AOI HITORIGOTO #59
- 藍天群青 FRIENDS -
By Kato Shigeaki
藍天群青・・・ (Indigo ultramarine)
As the color of a sunny day (藍天) and the dark blue of a night sky (群青), an example of counterfeit.
From Kato Shigeaki's dictionary*
Some years ago I was watching "Waratte iitomo!" and that's what happened. During the Telephone Shocking Corner there was, if I'm not mistaken, a young boy and Tamori-san asked to this guest: "What do you do usually?" and the boy answered: "I go out always with the same friends, of course". Then Tamori-san inquired again: "Don't you ever go somewhere alone?" but he said: "But I hate to be alone~". Hearing that Tamori-san said something peremptorily.
"That's no good. Being an adult also means to not always team with others".
I thought that he was right. In other words, turning things around, it's that "being adults" equals to "being alone". This doesn't mean that we shouldn't have friends and become lonely though. 藍天群青. It's only that psychologically "to be adult" is a perfect match to the words "to not team".
I have a friend that once said this: "To become excellent you have to become lonely".
Bringing out last essay's argument again, an excellent human being has to study and do his best struggling with solitude and the temptations that come along, he has to use his time profitably. As a matter of fact, the biggest enemy when you want to fulfill, achieve something is surely the loneliness. You need to overcome it, if you can't stand it that's the end. The expression "To stand out" means to raise oneself above the crowd. Literally it means that when you want to go leaving behind the group you have to be able to bring up by yourself a power strong enough to overcome the power of many people gathered. If you can't do this you can't "stand out".*
I have many friends. Really. But we aren't closely connected to each others. Sometimes it happens that we are all together by accident but we aren't an only big group. Moreover there are people whom I meet only once a month, somebody even only once a year. But still we're friends. When we're free and we're able to talk to each others I can find once again my respect for one of them, or realize another time how stupid he can be. Ah, in a good meaning of course.
That's why I never thought that I'm part of a group. With this I'm not saying that I'm against people who always get along with the same group of friends. Because I know it's enjoyable. It's just that right now I don't want to depend on that. To build a trust relationship with somebody is important but we also need to create some time for ourselves. You can't advance always going at the same pace of other people. I'm really scared at the thought that doing like that I may become a very boring person. How can the others face somebody not able to face his own self? Other people must disdain a person who has no interests even in his own self.*
I'm talking so haughtily but loneliness comes at you suddenly like an earthquake. I often try to deceive it. I watch tv even if I'm not interested to it, I call a friend, I go out even if I originally had intention to stay alone, I go with some specific friends according to a fixed time.
It's just that I don't want to become "1" of the group. Each one in the group must be a "1". Moreover, I want to be together with myself. Since the beginning I'm also a NEWS.
In this era in which everybody is a hero fighting all the others, it's we who decide our own mean to survive.
We're 6 people in a group of 6. No, who said we can't become a group of 100?
Notes:
*The first composite of characters doesn't exist. As explained he put together the kanji for indigo, sky and ultramarine blue. A counterfeit because it may seem real but doesn't exist in reality. They are two completely different things because there's no way a very light blue and a dark one can be mixed together without change. His point is that dark and light blue are only a little different in shade but they are two completely different colors. That's what he means when he put that word inside the essay.
On the first essay the theme was 藍 (Ai), last time it was 天 (Ten), this time is 群 (Gun).
*The argument is clearer in Japanese because "to stand out" is 群を抜く (Gun wo nuku) which is literally "to pull out from a group".
*Sorry, I'm confuse about the last two lines. I think I understood the thought but I can't express it well in English ><
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Sorry for the delay this time too. Honestly, I don't feel like translating since the last hate meme.I thought a lot about the things I wanted to say to those who read my journal. They are a lot. A part of me thinks that I don't have to give explanations because I'm confident that the most of people here already understood my intentions and my spirit in sharing translations, I know that because I met a lot of very nice people here. But to read that there are people who completely misunderstood me hurted me a little. Even though my pride is high, I don't deny it, I'm not too much offended by the comments about my translations. I'm sure that people who study Japanese or who can read/talk Japanese will find my translations bad, because I'm only a student, as you can read on my sidebar too. I do mistakes due to laziness and to ignorance.
The things that really annoyed me are others, I've been accused to make up things in my translations. I think that this is ridiculous because I don't see the reason why I should do that, do you think that NEWS members pay me to make them sound smart or funny? :D
What I wanted to absolutely say here is that that accusation is completely FALSE. I know I do mistakes in translations and I know that sometimes I don't understand full phrases, in those cases I usually skip them or I comment telling what I didn't understand. I always try to be honest with readers, I'm not a professionist but I behave as much as possible as one.
You can say that it's my pride speaking but I'm pretty confident that my Japanese is good enough to understand the juice of the articles. I don't make up things, I try to stick with what I understand and I try to convey the right meaning in a language that it's not my mother tongue. If sometimes I'm wrong I'm sorry and I beg you to point out my mistakes in the comments or to send me a message. I won't bite you ^^ I also think that this is the most right behaviour. Honestly, there are people on the meme who said that they read my translations and hate how many mistakes there are in it. They said that I don't care about sharing but that I just want to stand out and grab praises. That's not true, the ones who don't care about NEWS and NEWS fans are them. Because if they found something wrong in my translations they should have said that so that fans would have known the right meaning of NEWS' words.
I didn't want to talk too much about the meme but I felt the need to explain this. I'm not an attention seeker, or at least not more than everybody of us is, what I want to do is practice in translation and Japanese, talk with fangirls, collaborate with other translators and most of all, SHARE the love for this amazing group and share their words and thoughts with everybody. This is the idea that I have when I use my free time translating. I don't say I waste it because I usually have fun in doing it and I think that it's also useful for my studies.
Sorry to have wasted YOUR time to make you read this, most of all I'm sorry to have taken space under Shige's words, which are as always inspiring and wonderful ^__^
Love you,
Giulia.