I remember it as a television program on HIMARI broadcast by NHK.
It may, however, have been TV Asahi.
In that program, HIMARI said something profoundly important about why she had changed from the violin she had previously been playing to the instrument she now uses.
The moment I heard her words, I revised the assessment I had expressed in my previous writings.
I had always regarded Natsuho Murata and HIMARI as two extraordinary talents.
Yet, subtle though the difference was, I had felt that Natsuho possessed a slight edge.
Then HIMARI herself revealed the very reason why I had felt that difference.
Speaking about the violin she had previously used, HIMARI explained, in essence, that there was a sound intrinsic to her own nature, and that she felt the instrument could not fully produce that sound.
She spoke in particular about the G string and about the difference between the sound she sought and the sound she was able to obtain from the instrument.
That single observation astonished me.
She was not simply saying, “I wanted a violin with a better sound.”
She already possessed, within herself, her own sound.
She could hear whether the sound emerging from the great instrument in her hands truly corresponded to the sound she already heard within herself.
And these were the words of a girl still in her teens.
This has nothing to do merely with brilliant technique, perfect intonation, or the ability to play extraordinarily difficult works with apparent ease.
Before she even plays, the music already exists within her.
The sound already exists within her.
She chooses the instrument through which that inner sound can be brought into the physical world.
When I heard HIMARI say this, I recognized once again that she is, alongside Natsuho Murata, a talent of truly extraordinary magnitude.
And I revised the expression I had used before.
If Natsuho Murata is Nagashima, HIMARI is Oh.
This is not a question of superiority or inferiority.
Just as Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh possessed utterly different personalities yet stood side by side as two towering peaks in the history of Japanese baseball, Natsuho Murata and HIMARI are two immense talents, each endowed with a different natural gift, who have emerged from Japan onto the world stage in the same era.
Natsuho has music that belongs to Natsuho alone.
HIMARI has music that belongs to HIMARI alone.
And with her words about being unable to produce the sound intrinsic to her own nature, HIMARI revealed that she already possesses a musical world entirely her own.
The difference I had sensed was exceedingly slight.
The slight edge I had once felt Natsuho possessed lay precisely here.
But the moment I heard those words from HIMARI, that difference disappeared completely from my mind.
Natsuho Murata and HIMARI.
They are two supreme talents of whom Japan can be proud before the world.
And today, extraordinary young talents who can stand alongside them are appearing in Japan one after another, like brilliant stars across the night sky.
I have already written about why Japan is now producing so many remarkable young musicians.
Yet every time I encounter the performances of these young talents, I am reminded of something fundamental.
A genius is not simply someone who can play faster than others.
Nor is a genius merely someone who can play works of greater difficulty than anyone else.
A genius is someone who can already hear, within themselves, a sound of their own that does not yet exist anywhere else in the world.
HIMARI’s words about the sound intrinsic to her own nature expressed that truth more eloquently than anything else could.