Notsudoru Nudoru

Translator’s Preface: This is my first time translating anything into English from Japanese so there are bound to be more than a few mistakes in this translation. I’m also pretty stupid so there may be parts where I have misinterpreted the meaning of a sentence and warped it into something completely different. But I think I’ve gotten the general gist of this thing correct. If you see any mistakes, just correct it for me.

Translator’s preface: As you can probably tell by the title, this is a new translation that fixes all of the errors that were present in the original. Most of this had to be completely rewritten so it is highly recommended for people who read v1 to read v2 since this is the best version.

The bothersome aspects of living aren’t new. If you don’t like that, then there’s no better idea than just dying. From the point of view of someone like me, I cannot help but lament at how desolate even people who seem to have an abundance of free time are when they get to calm down and do something like read a book. But I’m alive right now so obviously I don’t want to die. I mostly eat twice a day, but sometimes I don’t eat at all. There are times where I wash my face, times where I don’t wash my face, times where I make my bed and times where I don’t make it. There are times where I read the newspaper and times where I don’t read the newspaper. There are times where people think that I’ve been drinking in the morning. Sometimes I actually do drink in the morning. There are times where I drink for three days straight and times where it’s as if I don’t drink at all. Writing letters, going to the bathroom, talking to guests, thinking about how good it would feel to have thousands of a currency called pounds deposited into the British bank; there are times where I think about things like these. At the end of the day, I need to be able to get money somehow so the fact that writing manuscript won’t necessarily make me money is extremely troubling. But I have no other abilities so there’s nothing I can do besides writing things.

The fact that human beings have trouble getting food is both comical and extremely unpleasant. If you consider that all of the work humans do is simply so that they can live, you truly feel how pathetic all of this is. I don’t how many tens of thousands of years you’ve lived, but I can’t help but think that the current state of things wouldn’t even suit a monkey. However you think about it, human beings are worthy of contempt. Despite this, there are people who are babbling about how this is the apex of creation. If this is the apex, then I would certainly like for it act that way. Last year I made a magazine called “Nihil,” but it got scrapped after its third edition. A truly stupid thing. I tried making this piece of shit called “Chameleon” even though it may be abandoned after its first edition. Anyways, I’ve decided to make it.

Speaking only for myself, all significant problems have gone away. While I get to have the quiet life that I want, it’s only a matter of living until my death. The only thing that I can do is leave behind a few sheets of writing. If the people who read it can show me some sympathy and feel a bit of comfort upon remembering it, then I’m more than satisfied.

Even though I think of myself as very ordinary and commonplace person, the Tsuji Jun reflected in socially tinted glasses appears peculiar. This is probably something brought about from my inclination towards drinking. Everyone, when drunk, becomes irrational and crazy. It isn’t at all something that is exclusive to me. Neither do I think that I particularly surpass being ordinary. If it’s about riding on the horse’s ass of everything corporations, bankers, city councilors, teachers and all of those other philistines, then I would have long since thrown away “literature” and become a husband sprinkling water on his lawn or a mailman or something.

If someone where to ask me why I’m not an anarchist or a Marxist, it’s because unlike those people, I can’t hold an excellent “ideal.” Or rather than not being able to hold an ideal, it’s because I can’t obtain one. In the past, even I have done as much as had a dream of a utopia, but now that’s long since disappeared from my grasp. I actually even believe that the actions human beings have taken as a result of dreaming of useless utopias has only unnecessarily made life more unfortunate. If there is something like an “ideal” in me, it’s “no ideals”; it would only be the ability of human beings to become aware of the fact that they are “animals,” and innocently and freely hop around the world without spouting sophism. Though whether such a thing is possible is something that I don’t know.

I’m not a poet, but my tendency towards daydreaming is extremely strong, and worldly affairs do not interest me much. As a member of society, I am zero. But there’s nothing I can do about the fact that I was born like this. That I was able to come to live this far is close to a miracle.

I’m an outdated individualist. But I have no need to use a word as formal as an “ist.” It basically just means that “I am not you.”

It doesn’t mean anything other than “My face and your face may look alike, but we are not the same.” The existence that I call “myself” is an extremely complicated “affair” and not something as simple as an “individual.” There’s no telling what will come out if you take me and shake me around. Even among “Japanese people,” there are quite a lot of varieties of people to find. It’s just like how you wouldn’t know what to find if you went back and traced everyone’s bloodlines to closely examine them. So even with something like “ethnic characteristics,” you can’t get a hold on anything significant. This is something I feel every time I take a trip to Kansai, and no matter what, I can’t think of those people as being the same race as me. (Of course, I’m talking generally here) Even the feeling you get from the accent of the first words a person speaks to you can differ quite a bit. Sometimes I wonder if a race of traders from around Phoenicia migrated over there in the distant past.

Thinking from recent social trends, I may be considered an intelligentsia tramp. I don’t care. Maybe there are some good things about being an intelligentsia tramp, and class consciousness? There’s that too. On the whole, I think that things like sociology and economics are useless sciences. That may be extreme, but this is if you remember that there was a time where human beings were able to live excellent lives without participating in sciences such as those. Then again, these were sciences that were created as a reaction to the needs of the times.

It’s not as if I hold worldly things that normal people desire like fame, money or women in contempt, nor do I hate them. It’s just that I find contemptible people who think about nothing except those things and holds them to be the highest standard of value in this world. Therefore, not only do I not envy the bourgeois life, but I think that if their existence inconveniences a large number of people, then it would better if they were gone. But unlike the communists, I don’t agree with using violence to threaten their existence. In any situation, the use of violence can only bring misfortune among those who use it. There is nothing I hate more than people who use violence under the pretense of justice or humanity.

In Floyd Dell’s “Intellectual Bleaching,” there is a sentence in the beginning that says: “Literature is, in a certain sense, a discussion on life.” This is something that I definitely agree with. Until now, I’ve been making arguments from the standpoint of nihilism. I’m still doing that now. But it’s not as if there is a particular form of nihilism, nor is there an unchanging ideology associated with it. It’s just that various people throughout history have expressed it from their own point of view. It’s been expressed in different forms depending on the era, the country and the individual who expresses it. Even among the same nihilists, there is quite a lot of variety to be found. I think that all humans start out as nihilists. It’s just that they are either not aware of it, or that they understand it too well and just don’t talk about it. Otherwise, they are either idiots or liars.

I’ve been advocating for nihilism for quite some time now, but recently I’ve actually gotten sick of it. So I thought about changing “nihil” to “chameleon,” but I changed my mind because it will get more people to read and because it’s convenient. Humans are creatures that get tired of things, so it isn’t strange if I get tired of things too.

I don’t particularly feel grateful for the fact that I was brought into this world, but I can at least find solace in the fact that I was able to learn about the teachings of great people like the Buddha, Laozi, Zhuangzi and Schopenhauer. I’m only expressing their teachings in my own style and as their disciple. Unsatisfactory people should just run around underneath their guidance. I’m actually hoping they do so.

The reason why I first came to love “literature” is so that I could use it to learn more about life. Of course, I didn’t balance that with the need for food, money or fame. So I don’t think it’s strange that even now I can’t make a living off “literature.” Anyways, I’m way too old to be looking for a career and I can’t even find a job that I would want to do. I guess there really is no other way for me to live besides writing. It’s just that I can’t change the way I think or feel to suit the trends of the times.

The other day, after reading Andre Gide’s “On Montaigne” translated by Kazuo Watanabe in the May edition of Saneatsu Mushanokouji’s “Nebula,” I discovered the following words. Montaigne was criticized for having too much of an interest in himself, and to refute this criticism, he tried to make it clear that the greatest victory in Socrates’s self-searching idea of “knowing yourself!” could be found in learning how to belittle your own self; he also quoted from him the words “In all of the ancient thought pertaining to humans, the one that I continue to adopt for myself and that I feel the most love for are the ones that most disdain, abase and ignore human beings. That is what I generally feel.” and then he adds that Gide, without expecting this, speaks in favor of Pascal.

There is no such thing as a completely fair and unprejudiced opinion. Even I constantly hold prejudices that suit me. Marxist thought and the like are the kings of prejudice.