In the old days, we used to make New Year’s vows,
But after the earthquake and other disasters on New Year’s Day, I suddenly feel uncomfortable thinking about my own resolutions and dreams, as if they were something small and trivial.
Of course, my main job of writing is important, and I would like to spend as much of my life as possible writing, but I feel as if that is not enough.
Of course, writing novels is a personal accomplishment, and it also has social significance in the Soseki Natsume sense of leaving behind a “meaningful consciousness” in history through novels.
At that time, when I decided to focus mainly on novels that could be read by children, I began to vaguely think that one day I would like to create something like a “place” in reality as well.
This has been the case in the past and present with a variety of people, including online salons (I wonder if membership on Note is one of them), the famous Rasu Jijin Association by Kenji Miyazawa, private schools run by philosophers Yoshimichi Nakajima and Tatsuru Uchida, and even a school for children run by Reizo Fukunaga and Setsuko Hasegawa. In the past and present, people from all walks of life have tried their hand at various forms.
Recently, I was particularly interested in the “Karuizawa Kazakoshi Gakuen” created by Shinnosuke Honjo, the founder of Rakuten, which I thought was a good example of a school.
However, the term “school” or “education” is an exaggeration, and it would be a very large undertaking that is not really appropriate for the size of the school, while opening part of one’s home to children as a library, as Momoko Ishii did, seems a little different.
When Hayao Miyazaki built a kindergarten for Studio Ghibli workers, he said that “children are a nucleus of hope,” but I don’t have the energy or the financial resources to build a kindergarten.
Anyway, I was thinking that I would like to create some kind of place for the future of children, not for making money, not for educational purposes, but for the sake of my own children’s future, while holed up in a rustic hot spring hotel in Gifu watching the news during the New Year’s holidays.
As I thought about the social problems that arose from the earthquake, my desire to create a place where I could help children who have been born with a nascent hope to become adults like the sun that can erase the darkness in society became even stronger, in addition to the solutions I could offer as an adult. I have a stronger desire to create such a place. If possible, using the creation for small children as a stepping stone.
I have written this far, but it is too vague at this point, and I sometimes wonder if it is just a passing fancy, but I hope to deepen my contemplation of this kind of “place” for children a little more this year.
After all, it is my resolution for this year… See you soon!
