This book is a record of Ende's talk wit three Japanese intellectuals(Hisashi Inoue, Mitsumasa Yasuno, Hayao Kawai) during his visit to Japan on March 1989. This record was first published on "Asahi Journal'(a Japanese weekly magazine that ended its publication some years ago)'s April 14, 21 and 28 issues and after published in a book.
Hisashi Inoue(1934~): a Japanese novelist.
The talk begins with Inoue's review on Edgar's pictures as "devastated, very lonely ane near a desperation." "The loneliness is that of the universe," answers Ende, commenting that the scenery of the spiritual(=ultrasensory) world Edgar tried to depict isn't devastated at all even it looks overwhelming to us. He tells furthermore on human beings' state of "homelessness" as "We gained something very important by becoming ego-equipped; the capacity of self-determination. This put us, on the other hand, definitively into a huge solitude. Nobody else can't indentify themselves with myself, and that's the situation painted on my father's pictures," showing that Ende's basic recognition on our circumstance is the same as that of the existentialists' one, symbolized by Sartre's "Human beings are comdamned to liberty."
After such an episode, Inoue talks of the youngstars who were inclined to new religious groups(Note that it was at that time that Aum Supreme Truth, a cult who would arise tens of social problems as the Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo's subways on March 20, 1995, began their campaign); "Todays' youngstars - in fact even middle-aged like us - are ubterested very much in supernatural world by feeling that this world is something more than only the real one," answered by Ende's following words: "In fact situation is similar... Yongstars are eager to be really tied with the existing spiritual world," an antithesis to the modern age when the materialistic way of thinking is prominent. Ende touches the contradiction that are deeply rooted on Europeans' thinking, "To think is one thing and to believe is another," and confer the "Einstein Roman 6" for the respective detail.
And they go into the financial system Ende was truely interested in, and Ende criticizes the current situation in which even ecologists waste the society as follows: "I saw a TV program on sea pollution, ... finished by the producer's last words that were something like 'so chemical factories should stop flowing the waste matters into the sea.' The producer stops here without developping further his thinking. Let's see why: when they stop flowing out the waste matters they'll be forced to raise their products' price. Products are now so expensive they lose their market. Consequently there'll be millions of unemployed taken in the street. In short nationals or companies who commit a sort of 'crimes'(those who go on offering low-priced but not-anti-pollution-measured products) will profit from such situation. And that's why countries like Europe, US and Japan are obliged to go toward more-consumption policy." What Ende told is currently happening in the globalized-world economy, manufacturers transfer their factories from countries with rigid ecological criteria to that of low ones, which is nothing but a movement to reduce the ecology cost that is 'irrevalent to the production(in fact the cheap workforce helps furthermore this commercial trend), and it's next to impossible to stop such tendency without changing the current economy'a principles.
Ende says, however, that the problem is even more fundamental: "Given such situation we have only two options: to go on the current way fearing that this will ruin the whole world, or to stop it fearing the massive unemployment and economic collapse. The only way to get ouver that I see is that those in the economic world notice, with their reasonable insight, that the money's system itself must change," telling that in the current capitalist economy all the economic activities are being done not to satisfy human beings' needs to consume but to gain the interest, and gives an alternative proposal quoting the Austrian case which adopted the 'second money'(it's forbidden to charge the interest by using such money) to get out of the economic crisis. "Before the adoption (of the second money) half of the residents were unemployed and the town's cash box was empty. After adopting and circulating it along with the official Austrian currency, it's just like a miracle but in fact happened, that within a year everybody became employed, the town became rich, and the official money had disappeared! When the Austrian Central Government knew it, however, they immediately forbit it because most capitalists didn't like such idea to be spread over." What's clear here is that capitalists want very much the economy to grow infinitely and forever on the current way, in other words they don't doubt the eternal growth of the capitalist economy, and do their utmost to prevent the alternative economy from being established because once it becomes popular the interest-exploiting economy can't survive any more, but I find it the problem that many economists and entrepreneurs, or economic leaders, go on ignoring the cases in which various capitalist economies went bankrupt.
Even so, Ende takes an optimistic posture on such a desperate circumstance, because he believes all the problems the modern society is afflicted with will be easily solved out once we have a certain 'measure': "The difference between our modern culture and the all previous ones is as follows: all the previous ones got their culture's measure by their previous ones while our measures can't be adquired from these, so we should foresee the future to determine how we should act." Human beings, sais Ende, have gotten out of their crises by referring to the former cases, but for our problems, such as the fortune's bipolarization, the devastated metropolitan zones that are cradle of the delinquency and the ecological crisis, we can solve them only by having another vision. For detail on this idea confer "Lack of Utopia" on "Fantasy, Politics, Arts."
After Ende told such idea, Inoue talks of many people's death of hepatitis due to the treatment they received thirty years ago to heal the tuberculosis on the spot, followed by Ende's reply: "Nowadays it's not only in the medical but in every field where people think of the immediate tratement that takes effect on the spot, without imagining what they lose instead for such quick treatment." I believe this problem is rooted on this modern society's tendency to create only narrow-sighted specialists who can't see the whole society. Specialists can deal with their major with their extraordinarily-equipped knowledge, but such dealing may be only superficial from the total viewpoint. For instance, people think of hiring policemen when crimes increase due to the growth of the poor population, but isn't it more efficient to use such money to found new companies where such poor people will be employed? In the current society such ideas are hard to hit on our heads, and I suppose this is the core.
Next theme is on the theater, since both of them have quite long experience on this field, and "the rule on the drama" is told. Inoue tells that once a man declares "I am King Lear" on the scene spectators will regard him as King Lear however humble he may seem. Ende replies to Inoue, telling the difference between movies and theater: "On the movie, for instance, coyboys must ride on real horses. On the scene, however, no real horse can appear. The symbol that can be easily identified as a horse must be shown instead," telling that on the movies everything is descriptive while theater tends to dislike such tendency, posing the following question: "The apparent and superficial reality is given up. But there must be something truely real on the scene which is recognized as a certain reality. Where will it appear?," self-answering that "It's the reality on the spiritual world." But according to him it's not something moralistic like not to be jealous after seeing Othello, but "something spiritual that can be applied for universally," that is important on the theater. Ende goes into Brecht, saying that he was once "afflicted with Brecht's theory" that aimed to create moralistic theater and criticizing him: "I suppose anything is more apt for the morality as theater, but Brecht's theory is on the contrary!" For the detail on Ende's anti-Brecht posture confer the relevant part on "Talk with Ende."
Finally "Goggolori" is talked, and Ende analyses that book's success in then West Germany because dialects were on the fashion, but Ende himself didn't appreciate such museum-visiter-like curiosity for it. What concerned him more was the future arts: "The more closer human beings are each other, the more unified our world becomes, and the more growth we share, also the more risk there'll be that everything becomes the same and that we lose our own identity," critical to the mass culture that are more and more unified beyond the borders and desiring "that the world have more and more colors." He says, however: "I don't find it good to catch such colors(=cultural diversity) from our ancient worlds' parental or genetic relations," refusing the attitude only to go back to ancient times and telling us that "what's needed is to recognize our spiritual world." He says furthermore: "We turn an hourglass upside down when all the sand falls out, and once our consciousness fell down to this world on recognizing the spiritual world instinctively. Now all the sand's fallen out, the upper side is empty, and we should turn it upside down again." meaning that we should look for our culture from our own internal world. Ende showed a similar idea for the science on "Einstein Roman 6," but I suppose here he told of the need to harmonize our internal and external world on the arts.
Mitsumasa Yasuno: Japanese paintor.
In this talk Edgar's pictures are mostly talked. Ende's comment is few because Yasuno's talk is longer, but let's see what's made clear on Ende's ideas on pictures.
First of all the deformation is talked, and Ende attributes its origin to the "idea's arts" that goes back to the 16th or 17th century. Ende says Michelangelo began it, "and such trend was revitalized this century in the expressionism." He points out the two trends on all the pictures, "that starts from the visible reality to spiritualize it and called as classicism" and "that starts from ideas and called romaniticism or mannerism," telling that Edgar belongs to the second group, "My father was well unconcerned of the expressionism's technic and sometimes behaved even indifferent to it," but it's quite natural if picture's role is taken into account. I suppose the two aspects of the reality("the superficial reality" and "spiritual world's one") on the theater, discussed in the talk with Inoue, and the two trends on the picture, above mentioned, try to represent something on the same way.
But Ende doesn't want Edgar to be regarded as a surrealist. "The surrealists' group came about after André Breton had established his theory on the surrealism. They created in accordance with a certain way: it's very similary to the so-called 'autography' influenced by Freud, which is to depict everything that surges from the subconscious area without evaluating.. My father always opposed to it," explains Ende, making clear Edgar's painting. "My father had his own technic. He remained lonely in his atelier, emptying his consciousness and creating his total awakeness. When he's really awake, some pictures surge into his empty consciousness which had a clear traits...", and the point here is his underscoring that "you can't let your thought enter." Freud, modeled by surrealists(it isn't accidental that "Civilization Desert Habitants" in his essay on "Einstein Roman 6" worship him as one of the "saints"), tried to seize all the consciousness by cause-and-effect theory and doesn't stop seeking the reason for every image, but Edgar tried to seize the whole image as it is without altering it by forbidding the intervention of so-obsessed ideas, and it's in this sense that Ende said Edgar wasn't surrealist.
Next theme is angels' and devils' existence, and Ende confesses he believes in them; "In this universe there're many other intellectual existences aside from human beings. And that's very important for the current human beings who have the so-called 'illuminated' consciousness... Such existences are imperceptible with out five senses and it's also hard to distinguish if they're good or evil... It's true, however, that human beings live and have contact together with them whether they know there're such unvisible existences or not." He tells both angels and devils exist as such beings, "They (devils) exist to prevent us human beings from being as we are," but he says such devils are indispensable, since Ende, fed up with the Western way of thinking which always divide everything into the good and the evil, tells the need for the darkness: "Why can't darkness be also so holy just as light is? No color can exist without both of them. The world which consists of only light is an unvisible and imperceptible just as the dark world is" and "In the ancient mathematics 1 is the biggest number.... since 1 includes all the conflicts into a greater integrality, unity, the unity which embraces both the visible and unvisible worlds. Such integrality is 1, and we call it the Almighty. The duality itself is already a devil... The devil isn't against God, but if you have a two-side confrontation inside it's already a devil," showing the linguistic example: In ancient German the word "Zweifel(doubt)" and "Teufel(devil)" were the same one and the Greek word "diabolos(devil: see the English diabolic, French diable and Spanish diábolo)" is derived from "two."
At the end of the talk Ende talks of the Japanese traditional culture: "Industry and technology are the result of the European thought at last. Europeans are more obliged to deal with the so-merciless result," telling European culture's self-destructive aspect and "Japan once had to give up its own culture's development to head for the industrialization. Just like grafting, Japan had to cut once its stump to set something totally different. Such internal contradiction is much bigger in Japan than in Europe," pointing out the self-contradictory aspect of the modern Japanese culture and comparing individualist Europeans and groupist Japanese: "I find it risky to do the two principles together: the groupism which emphasizes the human relations and the industrialization." It seems that Ende already predicted Japanese society's change from the lifetime employment which is on the verge of collapse to the ability-all society. I suppose Ende was the man who worried about the future of the Japanese culture which tries to demolish the groupism which was on its base.
Hayao Kawai(1928~): a famous Japanese Jungist.
Again on this talk the surrealism is discussed, and Ende tells furthermore on the difference between it and Edgar's pictures: "French surrealists like Dali tried to expose what move around on the subconscious area. My father, on the contrary, thought of it to rediscover the mythical consciousness by usind the modern forms. What he depicted isn't the bizarre accidental combination that comes from the chaos, and he tried to show a certain symbol," with Kawai's comment that "surrealism is the description of the chaos seen by the Europeans' consciousness, but your father picked up another consciousness that surges when your usual consciousness becomes weaker, and this is of course another consciousness... The consciousness your father told you can't be of the Freudian consciousness and unconsciousness but the one that surges from far below." I suppose Freud's unconsciousness suffers our usual consciousness' influence while Edgar's one lies far below such level that in our everyday life we can't nor perceive its existence.
The next theme is on the natural science. When Ende lived near Rome a German TV crew came to interview him and treated him as a barbarian when he told them why he gives some presents to olive trees as "they help me when I write": "Those who have another eye on their head must see that trees aren't the composition of chemical matters at all but a living existence which inhabits together with me on the Earth... To solve the ecological issues... we have to have internal relationship with the nature," said Ende, telling that when thinking of our environment it's necessary to think not only of the superficial problems(acid rain and rain forest' destruction, for instance) but also which kind of relationship should be build up between human beings and the environment which encircles them. Ende quotes Göthe's word "Nature answers the same way we ask her," explaining that "If we ask questions to the Nature with awe she'll give us an answer with awe and respect. But if we treat her just as to force her to open her internal lock she'll give us the criminal answer back," referring to our attitude toward her and concluding that "If we don't do a really spontaneous and free insight on her to transform a tragic ending will come, and it'll be a tremendously severe morality." If we go on building the cilivization that isn't in accordance with the Nature but consists of "exploiting"(Ende used this word on "Talk with Ende") her she'll give us a awful backlash.
On this talk various themes on the "consciousness" and "unconsciousness" were talked: For instance, the case of the Senoi tribe in the Malay peninsula who has another consciousness in the dream's world, and "(In the Western World) those who were respected by people had no sexual desire." so Western world misunderstood, believing that "they'll be respected if they give up their sex," with Ende's comment that "If the intercourse in the dream has much more impact than the real one, you'll lose your interest for the daily intercourse because it's not so exciting as that in the dream. I suppose the abstention originally meant that," or on the internal and external time depicted on "Momo", and so on..I suppose what's important can be summed up as follows: Our spirit has two fields: conscious one and unconscious one, and we live in both ones. When you have a good time you feel time passes very quick while the contrary happens when you have a tough time, but it's because your internal clock moves independently from the external one, and those who seem indifferent to the daily sexual affairs enjoy sexual pleasures in their dreams so much they don't need to expose their desire on the real world, Senois enrich their internal life by being expert of both worlds. What's important in any case is to stop thinking that only the world which is measurable with the modern natural science is realy but to deepen our consciousness on the another world.
(mig@lime.plala.or.jp)