20110710
いつもの夏と違って、この夏は一ヶ月しか日本にいないことにした。
It’s not like any other summer because I decided to visit Japan only for a month.
着いて４日目だというのに、私は公共機関や車で移動を続けている。
Odd enough, it’s been four days, I have been moving around with public transportations or with my car.
いつもだったら歩き倒し、自転車に乗り倒し、泳ぎながら、完全に自分の身体を叩きつけてまで日本なり、東京なりを感じたいというのに、みたくないものを見てしまうのが怖いし、ききたくないものを聞いてしまうのが怖い。
If this was like any other summer, I would have walked and biked like an asshole, and swum like a cock-sucking-mother-fucker till I feel like I am beating myself against Japan, or Tokyo, or whatever. But I really am afraid of running into something I don’t want to see or hear.
日本と世界が懸命に作り出している集団的記憶喪失（あるいは記憶の精製）に付き合わざるを得ない人たちや物事をみたくないのだ。
考えて見れば普段からそうだったけどね。
I loathe witnessing people and things that are forced to embrace the sates-led collective amnesia (or creating memories) here.
Although, I know that it’s been always like this even since before I was a debutant 30 years ago.
だから海に行ってたんだよ、たくさんね。
That’s why I used to head to beaches so fucking often.
裸になって、肌焼いて、ナンパされてパンパンすることしか考えないで焼きそば食べてるような人らしか、みたくないし、なりたくない。
Getting naked, tanning, hoping to be hit on and do bang bang, eating lousy fried noodles…that’s what I want for myself and whom I want to see.
東京にこの暑い中にいて、被爆を怖いと思うなら、外にいちゃいけない。
If you were in this crazy heat in Tokyo, and if you were afraid of exposure to radiation, you’ve better be out of outside.
だってガードレールも、駅の灰皿も、手すりも、公園の遊具もベンチも汚れてるんだから、自然や街並みに下手に親しんだりしちゃだめだ。
All the fences, ashtrays at train stations, handlebars, benches and swings in parks are dirty. So, you should defamilialize yourself with nature.
でも建物で入れるところなんて、店ぐらいしか無い。
Then, where do you go? There are only shops.
金があるから私は行くけど。
I would go because I have money.
やばい水道水や野菜をそれでも避けるしかない。
But still, I need to avoid tap water and veggies.
水も野菜もやばいんだろ。
Aren’t they dangerous?
このやばいものを、暑さのせいで欲しくてたまらん。
I can’t help wanting them, though.
これまで健康だ、健康だから食べろって言われてたものがいきなり超危険。
Things that we were told to eat because they are healthy turned into the riskiest.
子どもが土壇場で考えた嫌な罰ゲームがメインの遊びみたいな、変な支配だ、放射能。
Radiation is like the craziest games made up by dumbest kids. Punishment is more fun than playing. That must be this crazy radioactive domination.
「子どもって純真でかわいい」って言う人に、「子どもにもよるじゃん。子どもだから好きなんて差別だよ」と屁理屈を（まっとうなんだけど）心のなかで言い返すときの気持ちとも似ている。一度子どもだったのに、それを忘れる人が多すぎる。子どもでいるってハードな地獄だからだろうね。
I feel the same way when I talk back inside of my head to child-fetishizers.
They say “kids are so cute, and innocent.” I spit my imaginary saliva onto their faces. “That depends on each kid. If you say that you like kids because they are kids, that’s a discrimination.” My wounded brain. But there are just too many folks who forget that they once had been kids themselves. Mayhaps because being a kid is the hardest hell.
私は屁理屈しても、生きなきゃならん。
I’ve gotta live with my wounded brain.
食べないところでも、店員からご親切いただく。
ご親切はこれまで以上に敵意に満ちている。
実験動物同士のいがみ合いだ。
Even if I go to a place when I don’t have to eat, shop workers are annoyingly kind.
Their kindness is hostile than ever, because we all know that we are on experiments.
恋人が竪琴を弾いたのを録音しておいてよかった。竪琴は、日本の琴みたいなんだけど、ちょっと違う。そのちょっとズレてる感を耳が聞いて、私がここに今いてもそんなに変じゃないよ、と。あるいは、今いるこの場所を「ちょっと変」と思っててもいいように修正してくれている。
この夏はとりあえず自分の命を少し試してみて、無事にサンフランに帰って、竪琴を挟んでる恋人の太ももでも眺めてえろっちいことでも考えたいもんだ。
I am glad that I recorded what my girlfriend played with her harp. Her harp sounds a little bit like Japanese koto, but they are a stranger to each other. My ears hear the difference, and they tell that it’s not that strange that I am here. Or my ears tell me that it is alright for me to think that this place where I am at is a bit strange.
I’m gonna try out my life this summer here. Hopefully I would be back in San Fran, and ogling at those thighs agains when she plays her harp.
It’s been four months since the nuquakes on 311.
I flew in just four days ago, and I am feeling totally out of place. Partially because I spent enough time in the US, so this is what is called “culture-shock”. Culture is a problematic word that I usually refuse to use because it covers up how political culture is framed.
This shock does not only exist because of 311, but out of estimated 65,000 Tokyo residents who left to South or elsewhere, many are my friends and loved ones.
I miss them dearly.
Those who remain here at this point survived four months of quakes and fear for radioactivity already, which I can hardly imagine.
Japan had four earthquakes since the day I flew in. Once when I was about to land on Narita Airport. Two of others happened far away. The fourth one, I felt in my house in Yokohama. It felt like M2+, and actually happened in Hokota, Ibaraki, right next to my mother’s village.
It freaked me out than M4.3 quake did on a train car in a tunnel under the sea between Embarcaderro and West Oakland in May.
Please, please, stop shaking me too much.
I am shaken by the possibility that I might have been drowned on the train in the Bay Area on that day.
I am shaken by the fact that any earthquake can further damage any of 54 reactors in Japan.
I am shaken by the earthquakes. 30 seconds of M2+ gave me a psychological nausea.
I am shaken by the fact that I can both imagine and cannot imagine.
I feel happy that people made decisions to leave here for now or for good.
But what is this?
Nuquakes cracks the heartbeat of both who are moving or immobile.
I notice that heartbeat in every move, everywhere.
I notice the traces that my friends left in Tokyo.
Mosquitos ate my skin while my friend and I were measuring the radioactivity at parks yesterday in Kawasaki.
One of the kids who happened to be in a park said “Thank you” when we told what we were doing with a geiger counter. “Why don’t you thank them?”, he insisted his sister. “I don’t want to!”, she answered. “You don’t have to say. You should say what you want to say if you want to say, ” I murmured to them.
Mosquito bites haunted me during the night.
With sleepy eyes, I jumped into shower.
Perhaps this water is contaminated too, but using AC would be too much to excuse.
Summers in Japan for the last couple of years had been bizarre.
But this summer, I feel less difference with Okinawan summer.
Too hot to sleep, too hot to wake up.
Everybody is sneezing and speaking in coughy throats for too much drinking and smoking.
My friend smokes while she waits the counter to show the average radioactivity of 160 seconds.
She smokes when we hops onto the car, head to the next park.
We drove to Tokyo Toritsu University’s Nuclear Research Center that is located five minutes away from the project housing that I used to live as a child.
In 1989, they had a small leak, but they covered it up. It used to be Musashi Kogyo University.
As a child, with some concerned residents, we rushed to the gate and protested against them to release the precise information about the leak.
This time, the gate was open, so we drove in.
Voila! There was a familiar looking research reactor, right there!
“Yabai! Korekayo?! Kore sou dayone!? (Holy shit! Is this IT? THISis IT, isn’t IT!?)”
“Koeeee!!! (freakin’ scary!)”
“Yametoko! Chotto-!! (We’ve gotta quit this! No waaay!)”
Without thinking, I immediately turned the car to escape as we noticed a man in a factory uniform walking out, giving us a suspicious look.
Since gate and the whole institution had always been surrounded by woods, so I grew up being scared, but never thought this research monster to be right up the gate (200 meters yo, yabaidaro!).
Perhaps the 1989 leak was alright cuz I grew up alright despite the fact that my family kept living there until 1995.
Was my dropping out school due to the radioactivity? Nah.
Was my irregular menstruation due to the radioactivity? Everybody has that these days.
The world has always been mine and theirs at the same time, so there is nothing to freak out about at this point.
But I cannot stand this world.
(Source: famoose)
New York & San Fran. Some states are united against the disgusting coalition between U.S. & Japan’s nuke-based militarization/capitalization of people and their places! See the flyer, print it out, and distribute! Thanks to Yuko Tonohira for the artwork! Come join our event!
The title, 100 SUNS, refers to the response by J. Robert Oppenheimer to the world’s first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One… I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was Oppenheimer’s attempt to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 SUNSlikewise confronts the indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were either conducted in Nevada or the Pacific the book is divided between the desert and the ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test, its explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location. The enormity of the events recorded is contained by understated neutrality of bare data. Interspersed within the sequence of explosions are images of awestruck witnesses.
(Source: sincerelycecilia, via famoose)
北島三郎 － まつり (by enkasuki2)
一号機から四号機までなんとかしてくれそうなサブちゃん。政府にプランBとして提案したい。二十秒で消化して、いつのまにか撤去まで出来る可能性を秘めているのはサブちゃんかEarth Songを歌うマイケル・ジャクソンだろう。
(Source: youtube.com)
スリーマイル島の原子炉灰皿。
原発震災を受けて書かれた文の中でも、もっともぐっときた。 "『津波はとてつもない速度で深くひろがる暗い海だった。少しの間、間しかなかった。長いあいだ叫びなどなかった。叫びと、叫びのあいだ、わずかな言葉を震わせていたひとびと。彼（女）らは身を挺している。その地で駆ける牛や犬の逃避行は、公然たる逃走だろう。その身体とは誰のものであったのか。…これからさき「福島―Fukushima」という名が隔たりをもって迎えられるようなことがあれば、わたしたちはかわらずに震えのなかにとどまるだろう。この身体が誰のものであるのか、考えるまでもなく次が待機している。…いまやはっきりと海のうえに浮かぶ帆の群島のすがたがみえる。海を震わせていく群島が―。この持続する心音にきれぎれに遡る声。この心臓以外に、これからわたしたちはなにを震わせていこうか』“
ソヴィエトとアメリカが戦争したときに、イギリスの田舎町が核兵器で攻撃されたら、という映画。小さな町のパニックが描かれる。1965年制作。ピーター・ワトキンス監督。しかしBBCはショックだとして放送を禁止。だのに1967年にはドキュメンタリー部門でオスカーを受賞。おそらくはヒロシマという文脈あっての映画なので、いま見てもいまいちというか、福島として見るには、甘すぎるというか、もうすでに現実がいかに醜く、また希望もあるものだとわかったりして。
Our Friend The Atom (by VegaTaxi)は、阿片中毒者の反共かつ核推進派のウォルト・ディズニーが作った原子力ってすんばらしいという映画。ディズニーランドのセクション、フロンティアランド、トゥモローランドなどが、とても政治的で帝国主義・植民地主義的なんだとよくわかる。
(Source: youtube.com)
