First, in The Bean, a coffee shop near school, one of a group of four French tourists was taking a picture of the others and I said Voulez vous que je prenne votre photo? and was rewarded with Vous êtes français? and an enjoyable conversation, which, alas, established that I am very far from French, even the simplest words having vanished from my vocabulary. But what a pleasure it was even to stumble through a conversation en français! What a sensuous, physical pleasure: the facial muscles you use for French are different from those in English, and I don't think I'm imagining that French sounds send different vibrations through your whole head, indeed your whole body. In any case, I want to go back to France! I want my French back, my French voice, my French head and body!
And then this evening I went with my housemate to the Japan Society for a screening of some animated propaganda films from the 1930s, narrated - live - by Midori Sawato (澤登翠). Turns out that when film arrived in Japan, silent of course, it was presented by storytellers called benshi (弁士), who were often a greater draw than the films. (They tapped into long traditions of narration, such as rakugo and bunraku.) To hear Ms. Sawato do the different styles of narration and the many voices needed for the eleven short films we saw was to see why: it is her magnetism and joyous engagement that I will remember (along with a few scenes of cute monkeys besting nasty bears, eagles and octupi). There was a Q&A afterwards, where she appeared alongside a scion of the benshi family which owned the films and an American translator. She spoke, needless to say, with beautiful clarity and feeling, and it was a delight to realize I understood most all of what she was saying and then to feel it was not done justice by the interpreter's paraphrase.I didn't have a chance to actually speak Japanese, but felt a pang of recognition and nostalgia here too, the stronger, I suppose, because some of the animation we saw was aimed at children. My most important teacher of Japanese was a four year old, and if I didn't learn it as a little child I sort of did learn it as if a little child. O to get back in touch with my inner Japanese child!
Funny how much a foreign language can become part of you, not just intellectually but physically. Even, I suppose, since this involves body and mind, spiritually.
