Beautiful star, p.20
Beautiful Star, page 20
‘Humans will not be able to stop themselves from kissing this image of humanity at some point. Since the result is irrevocable, they will dance in circles around it for ages. However, there will come a time, inevitably, inevitably, when they cannot help but kiss that “human” limb. Let me be clear. At some point, humans will inevitably have to press their lips to it. With one brush of those lips, the dainty button on the limb will send the hydrogen warhead soaring effortlessly into the dawn sky. Ah, buttons again. He is not only human, but a button, too. What an idealistic existence. Humans are buttons discarded from childhood that have finally discovered their value.
‘But there is more. One group of sentimental humanists wants to treat the hydrogen bomb as a “thing” to the very end. Humans have muddled heads, so they do not entirely rule out the possibility that they might consider even this “final human” as a thing, if only they make the effort. After all, humans have always done it that way. But one problem is that the hydrogen bomb still remains an incomplete thing. Human beings can only guarantee their own happiness if they live surrounded by things in their completed form. On that point, no one is less willing to compromise than humanists when it comes to their beloved pipes and walking clothes with leather elbow pads. At some point, they will inevitably invest the thing-like nature of the hydrogen bomb with a sense of completion. What do I mean by completion? Simply the act of pressing the button.’
Jūichirō looked down in silence, swallowing his sense of revulsion, but the barber responded with a light clapping of his sweaty hands.
‘You are so right, Professor. The reason I cherish my wife and children, and love my beautiful family, is fundamentally because I am an extraterrestrial. It would not be the same if I were human. In fact, humans consider it good practice to be cold-hearted, especially when it comes to rich and famous families, and a really proficient gigolo regards women as things. They even say women find that more attractive. That’s humanity in its most depraved form. At any rate, even when flirting with a woman you should wholeheartedly esteem her position as a human being, and shower her with warm affection. Of course, I simply take care of my own wife and children, and have no time for such things.’
Haguro flatly ignored his companion’s concerns. ‘Secondly,’ he said, ‘the malady of human anxiety about people.
‘It is thought to manifest itself most directly through sexual desire, but actually sexual desire is not a source of humans’ anxiety. Such desire involves the act of glimpsing into the twilight world between reproduction and destruction.
‘But putting that aside, the extent to which people are constantly interested in others from dawn to dusk is astonishing. Every morning, the newspapers are crammed full of human-interest stories, and on television we see one human after another. When animals do make an occasional appearance, they are ascribed human characteristics to make them palatable. And people only talk about themselves. Even if the subject is natural phenomena like earthquakes, tsunamis or cherry blossoms coming into full bloom, everything is seen in terms of its impact on people. Nothing delights people more than to talk about people dying or being killed.
‘And so, the truly universal, popular issue that really excites interest is always humans. Astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry. These are all left to a small handful of specialists, and they never create any enthusiasm among the masses. When it comes to “political” matters that the masses get so worked up over, whatever theory or structure you clothe the politics in, it is all about people, people, people, from beginning to end.
‘For example, consider one of those dinner parties where humans indulge their anxiety about people. Words fly, there is an exchange of emotion, and everyone is happy. It feels as if they have all been old friends since the beginning of time, as if everything has melted together and everything is shared. But while that is taking place, the food picked from the same dishes and the wine poured from the same bottles make their way down each person’s oesophagus to the total darkness of their stomach. The function of individual consumption continues at a pace with no relation whatsoever to the oesophagi or stomachs of others. If there is a gathering of eight guests, then the solitary, dark tubes of eight wastage systems, invisible under the bright candles, run through each individual body.
‘Another example. Imagine a traffic accident in which a young woman has fallen to the ground, exposing her thighs. It happens to be a rainy night, and the rain spatters onto the blood gushing from her thighs, making it seem that she is wearing vivacious red mesh tights.’
The young bank clerk excitedly cut in with a lyrical outburst. ‘How right you are! Humans are nothing but fountains of blood. If they fail to produce a fountain while still alive, the problem is just that the fountain has broken down and dried up. Pigeons approach humans in search of the fountain, but they all fly away, disappointed. Even a sweet, pure-white dove loves to splash its wings in red blood!’
‘And all the surrounding rubberneckers,’ continued the assistant professor calmly, ‘stare long and hard at the distressed human girl with a mixture of bewilderment and delight. They are all aware that her suffering is non-transmissible, that each of them shoulders the “conditions” of suffering in their individual way.
‘Human anxiety about people always takes the same form. While they share the same conditions of existence, they know very well that there is no such thing as common pain, and that mankind does not possess a single stomach. You will be familiar with how quickly women forget the pain of childbirth, and yet are convinced that no one else has ever experienced such pain. Each individual believes in all sincerity that their own experience of old age, sickness and death has no connection with the rest of mankind.
‘Human beings are happy to acknowledge universality and a communal spirit when it comes to political slogans, ideas and other such things of no consequence. Harmless but pointless things, like musty old architecture and works of art, are easily categorized as a cultural legacy common to all mankind. But once suffering is involved, it becomes a real problem. If a political leader’s back teeth begin to ache in the midst of a great speech, and the teeth of tens of thousands in his audience begin to ache in the same way, it means trouble.
‘People endlessly discuss, watch and listen to others because it is the perfect way to soothe the conditions of human existence. People tolerate the existence of heroes because they know that every hero defecates in the same manner as everyone else.
‘Humans get into a frenzy searching out other humans either in order to conclude that we are all the same, or to claim that, for good or ill, we are all different. They aim to confirm either the uniformity of all conditions of existence, or the sensuous reality of each individual.
‘Let us call the former A, and the latter B. Those in the A camp all evoke thoughts of a world commonwealth. Their thoughts are rooted in nothing of consequence, they abandon themselves to a facile sense of universalism, and they espouse a unity that actually precludes real sharing. “People of the world, join hands!” “Let us eradicate racial prejudice!” These delusions all come from the A camp. But no matter how many hands you shake, as long as a white man does not fear that the pain felt in a black man’s stomach will be transmitted to his own, what good is the shaking of hands? There is something a bit insensitive, yet strangely over-optimistic and saccharine, in the concept of a world commonwealth. Oh, and by the way, the fundamental ideals of a world commonwealth inevitably lead to a frightening endpoint. Since these ideals are premised upon an acceptance of the universal conditions of human existence, common consciousness will gradually find itself unable to bear the isolated circumstances of pain, discomfort and empty stomachs. Impatient people will become utterly contemptuous of a world commonwealth. Growing old alone in a world commonwealth will seem unfair. Why should it be wrong to proclaim one’s own old age among a bunch of vivacious youngsters? People will find it intolerable if they are for ever defined as traitors simply for having rejected the concept of sharing. Surely the point is that people in a world commonwealth are born together, get old together, perish together. If the universal conditions of existence are the sole ideal underpinning this vast state, at some point that state will have to present the evidence.
‘But people will not be able to endure returning to the isolated pain of their individual, sensuous existence. After all, a world state will have been established in which, fundamentally, it is possible to close one’s eyes to such things and remain in ignorance.
‘And then, they come up with the largest instantaneous, simultaneous policy of total destruction in history. This is the single piece of evidence of human strength that the world commonwealth can provide, and the sole opportunity to fully acknowledge the universal conditions of existence. When humans liken the suffering of that woman in the traffic accident to the universal conditions of human existence within themselves, they can only vaguely identify mutual links through the power of imagination. But with the hydrogen bomb, there is no need for imaginative power. This time, isolated suffering will cease to exist anywhere.
‘Once humans have discovered the bomb as a means to carry out the instantaneous, simultaneous destruction of the world commonwealth, not much time and effort will be required. Bombs merely need to be placed around strategic points on the Earth’s surface. Heads of state, either solemnly or on a whim, just have to press the button. Like throwing a garland at a ship-launching ceremony, or cramming pigeons into a festive paper ball. In an instant, the pigeons soar up and catch the dawn light … The end.
‘And then we have those in the B camp who confirm the sensuous reality of each human individual. This group is driven by nationalistic ideals centred around both national and racial identities. In other words, their ideology is driven by pain. Unlike society at large, their ideas are disturbingly unconnected to destruction, and creepily wholesome. Their ideas are based fundamentally on individual appetites for food and sexual desire, an itchy dissatisfaction and, above all, pain. “For good or ill, I alone am different.” “How could you understand the pain I feel?” These are the sort of assertions they make, and actually, there is no way others can really know their pain. Their way of thinking is for ever trapped inside their own suffering, and they are even happy to spill their own blood to prove the point. They get by without any power of imagination, but they do know how to appeal to the imaginative power of others.
‘Since they believe in things that are impossible to communicate, there are even times when they forget the universal conditions of existence, confuse heroes with gods, and mistakenly interpret their own scabrous itching as a miracle. By miracle, I mean an individual sensuous entity transformed into universal form. If sticking a dagger into your own skin and producing a pain that makes you jump is the biggest exception in the history of mankind, how could that be anything but a miracle?
‘However, the instinct for self-preservation provides unlimited protection for these people. Such an instinct always allows humans to feel secure in the unconditional belief they have harboured since childhood. Namely, their firm belief in the miracle that, whatever happens, they alone will be saved.
‘If a man were to dash around under a hail of bullets, only he would avoid injury. If a train were suddenly involved in a collision and burst into flames, he alone would escape unscathed. If a jet crashed, only he would crawl out, uninjured, from the blackened corpses that lay scattered about. This is because the sensuous reality of each individual is something irreplaceable, more precious than a jewel, unique to the world, impervious to destruction.
‘Before long, for good or ill, the ideas forged in the B camp enter upon a dangerous experiment. The miracle must be substantiated. Some trivial incident leads to thoughts of major destruction, and the scale of destruction accumulates like building a snowman. Finally, it gets to the point where, even when the destruction of all mankind looms, people can envisage a scenario in which just one person, or the single race of a nation, is saved. It is impossible to conceive of a more alluring or attractive scene than that. In such a situation, the only thing to be done is to press the button. They simply have to press the button.
‘So, you see, when it comes to human anxiety about people, whichever side you are on, ultimately your only choice is to press the button.’
Kurita, who had been grimacing for some time, cut in before Haguro could finish.
‘Professor, I don’t like the way you’ve excluded the matter of sexual desire. It’s not so much the destruction of all mankind I’m interested in, but the destruction of all women. Even while women lie on their backs with their legs open, they find men utterly contemptuous, and yet men feel the urge to reproduce with them. There’s obviously something ominous and dark about mankind.’
‘You’re talking of women, but wives and children are an exception,’ the barber broke in. ‘Provided human wives have splendid husbands, they never fail to show respect, although it can lead to trouble if both man and woman are human …’
Professor Haguro ignored this idle exchange and continued to elaborate his theory to Jūichirō, whose head was still nodding silently.
‘Thirdly, the fateful malady that is human anxiety about God.
‘What we call God was a really cunning invention. It came about by placing ninety per cent of knowledge attained by humans into the realm of mankind, and by entrusting the remaining ten per cent to the management of God. The point where human knowledge shifts ambiguously into a vast emptiness was placed in the manager’s hands. Humans could not bear the loneliness of standing guard at the frontiers of human knowledge. And so, the mercenaries that we call God assumed the role of guards in exchange for immense reverence and monetary offerings at the altar. As the borders of human knowledge expanded, the frontier guard outposts became increasingly distant. The citizens of the capital could no longer easily see the mercenaries’ faces. However, people held firmly to the old belief that the mercenaries were still there in their distant posts, keeping people safe. Humans were reminded of this every time they saw a distant rainbow at dawn. They imagined the white-bearded mercenaries blowing trumpets in their faraway barracks, their polished spear tips in rows, as they formed lines in the compound before the break of day.
‘People delight in describing God as Truth and Justice. But God is not actually Truth, or Justice, or even God. God is nothing more than a manager, designed to maintain the ambiguous seam between human knowledge and nothingness, blurring the borders between reality and the unreal. The reason for this is that humans cannot bear any chasm between existence and non-existence. Because, once the concept of “the absolute” has arisen in a person’s mind, the gap between the relativity of all things in the world and “the absolute” becomes insufferable. Somehow, the border guards stationed far away seem to link together the world of relativity and the absolute. And all they have for weapons and protective helmets are the hard work and financial support of humans.
‘These mercenaries have been working hard for thousands of years, and humans have never lost touch with them. The philosophers of Scholasticism prattled on about the bogus, finite existence of humans, and about God alone being in possession of true existence. Fear that the mercenaries might not exist was all that was needed to generate the feeble power of their human imagination.
‘But what if every mercenary disappeared? Nothingness would immediately breach the frontier and destroy the towns built by human knowledge, inundating the houses of the capital right up to their windows. When people awoke in the morning, washed their faces and opened the windows, only nothingness would be visible out there. When they scampered downstairs, they would tumble headlong into the abyss. If they lifted the lid to the pickle tub, the jet-black face of nothingness would stare right back at them. Any attempt to arrange flowers in a vase would lead to the flowers falling straight down through the bottom of the vase into nothingness.
‘Everything would lead to nothingness. If you sent a telegram, it would be delivered into nothingness and never come back. Every train leaving the station at dawn would chunter off into nothingness, never to return. Human voices would be changed into eternal echoes, and every cry would be soaked up by nothingness, like blotting paper. If you opened a window and threw a body out, it would slither down into nothingness, so that murderers would never have to worry about handling corpses.
‘Such were the human misgivings and the high price that the mercenaries extracted from their masters. And humans always listened with delight to the phoney reports of the border guards. The guards were just managing things, but they made false claims about bravely engaging in endless sporadic skirmishes.
‘This is my rough sketch of the web of lies centred around God in human culture. Thanks to their relationship with God, humans have somehow managed to avoid directly confronting nothingness, non-existence and the absolute. And so, even now, humans are almost entirely ignorant about nothingness in its true sense. Humanism still clings to a foolish, blind belief that the totally destructive theory of nothingness did not arise from within human culture, that human knowledge is incapable of creating nothingness.
‘But is that really so? When nothingness proceeds downstairs to the ground floor, it keeps on falling straight into the abyss. You try to create an arrangement of flowers in a vase, and you end up sending them flying into the chasm. In other words, the very moment you instigate a purposeful, wilful act, that act is betrayed, the purpose is exceeded, and action tumbles endlessly into meaninglessness. You dive into meaninglessness as if that was always your intention. Every small blunder is swallowed up into a giant pool of destruction. This has been happening throughout time in the human world, and it constitutes the essence of nothingness.
‘It has been taking place all over the world from the beginning of the twentieth century. But human beings, ever ignorant of the true nature of nothingness, still believed they were protected by God, by those border guards. These small events, repeated here, there, and everywhere were what you might call the preliminary esquisses of nothingness. And scientific technology lit the fuse of ubiquitous nothingness with eerie accuracy. Now, scientific technology is not as rational as humans think. Rather, it is an opaque impulse in abstract form, the systemization of the human nightmare since the days of alchemy. When humans dream of the appearance of an unforeseen monster, scientific technology offers confirmation that humans have already anticipated that monster. And so, the day finally arrives to realize the emptiness in which humans are already steeped. Like a crazy, giant rose with deep-red petals, nothingness is cultivated by the human hand for the first time. I am talking about the hydrogen bomb.
