My Hokkaido Affection: From My Personal Pillow Book
by Alfred F. Majewicz (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland, COE-Foreign Visiting Fellow,
SRC, 1997-98)
As if a
little unexpectedly
- but the calendar excludes any unexpectedness - Hokkaido has evidently
entered
the period of its beautiful yet far too short autumn and what is only
to
be regretted is that I am not in the position to be roaming the
enchanting
and spectacular, really breathtaking natural recesses of the Island's
northeastern
Shiretoko Peninsula.
Soon, however, all will be over: the colorfulness of autumn will
inevitably surrender to the overwhelming whiteness of Hokkaido's long
and heavy-snow-abundant winter - which most probably I shall not
witness this year having already left for my academic duties in Europe
and my quiet seclusion in Steszew, a
tiny sleepy township some 25 kms from my Poznan Alma Mater, where
winter is
expected to be much more severe than in Hokkaido, with temperatures
falling for long periods below -30�Ž, but usually with little snow.
For Hokkaido inhabitants, the dosanko, and for the Ainu, a prolonged
and very snowy winter is just a normal yearly occurrence; they have
mastered coping with it and take it matterfactedly. I also had a chance
to learn to
live with it having experienced its hardships at least four times. It
may,
nevertheless, turn quite challenging for another current visitor at the
SRC,
Professor Mordechai Altshuler from the mild Mediterranean climate of
Israel...
My relation to Hokkaido appears to be very special, very emotional,
although, to be frank, the source of this virtual passion remains
unclear and hidden also from myself. The fact is, however, that this
kind of attitude is deeply rooted, it sits somewhere inside me.
This is my sixth or seventh visit to Japan, and although I have been to
quite a number of countries, some revisited more frequently than Japan,
it is Japan where I seem to have spent more of my time abroad than
anywhere else. And as far as I can recall, every time I visited Japan I
also set my foot
on the soil of this ancient homeland of the Ainu. Every time I came to
Japan
it was either with the premeditated purpose to stay in Hokkaido or even
if
the destination of my visit was far away from this northernmost major
island,
some internal imperative directed me here.
As many people have frequently asked me about the origins of my ties
with Japan and my persistence in revisiting Hokkaido, about my
interests related to Japan, where I learned the language from, and the
like, I found this little essay which Ms. Mika Osuga had commissioned
from me for the Slavic Research Center News an ideal opportunity to
try, at least in part, to approach these questions and share this rare
confession of mine with any potential reader of this text.
As with most of the events and undertakings in my quite adventurous
scholarly career, my first contacts with Japan were quite incidental.
As early as in
my secondary school years (my education consisted of seven years of
primary school followed by four years of secondary school before
starting university - the standard in Poland in my era, surviving with
little change till these days) I started actively manifesting interest
in languages by collecting dictionaries,
grammars, and handbooks of as many of what are now euphemistically
labeled
"lesser-used languages" as possible in addition to all major languages
from
beyond Europe. This collection, nota bene, has been growing for years
to
become now one of the richest and renowned collections in private hands
globally. In my university years I was also relatively well known for
being fluent
in well over a dozen of European tongues, and although my university
studies
initially focused on pre-English (Anglo-Saxon) and Early and Middle
English
literature, and I still today cherish the memory of my academic teacher
of
these subjects (were it not for him exposing to me in the dull years of
socialism
to the very essence of "Academicness" I would have almost surely
dropped
out of university altogether), my MA thesis turned out to be in
linguistics, examining the verb-phrase structure in English,...
Japanese, Chinese, Swahili, Eskimo, and some 75 other languages of
varying genetic affiliation, at times drastically different from one
another.
Precisely at the time of my graduation in 1973, a new Institute of
Linguistics was created at Adam Mickiewicz University and I was
persuaded to undertake a position there. Thus, I became associated with
the University for years to come, till the present, assuming all
consecutive positions in the said Institute to become its first
director elected in a popular vote. I turned out also to be its last
director, as the Institute split into two institutions, one
specializing in linguistics, the other in Oriental studies. I became
director of the latter and by that time my interests in Japan and, more
generally, in the East had of course become professional.
It was not, however, so at the start of my academic involvement.
Nevertheless, the first task I was assigned was nothing less than
writing a monograph of the phonological system of... Japanese. Although
not enthusiastic with the
subject, I dutifully completed the job: I received my PhD for the book
around
1978 and it has since been published.
While preparing for the above task I intensively inspected
Japanological bibliographies to find to my astonishment that a number
of Polish names had been recorded as being associated with the study of
the Ainu. At that time I knew little of the Ainu aside from the fact
that such a people existed, so I became intrigued with my discovery
only to learn about the existence of Bronislaw Pilsudski's old records
on wax cylinders of Ainu folklore made in 1902-1903. I found the
collection in an extremely miserable state of preservation
but examined it scrupulously and made extensive notes.
In 1976 I was very unexpectedly sent to Japan - without any solid
preparation and without any plan for studying. I landed at Kyoto Sangyo
University where nobody seemed to expect or need me, with very meager
means of self-support. From any point of view, there was anything but
responsibility in the very decision to have sent me there but,
fortunately for me, of JapanÕs three leading linguists at that
time two were working at Kyoto Sangyo - the late Professors Hisanosuke
Izui and Shichiro Murayama. As I look back now, I was not only too
stupid, but above all too immature and too unprepared to
fully realize the opportunities of contact with these two eminent
scholars. Nevertheless, I shall never forget how kindly the two
expressed their interest in my humble person. It was Professor Murayama
who persuaded me to put my notes on Pilsudski's cylinders into some
orderly article and send the latter to... Hokkaido University, to the
Hoppo Bunka Kenkyu Shisetsu. I did so but for a long time there was no
response and finally what I received was "Mr. Majewicz, actually, who
are you ?." It sounded terrifying but I learned they wished to publish
my paper and simply wanted to identify a prospective author for an
appropriate citation. This was probably the moment that triggered my
affection towards Hokkaido. I secured enough money to undertake my
first ever trip to Hokkaido in March 1977 prior to my departure from
Japan. I remember
that when I announced my decision to travel to Hokkaido to my
acquaintances in Kyoto and my bar companions in Osaka, it met with
their utmost astonishment and disbelief: to go to Hokkaido where "there
is nothing" proved to be beyond their comprehension. This recollection
as well as the abundance of others from my extensive travels all over
Japan show how little people south of Aomori
know about Hokkaido.
The purpose of my later consecutive stays in Hokkaido, including the
present one with the SRC, is related to my preparation of the
manuscripts of the Collected
Works of Bronislaw Pilsudski. Volumes One and Two are expected to be
released
in the near-future - the first proof-reading in its entirety and most
of
the second proofs together with the compilation of numerous indices
have
been finished with the enormous help of my wife Elzbieta during this
stay
at the Center. I hope to be able to say soon that we all performed a
wonderful
job.
As for the rest of Japan - I
have visited many places of greater or lesser interest, touching the
westernmost point at Yonagunijima, southernmost inhabited spot at
Haterumajima, easternmost cape Nosappu, climbed up the tower there to
photograph Habomai, and the northernmost Benten islet a few dozen
meters north from Cape Soya inhabited by birds only. I have seen the
three most renowned magnificent views of Miyajima, Matsu-shima (to
repeat, after Basho, "Matsushima, Matsu-shima, ah, Matsushima,") and
Amanohashidate (this disappointed me a bit, frankly). I failed to cover
the entire south-north stretch of the
Shinkansen, traveling from Hakata "only" to Sendai, but reaching Hakata
from
Nishi-Kagoshima by train well compensates the doubtlessly shorter
Sendai-Morioka stretch.
As for Hokkaido - I have managed to travel almost everywhere. During
the present stay with the SRC, this field-study inspection was enriched
by visits to Teuri, Yagishiri and Okushiri islands and to Matsumae and
Hiyama.
Almost none of these trips was undertaken exclusively for tourist
purposes - all of them turned out to be well-planned and necessary
study tours well-documented with thousands of photographs, notes, and
an abundance of other material locally
collected and preserved in my Steszew archives. It will be solely on
those
collections that Japanese studies at Poznan may for years be based upon.
I have never been to Shikoku, Daito, and Ogasawara, and in Hokkaido
what remains to be visited is the seashore between Setana and Iwanai,
and between Soya and Lake Saroma. Thus, at least one more visit to
Japan - and to Hokkaido - seems indispensable to fully mature to write
a long-since planned book on
Japan, my Japan, as I experienced it, throughout the period of over
twenty years, covering - hopefully - its entire territory.
What I have been interested in since my first contact with Japan, and
still pursuing today, is a large project labeled Hokkaido and Ryukyu -
two poles of the Japanese ethnosphere. When I started proposing it to
different institutions in Japan over twenty years ago, the response was
utterly negative. Now, one
only has to visit large bookstores to see how hot the issue has become.
The last question to approach here is that of the language. Frankly, I
never learned Japanese. I never had a single minute of regular
instruction in the language with a teacher correcting my (horrible at
times Ñ theoretically
I often realize my mistakes immediately upon committing them, as
theoretically
I am much better acquainted with the language) mistakes. Simply, I had
to
deal with Japanese-language sources, I had to survive far from big
cities
in villages where nobody could communicate in any other language than
Japanese. Besides, it is my personal policy to at least try, out of
respect and courtesy
for the people hosting me, to communicate with them in their own
vernacular
if they wish so. The results vary: there are days when I perform better
and days of failure. There are individuals with whom I can find almost
complete
mutual understanding and persons immune to any communicative
cooperation. There are subjects that I can discuss with little
constraint and subjects
totally incomprehensible to me Ñ be it in life, or in mass
media. Generally, I can easily survive with my abilities and I shall
always appreciate
and be grateful to the Japanese for their readiness to try to
understand
me and for their appreciation of the very fact that I do try. Although
my
communicative abilities in other languages are far better than those in
Japanese,
most Japanese prefer to communicate with me in their own language which
puts
me in a somewhat disadvantaged position when compared with my foreign
colleagues
in Japan but I appreciate it as long as my efforts are noticed and also
appreciated.
As for the beauty of the Japanese autumn, this year I appreciated
it in
full bloom in the Jozankei area on my way from Okushiri, where I had
been trapped for some days by rough seas, to Sapporo to pick up my
plane ticket for a survival trial in southern Sakhalin. There - I did
survive.
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