Word! The Language Column
Haibun, or How I Learnt to Limp from Book Learning about Japan
![Word! The Language Column, 79th Edition Illustration: A person with a speech bubble in the form of a book on which the letters B, U, C, H (German for “book“) can be read.](/resources/files/png138/sprachkolumne_79-formatkey-png-w320m.png)
Our new columnist Jan Snela thinks back on his trip to Japan a few months ago, interweaving recollections with reflections on the books he lugged around – or didn’t.
By Jan Snela
It’s been three months since my trip to Japan and I’m wondering: Which books did I bring along? I’ve been rummaging around for clues between a duty-free bottle of sake and a couple packets of those truly Irresistible Rice Crackers & Peanuts you can get at any Combini (late-night convenience shops in Japan); between a notebook page on which Kimie, my bed-and-breakfast hostess in Kamakura, jotted down a haiku by Matsuo Bashō in kanji (Japanese characters) as well as in a phonetic transcription and in English translation, and four iron balls I nicked from the Pachinko Parlour in Nara, not to mention dozens of receipts – no idea now why I held on to them. All in vain. I can’t find even a fragment of a quote on any of the various slips of paper I actually did scribble on.
Enough ballast for a backache
![Book Barthes closed Closed book with the inscription “Roland Barthes - In the Realm of Signs”, next to it a glass with a clear liquid](/resources/files/jpg1242/barthes_glas-formatkey-jpg-w320m.jpg)
![Book Barthes open Open book, next to it a cup with coffee](/resources/files/jpg1242/buch_tasse-formatkey-jpg-w320m.jpg)
An old couple
![Café couple Two people wearing breathing masks sit opposite each other at a counter, both seem to be very concentrated on one task each.](/resources/files/jpg1242/3_personen-formatkey-jpg-w320m.jpg)
How the two of them would wait till evening to talk, animatedly and yet with restraint, about the strangers who’d come into their establishment that day = one of those dialogical meditations to be found in Ōe, chance signs as meaningful clues. Though driven by the exact opposite of the European yen to solve the mystery or riddle sooner or later.
Barthes, Philemon and Baucis
Two hours in the Empire of Signs. With a backache. And a classical music station playing at the bottom of my aural consciousness. Was this still the Western inner radiophony that keeps the uninterrupted conversation with one’s self going, or was I already hearing the echoless cut = the “end of discourse”? In any case, Fi-le-mon and Bao-tsi remained silent for the duration of my stay there.Incidentally, I was in Japan to do some research for a book. More precisely: for a haibun. I’d like to tell you about it right here, right now, but it’ll have to wait till next time. Many years ago, a Japanese woman I met at a garden party told me that the Japanese don’t like articulating more than 60 per cent of a thing. Besides, I’m already well over the roughly 3500-character limit for this column.
Word! The Language Column
Our column “Word!” appears every two weeks. It is dedicated to language – as a cultural and social phenomenon. How does language develop, what attitude do authors have towards “their” language, how does language shape a society? – Changing columnists – people with a professional or other connection to language – follow their personal topics for six consecutive issues.