This rough draft, dated December 10, 2024, begins with a dedication: to present today’s photographs of Korakuen and summer to readers around the world, accompanied by Chopin’s Barcarolle performed by the greatest pianist alive.
The author recalls how YouTube unexpectedly played the Barcarolle that morning, performed by a highly acclaimed world-class pianist, only to then encounter Maurizio Pollini’s recording when checking the play time.
Even immediately after hearing a universally respected master, the author still feels “Pollini is the greatest in the world,” likening him to Shohei Ohtani in the realm of the piano.
He explains this certainty by tracing it back to a formative year in his final year of high school, when he spent every day listening to NHK-FM from morning to night, absorbing the sound of virtually every major pianist, violinist, conductor, and orchestra of that era.
He never tried to use music in a pedantic way; for him “music is sound,” and it was pure listening that sustained him through the traumatic period when the path he was meant to follow suddenly vanished.
After that came the Beatles and Bob Dylan, whose records accompanied his struggle to make a living on his own, to the point where he now feels he may have been the person who “lived most closely together” with those two artists anywhere in the world.
Claiming his own genius—citing an IQ in fifth grade equal to that of high school upperclassmen—he describes how all of his mental powers resonate with Pollini’s Chopin as it plays on YouTube late into the night, even as he now lives by a disciplined routine of sleeping at 10 p.m. and rising at 6 a.m.
The text closes by recalling New Year’s Eve 2020, when he switched off NHK’s Kōhaku Uta Gassen and discovered the “super-superlative genius” Murata Natsuho on YouTube, promising that this essay will continue in a later installment.

I send today’s Korakuen and summer photographs to readers around the world, together with Chopin’s “Barcarolle” performed by the greatest pianist in the world.
December 10, 2024.
The following is a rough draft.
I send today’s Korakuen and summer photographs to readers around the world, together with Chopin’s “Barcarolle” performed by the greatest pianist in the world.
This morning, for the first time in a while, the “Barcarolle” came on from YouTube.
The performer is an extraordinarily outstanding pianist who enjoys worldwide renown.
In other words, he is one of the true masters, a grand master.
Today in Okayama the weather was supposed to be clear.
I was thinking that after I got home I would upload the photos together with his piano.
When I opened YouTube to check the playing time, I saw Pollini’s “Barcarolle.”
I immediately listened to it.
He really is the greatest in the world.
Even right after listening to a performer everyone recognizes as a great artist, I instantly think so, and that is no exaggeration to call another dimension altogether.
Pollini is the Ōtani of the world of pianists.
If you ask why I can tell something like that, it is because the first-rate recognize the first-rate, and geniuses recognize geniuses.
To be specific, as I have already written, I spent my entire third year of high school, from morning till night, listening to classical music on NHK-FM.
The mornings began with baroque music.
Back then, NHK-FM broadcast every day the performances of truly illustrious world-class pianists, violinists, conductors, and orchestras.
So I had listened to the sound of almost all the great performers in their respective fields at that time.
As I have also written before, unlike M, who makes being a writer his family business, or H, who in fact does nothing more than imitate him in everything, I never had the slightest desire to use music in a pedantic, showy way.
That is why I never once thought about listening to music systematically or studying it in an academic fashion.
“Music is sound.”
All I did was listen intently to the sound of the great performers.
Those days, when the path I ought to follow was, one day, at one moment, suddenly closed off and vanished, were days I could do nothing to resolve, and I cannot express how much listening to that music saved me.
Even now, as I write this, it is no exaggeration to say that I am realizing this for the very first time.
That is why my sense of hearing toward music is not ordinary.
It is no exaggeration to say that to be able to listen to an extraordinarily outstanding great performer and then, upon hearing Pollini’s sound, instantly feel that he is the greatest in the world, is not an ordinary sensitivity.
So, to put it in extreme terms, from the very first note, the first-rate comes to know the first-rate, and the genius comes to know the genius.
The reason is that, as the price for having lost the kind of life where you all go around saying, “I am a graduate of Todai or Kyodai,” at the very least I spent a full, solid year of my life listening to classical music every single day (recording it when I could not hear it live).
After that period of listening to classical music, I began to listen to the Beatles and Bob Dylan.
From then on I listened almost exclusively to rock, starting with them.
Until now, I had never once thought of my life as a struggle, but now, when I think of my classmates, I realize that my life was a struggle completely beyond anything they could have imagined.
I somehow managed to support myself by my own efforts and keep going.
It was truly a struggle.
“The wise hawk hides its talons.”
That was the way of life I followed as if it were the rule.
In that era, the ones who saved me were John Lennon and Bob Dylan.
Although my third year of high school was all classical music.
Perhaps I was the person in the world who lived the most together with those two.
Because I lived together with their sound, I did not think of my own life as a struggle.
This is only natural, because they were truth and universality.
That is to say, I was living truth and universality together with them.
The reason I started saying that I am a genius (my IQ in fifth grade of elementary school was already the same as that of upperclassmen in high school) is that there was no longer any need to hide it.
A moment ago I caught myself wondering why I am writing all this tonight.
I see now that all this time Pollini’s Chopin has been playing on YouTube.
Tonight, just as when I first heard him, I am listening to his sound.
It is no exaggeration to say that my every bit of knowledge and power is resonating with his sound.
Even so, tonight I will stop here.
Because nowadays I basically live by going to bed at ten and getting up at six.
I will end this piece around here and move on to the work mentioned at the beginning.
On the night of December 31, 2020, I decided there was no point in watching Kōhaku Uta Gassen any longer and started watching YouTube instead, and as I have already written, that was when I discovered the ultra-superlative genius Murata Natsuho.
This piece will be continued another day.