Recently, there was something I deeply regretted.
It concerned the Indianapolis International Music Festival, in which Lina Nakano was participating and had reached the semifinals, and its final results following the circumstances described below.
Having listened to her performance in the superb picture and sound quality of the live broadcast they provided, I became convinced that Lina Nakano would, so to speak, win by a landslide.
I immediately wrote in this column that the crown would be hers.
At that point, Saran Watanabe had also reached the semifinals among the Japanese contestants.
She performed first.
Her live performance took place late at night, Japan time.
That day, I attended a concert by the Osaka Philharmonic.
It was a historic performance.
I returned home filled with that sense of happiness and listened to her performance.
At that moment, an unexpected thought came to me.
She, too, was striving to win.
If she were a reader of this column…how would she feel if she read my essay, in which I had confidently and categorically written that the crown would go to Lina Nakano?
No, this would not do.
I must not do anything that might undermine her hard-earned determination.
It might already be too late, but in any case, I would rewrite that essay.
I rewrote it in a vein expressing my hope for a Japanese one-two finish by Lina Nakano and Saran Watanabe.
As I have already written, shortly after this column appeared, it was swept up in an explosive wave of followers from around the world.
In terms of site power, this column on FC2 not only far exceeded level 2, said to indicate considerable influence, but also ranked 34th in the world.
At the time, I watched the Grammy Awards live every year without fail.
That year, most people had not expected them to win a Grammy at all.
This column must have been the only one.
This year’s Grammy will go to Arcade Fire, I wrote, in the manner of speaking to my closest friends, explaining that they had reached a magnificent new horizon…that they had entered John Lennon’s realm.
The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Police, U2, Coldplay, and then Arcade Fire.
In light of my profound regret this time, I intend henceforth to refrain entirely from pronouncements resembling those of a pseudo-moralist.
I will speak plainly.
Among the new, very young generation that has emerged in the twenty-first century, there are no fewer than three of the world’s greatest violinists, geniuses of extraordinary magnitude…that, for some reason, they are all women is also part of Japan’s true tradition.
Twenty-one-year-old Lina Nakano, nineteen-year-old Natsuho Murata, and fifteen-year-old Himari…these three are each magnificent, each possessing her own distinctive sound, and each a genius of extraordinary magnitude.
The generation before them, too, is crowded with magnificent female violinists, like a galaxy of brilliant stars.
The generation before that is already crowded with musicians who rank among the world’s great masters.
Just as not a single human being is 100 percent perfect,
the United States, a country where “the turntable of civilization” turns alongside Japan, and which must continue to lead the world together with Japan for at least another 170 years, is by no means perfect either.
One of its shortcomings was clearly manifested in the results of this Indianapolis International Music Festival.
To begin with, the Japanese community in the United States must be overwhelmingly smaller than the Chinese and Korean communities.
Not only that, but there is an enormous difference in how loudly they make their voices heard.
Still, they, too, have a conscience.
Moreover, the difference was that unmistakable.
They placed Lina Nakano, of all things, sixth.
But there were the concerto performances with orchestra, in which it would be no exaggeration to say that the true abilities of all the finalists were put to the test.
Lina Nakano’s Bartók was a historic performance.
It was a performance that clearly demonstrated that she is a genius of extraordinary magnitude.
The jurors, by way of an apology, awarded Lina Nakano the highest prize.
Sincere readers will know that my ears are not merely for show.
The winner’s Tchaikovsky concerto…that was the performance of a highly accomplished student.
It is no exaggeration at all to say that Japan has many female violinists who can perform the same concerto as well as she does, or better.
The reason is as this column has stated time and again.
To be continued.