What Sort of a Stone Was Sōseki? How to Become Who You Are Not

We agreed that I would speak in Japanese today. So I am relieved not to have to pronounce difficult English words, cramming my tongue against my palate in uncomfortable ways, while ruddering both sides of my tongue to the left and the right. Of course it is not easy to give a lecture in Japanese either. Since a lecture is spoken rather than written, one has to use the polite “desu-masu” style, and this slows everything down.1 Your thoughts want to race ahead, but these sociable words keep bowing and apologizing to the audience, so that your thoughts can’t quite get out of the gate. Natsume Sōseki and his generation of writers worked hard to unite the spoken and written languages (genbun’itchi), but today’s written Japanese has once again drifted away from spoken language, opening a gap between them. Of course, this situation makes us writers happy. Depending on how we skirt this gap, new styles of writing emerge.