From Author;
This Translation by Google have some obscure points.
So sorry.
Original text is Japanese.
Afterword
From a far way off thinking
It had been several years since I first thought of writing this modest essay on Professor Hananoi Kazumi, even if it was inexperienced, but the impetus that finally led me to want to write it last summer, 2020, came when, as I mentioned in the introduction, I heard stories and read letters from her younger brother, Mr. Hananoi Kiwamu. Each of his brief words conveyed to me as if the professor himself were speaking, important facts about her life that only a sibling could express. I would like to express my deepest gratitude for the sudden phone call I received in 2019, the letters you took out of your busy schedule, and the encouragement you provided to continue writing.
When I first decided to write this essay in 2018 and began researching materials related to Professor Hananoi, it was more difficult than I had anticipated, finding personal materials from half a century ago. When I decided to do it again last year, the people at the Academic Support Office and the Affiliated Library at Wako University, where Professor Hananoi worked until his death, listened carefully to my requests, and despite their busy schedules, they checked the storage and archives for me and sent me the materials. At this point, I became deeply aware that the creation of this essay was no longer my own. This is because I began to feel that Professor Hananoi's achievements could go beyond personal recollections and serve as a clear record of the university's early days for the people of Wako University and the young students studying there.
The legacy of this small experimental university on a hill, the countless efforts of its pioneering professors and students, and all the staff who supported and assisted them, will surely convey to everyone the preciousness of learning and how difficult it is to achieve it. From there, entirely new soaring avenues will surely be undertaken. Looking back over my own half century, I also ask myself what my late teacher meant to me. As I continue writing, one thing has become clear: the figure of my teacher overlapped with my youth.
I never spoke to Professor Hananoi in person, and in some ways he seemed a distant figure. But to me, Professor Hananoi, who was only eight years older than me, always seemed to embody, close by, my deep longing for my life's theme and research, which at the time were completely undefined, and for academia in general. French language and literature, and the faith that lies beneath them. Modern Europe, which fascinated me throughout my twenties. The unknown methods of writing and language itself. I now believe Professor Hananoi's presence was deeply connected to all of these. Because I myself had nothing at the time, his quiet, refined appearance gave me a sense of certainty, a feeling that I would probably never be able to achieve, even as I grew older, but it continued to linger in my memory.
To me, having passed the age of 70 and turning 74 this June, Professor Hananoi has always remained young and handsome. If I can convey, even in a small way, through this essay, that people can sometimes have memories that, while at first glance indirect, are deeply meaningful, then perhaps I have been able to answer the question I posed, as stated by French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973), who visited Japan as a French cultural envoy in 1966 and was fortunate enough to watch the television broadcast of his lecture "Human Dignity" at Harvard University in 1961: "I believe that essential questions can only be posed in a personal form, in the first person, when one is able to look back on one's past path, often one of groping and dictated by chance, with one's own life unfolding in the background like a familiar landscape."
Tokyo
, March 20, 2021
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