A reflection triggered by episodic films on streaming platforms, leading to an exploration of British cinema, class society, classical music, and the literary power of Jane Austen. A cultural essay contrasting Hollywood’s decline with Britain’s enduring civilizational strength.

A few nights ago, quite unusually, I felt like watching a movie.
So I decided to choose one on Prime Video.
I have written about this once before, but after subscribing to Netflix and watching a film, I canceled the service the very next day.
I subscribed because I knew that Netflix was expanding its power in Hollywood.
I immediately watched a movie.
It starred a well-known action actor, but to my surprise, it was structured in episodes, that is, in a television drama format.
Each episode ended at a good point and led straight into the next, and before I knew it, I watched all the way through.
I started watching early in the night, and by the time it ended, it was already dawn.
Because it was merely an action movie designed to keep viewers hooked, nothing remained afterward.
All that was left was an enormous waste of time.
When I woke up, I canceled the subscription immediately.
A few days ago and again last night, I was similarly pulled along by a succession of episodes and stayed up late, yet I did not cancel Prime Video.
That was because the long hours spent had been worth it.
When I was in junior high school, among British works, I carefully read and completed Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
For some reason, however, I never finished Pride and Prejudice.
I kept it at a respectful distance.
That was because it starred Colin Firth.
Soon after appearing in this column, I wrote that Europe remains a class-based society even today.
The idea worthy of a Nobel Prize, the “Turntable of Civilization.”
It was indispensable for explaining why it is now turning in Japan.
The reason I cannot love soccer in the same way I love MLB, although I do not dislike it at all, is that soccer originally emerged as an outlet for dissatisfaction among the European working class.
Recently, however, the game has changed so much that cunning plays such as time-wasting have drastically decreased.
Compared to the past, I now watch soccer as an ordinary sports fan.
I am familiar with most of the world’s outstanding players today.
I watch their play, as well as the current Japanese national team, with keen interest.
Now then, after watching the film mentioned above, my overall impression was this.
Britain is not dead.
Britain is alive.
The civilizational strength that allows such films to be made remains firmly intact.
These films stand far above the action-movie-dominated Hollywood, which has become virtually worthless since it began pandering to China.
I even felt that the best era of Hollywood is now living on in Britain.
I wondered whether it was good or bad that I realized something else.
The moment the film began, I thought that this kind of movie truly calls for classical music.
At the same time, I realized that classical music itself was born from such a world.
The distinctive natural beauty of Britain that still remains today, its gardens and greenery.
If privately owned, they belong to the aristocracy, and otherwise they are preserved as national parks.
In other words, classical music was born within aristocratic landscapes.
Yet almost none of the great composers were children of high aristocrats.
If they had been, there would have been no need for them to engage in desperate job-hunting to secure positions in court-related musical institutions, and this is a clear fact.
Be that as it may.
Thanks to Colin Firth’s exemplary performance, I was finally able to understand Pride and Prejudice in its entirety.
In other words, I was able to finish reading that massive work which had discouraged me from the very beginning.
However, I then became deeply absorbed in the world of Jane Austen.
Last night, perhaps it was episode eleven, but I watched Sanditon all the way to the end.
Together with Pride and Prejudice the night before, I came to understand on a visceral level that she was indeed a wildly popular author of her time.
With works like these, it is only natural that she became a bestselling writer.
At the same time, I felt that her style and narrative construction were similar to those of Japan’s popular writers, especially those of the Edo period.
Going even further back, it would not be an exaggeration to say that The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu was being reenacted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.
As proof of this, the central figures of that era were women, Jane Austen herself, Charlotte Brontë with Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë with Wuthering Heights, and the Brontë sisters, and I look forward to seeing the remaining sister’s work as a film.
This is what I wanted to write.
However, before going to bed, I watched a YouTube program by Kadota Ryusho that had been released much later than usual.
There I learned about yesterday’s Asahi Shimbun, produced by so-called journalism figures bearing the name Asahi, who have completely abandoned their role as a news organization.
They have become anti-establishment activists, pro-China, appeasing China, and are almost certainly ensnared in honey traps and money traps.
I felt that, for now, it is more important to correct those matters.
And so I put down my pen here.
To be continued.