Some thoughts on why we study foreign languages that are both difficult and exciting, like
Japanese. It is like a riddle. A video game. Jumping over obstacles, passing levels. Getting
to know a new culture. Understanding its past.
English edition: Kathelijne Bonne
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Why I am doing this
The other day in class we were wondering why one would study Japanese, such a difficult
language. It doesn’t make sense, some say. It is only spoken in Japan. Some parents at
school think it’s useless for children who will only be in the country for a few years to study it.
I doubt that.
To me, it is the gateway to a culture. If you’re here, how can you not study it even a little? My
daughter does it much more seriously than I do because she has exams all the time. I’m
happy for her because it’s one of the few activities she does with a book, paper and pencil.
She really enjoys writing Japanese because it’s like drawing.
Studying Japanese is a slow process. It forces the pencil. The pen. To put care in each
stroke. You pay attention to very small things like the shape of the syllables. The curves and
the straight lines. It’s like taking apart an artifact and seeing how it works. It stirs a deep
curiosity in me. My classmate says that sometimes she gets up and thinks: why am I doing
this? I’m not going to mention Nuccio Ordine or Bifo Berardi. I don’t need them. Just life. The
street.
I think that the most important things have no clear explanation. There is no obvious
rationality.
Having children. Falling in love. Learning. Doing philosophy. Writing. It’s like an alienation.
(Well, others travel compulsively or go to amusement parks or buy clothes, dogs, porcelain
and that’s fine).
It occurs to me that I believe more and more in intuition. I don’t really know what it is. A
mystery. I flatly refuse to give it an explanation. That’s why my voice shakes a little when I
have to justify. My mouth goes dry. I’m very bad at it.
That’s why I’m unreliable.
Slowness as a school
Japanese is the first language I study without rushing. It’s not about getting a job. There’s no prestige
involved. I may not even speak it. Just hieroglyphs I love to decipher. To read a haiku. A
sentence. To understand how language is constructed. To understand the street signs. It’s a
bit like seeing how they think. The way sentences are put together. Understanding the
hierarchies of society through language. It is like engineering, taking apart the machinery to
see what is inside.
Surely there will come a time when I get tired, who knows. But something drives me to
continue. I discover in Japanese something similar to what happens when writing. As soon as
you forget about your goals and let go a little, interesting things happen.
I keep a notebook and repeat words. I do calligraphy. I fill out whole pages. I take a break, to
read. I do it slowly, like a 6-year-old. And suddenly I remember my time in school. When I
was bored, I wrote out whole alphabets in the margins of my textbooks. Now I do to the same
in another language.
Being illiterate is interesting. You have to activate other forms of communication and
understanding. I break down sentences. You have to break down to understand. I slow down
because even a single syllable is important.
And I notice the small things. The color of the ink. The texture of the paper. The substance
that forms syllables. Or the kanji that says things, compresses them into a single ideogram. It
plays with ambiguity. It is like poetry.
Or it is poetry.
I crave to understand. Or not. Understanding is not the word. To access. Get access to the
shadows. To observe them from afar. Like the cherry tree that you look at without touching. It
sometimes hurts to look at such beauty. The distance is needed to keep it intact. Because it
is fragile. It needs to be contemplated. It’s like peeking at something. To take a mental note.
And then to walk on.
Deciphering poetry
I look up from my screen. Shadows tremble on the brick wall in front of me. They appear and
disappear according to the sun, which shines differently here. Clouds and wind also play.
Sometimes, a cat passes by to stop and look at me. The leaves never stop moving in this
country. There are constant gusts. Further away, I see the scaffolding of the construction site.
The signs are always explanatory. Because everything must be explained in this
country. Little by little I start to understand them. For the moment, only half sentences.
Snippets that remain in the air. Like hanging threads. I break the sentences into pieces. I put
them back together. I grab the paper and write. I copy, rather.
“writing / like someone dis-pairing, / to cauterize / to take the measure of fear / to conjure / to take life’s bait again / to not give in” and the playfulness of “writing / with small words / ordinary words / eyewords / animal words / cattonguewords”
Chantal Maillard [1],
[1] Maillard Chantal. Killing Plato. New Directions. 2019
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