish studies, took place from Sunday through Thursday this week at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with hundreds of lectures by scholars who came to Jerusalem to present the fruits of their latest researches since the last congress four years ago. In many ways this was one of the most fruitful conferences I had ever attended.
I read a paper in Hebrew entitled "Hebrew-Yiddish contact linguistics: a proposal for a theoretical framework". Unlike in Japan, where I cannot assume any prior knowledge of Hebrew and Yiddish, whether theoretical or practical, I did not have to "censure" myself academically. This was already consolation. I was very happy that the response of the audience consisting mostly of scholars who understand both Hebrew and Yiddish including my colleagues was very positive. The pleasure and satisfaction I felt during and after my presentation were something I almost forgot since my last presentation outside Japan several years ago. I especially enjoyed the lively interaction with the audience in a very cozy atmosphere.
During the five-day conference there were three to four slots of sessions each day, and in each slot there were ten to twenty sessions in parallel in all the fields of Jewish studies. I went mainly to sessions on Modern Hebrew, Yiddish, Judezmo and other Jewish languages. The academic stimuli I got from the presentations I heard will continue to nurture me for some time in the future.
The most fruitful thing in this conference, however, was neither the success of my presentation nor the stimuli from the presentations by other scholars, but the reunion and acquaintance I could make with leading scholars, especially young ones, in the field of Hebrew, Yiddish and Jewish linguistics. I felt that there is an informally knitted international network of leading scholars, and it is important to be part of this invisible "guild" as quite a lot of academic information is exchanged only inside its "members" through meetings in conferences, email, etc.
I really wish that more specialists or self-claimed "specialists" in Jewish studies in Japan would participate in the next World Congress of Jewish Studies, taste the true flavor of academic Jewish studies at its best, and enjoy the same excitement and joy I experienced this time.
24 August 2001 (5 Elul 5761)
With the start of the Hebrew month of Elul the regular study resumed at all yeshivas this Sunday after the so-called "beyn hazmanim" vacation since the 9th of Av. I also started learning at the same yeshiva - Jerusalem central campus of Ohr Somayach - where I had studied in my previous visits here in the spring and summer of 2000. Although I no longer feel the kind of intellectual and spiritual surprise I felt when I studied there for the first time, I feel much more comfortable there.
Of all the excellent rabbis teaching at the yeshiva I especially liked Rabbi Yitzhok Ziskind, Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb, Rabbi Mordechai Becher and Rabbi Chaim Salenger in my previous visits. So I was just sorry to find that Rabbi Ziskind and Rabbi Becher would not be in Jerusalem temporarily during my stay.
In the Talmud class taught by Rabbi Salenger we are studying this time the famous issues about a goring ox in the tractate Bava Kama. In the past two visits I was frustrated with myself because I was too preoccupied with the grammatical and lexical meaning of each and every word in Aramaic to follow the arguments even with the explanations by the teacher. I was happy to find that this time I could finally follow the arguments, though not perfectly, and even ask questions, which is not an easy thing for beginners learning the Talmud. I was also stimulated by the echoing voices of other students discussing over the same issue in other classes on the same floor, which sounded so pleasantly to my ears in spite of my hypersensitivity to noise.
Taking this Talmud class and other lectures at the yeshiva, I am aghast anew at the amount and depth of knowledge transmitted orally from generation to generation inside the study halls of yeshivas. Although I have tasted only a tiny doze of this vast and profound esoteric knowledge, I cannot help feeling even more strongly the spiritual superficialness of life in Japan even among the intellectuals and the lack of intellectual interactions in Japanese universities.
31 August 2001 (12 Elul 5761)
My four-week stay in Jerusalem is coming to an end as I have to return to Japan next Sunday. Every time I come here, I ask myself consciously or unconsciously whether I will have the same intellectual and spiritual pleasure I experience during my short visits when I come here and settle down. Although I may encounter problems I did not experience as a doctoral student here from 1988 to 1993 or I have not been aware of as a quasi-tourist for the past eight years, I am now more convinced that my life will be far more fruitful and pleasurable here than in Japan. Almost all my friends with whom I consulted repeated the same feeling as mine.
Of course, it is not they but I who have to decide, but there still seems to remain something that does not allow me to make this fatal irreversible decision of leaving Japan for Israel for good. It is my academic career as a specialist in Hebrew and Jewish linguistics. A friend of mine in Japan who did his doctorate on Judaism decades ago in the US seems be right when he told me recently that the state of the art of Jewish studies in Japan now is like that of European studies more than a century and a half ago when Japan opened its door to the outside world. There seem to be so many self-taught and self-claimed specialists in Jewish studies in Japan who are simply out of focus, detached from researches done mainly in Hebrew by Israeli researchers. So as a person who was trained in Jerusalem I feel a kind of mission to advance true Jewish studies in Japan, which is after all the country where I was born although I cannot accept many of its sociocultural rules. This is the main reason why I am still applying in vain for what few vacant positions there are in areas related to my major, but I am not so optimistic about the possibility of finding tenure in a Japanese university when various factors are taken into consideration.
But at the same time I also feel some vanity in trying to make some humble contribution to the advancement of true Jewish studies in Japan not contaminated by preconceptions or even mere ignorance. It seems more challenging and rewarding to try to prove myself academically in the world center of Jewish studies, and not in a negligible peripheral. Of course, it will not be so easy unlike in Japan, where specialists in Hebrew and Jewish linguistics are few and far between. Even if I should secure myself a postdoctoral fellowship for the first one or few years in Israel, it would not guarantee anything about my academic future.
My agony over the future of my own academic career will continue some more time, but some time in the near future I will have to decide either way or other so that I may not end up falling between two stools.