[Miscellaneous Thoughts] Contrapuntal Thinking

It is important to connect things that were thought to exist in completely different worlds.

In Arthur Koestler's "The Ghost in the Machine" (Kousakusha), the second part is titled "The Creative Mind," and it states:

"Scientific discovery is not the creation of something from nothing.

It is the combination, correlation, and integration of concepts, facts, and contexts that were originally related but have been treated separately.

This cross-breeding is the essence of creativity."

He cites examples such as Oersted's discovery of the interaction between electricity and magnetism.

【Reference Book 1】
"The Ghost in the Machine: New Edition - The Dynamics of Part and Whole" by Arthur Koestler, translated by Mitsuhiko Tanaka and Yoshiko Yoshioka

He also discusses the creativity of humor and wit.

"Previous theories, including those of Bergson and Freud, merely regarded humor as an isolated phenomenon and did not attempt to shed light on the close connection between comedy and tragedy, laughter and tears, and artistic inspiration, comic creativity, and scientific discovery," but he argues that science, art, and comedy all share a common fundamental pattern in their creativity.

He defines scientific creativity as "integrating separate mental structures that had previously been unrelated, and obtaining more than what was input from the new unity," and begins this analysis with humor.

This is because "the creative process clearly reveals itself in humor and wit," and he explains what is known as the "incongruity theory" in humor using the concept of "bisociation" (the "bi-" in association, meaning "association from two sources").

Relating to a single frame of reference (thinking on a single plane) is called 'associating,' while relating to two frames of reference is called 'bisociating.'

Creative thinking is a mental activity in which two mutually incompatible domains, two logics, or two standards operate on the same plane.

Separate mental activities that were previously unrelated are combined to produce new ideas.

He states that "in the creation of a clever joke, as well as in the 're-creative' activity of understanding it, there is a delightful mental oscillation of jumping instantaneously from one plane to another," and notes that this "instantaneous jumping" is essential to humor.

He argues that liberation from fixed ideas is important.

In Surrealism, this is a technique called 'dépaysement' (displacement).

As in the most famous example, 'as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table,' it involves placing objects in an extraordinary and accidental context.

Recent examples include Sheena Ringo's "Muzai Moratorium" and "Shouso Strip."

In haiku, techniques called 'toriawase' (combination), 'nibutsu shougeki' (two-object collision), or 'haigou' (blending) are the same.

Using only one subject is called "single-object composition."

For example, "The iron wind chime rings in the autumn wind" (Dakotsu) is a single-object composition, while "Eating a persimmon, the bell tolls at Horyu-ji" (Shiki) is a two-object composition.

In "Haiku Lesson" (Kokubungaku, July 2001 issue), haiku poet Toshinori Tsubouchi stated, "Haiku created through 'toriawase' (combination) are not so much about expressing the author's emotions as they are haiku that evoke emotion through the act of creation."

In other words, he described haiku as a device for discovering emotion.

He noted, "If you tell elementary school students to express their emotions or thoughts in 5-7-5, it forces a difficulty upon them, but with combination, it can be done very easily." He further wrote, "Combination is neither interesting nor meaningful when it can be explained rationally, but children, constrained by the 5-7-5 syllable structure, perform combinations quite forcefully. Because of this, unexpected combinations often occur, and pidgin-like haiku emerge." He also wrote, "If the relationship between the two combined elements is too close, the work becomes mundane. Conversely, if they are too far apart, it becomes difficult for the reader to interpret."

By combining heterogeneous things with things, things with people, and people with people, something new and powerful is likely born, isn't it?

By doing so, broadcasting stations and viewers become connected, and viewers might begin to think about culture by connecting it to other things we never imagined, from their own unique perspectives.

This is the same in fantasy as well.

In "The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories" (Chikuma Bunko), Gianni Rodari presented the concept of the "fantasy binomial," a technique for creating a defamiliarization effect.

【Reference Book ②】
"The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories" (Chikuma Bunko), Gianni Rodari (Author), Tomio Kubota (Translator)

He says that a fantastic story begins with the collision of two words that have a certain distance between them.

As an example, with "glass bottle" and "mountain," one might brainstorm ideas like a glass bottle inside a mountain, a mountain made of glass bottles, a mountain where trees that grow glass bottles are planted, or a mountain inside a glass bottle, and so on, expanding the story from that sense of incongruity.

If you think about "dog" and "chest of drawers," it would be interesting if there were a dog carrying a chest of drawers on its back, and it would also be interesting if there were a dog inside a chest of drawers.

A premonition that a story is about to begin is born.

Rodari said, "There is no life where there is no struggle."

He also said, "Imagination is the mind, and the mind is born in struggle, not in peace."

The poet Shelley expressed something similar with the words, "Reason respects the differences between things, and imagination respects the similarities between things."

"The Butterfly Effect" is known in chaos theory.

It is the effect where the movement of air caused by the wings of a butterfly in Beijing eventually triggers a massive storm in New York.

I would like that level of unexpectedness.

The poet Yeats once said, 'We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry,' but what we need are encounters that result in multiplication rather than addition.

In 'Orientalism' and 'Culture and Imperialism,' Said argued that 'contrapuntal' thinking is important, asserting that it is not about fusing two things together, but about making them resonate with each other.

[Reference Books ③]
'Orientalism (Vol. 1)' (Heibonsha Library) by Edward W. Said, translated by Noriko Imazawa

'Orientalism (Vol. 2)' (Heibonsha Library) by Edward W. Said, translated by Noriko Imazawa

'Culture and Imperialism (1)' by Edward W. Said, translated by Yoichi Ohashi

'Culture and Imperialism (2)' by Edward W. Said, translated by Yoichi Ohashi

In other words, in works such as Bach's 'The Art of Fugue'

'Inventions and Sinfonias'

'The Well-Tempered Clavier'

and so on, I focus on the point where the right-hand and left-hand melodies, while playing independently, resonate as if they are engaging in a dialogue simultaneously.

In 'Culture and Imperialism,' Said applies a 'contrapuntal reading' to novels by Dickens, Conrad, Jane Austen, Kipling, Camus, and others, revealing how 'imperialism' (the existence of colonies), which is the historical background of these novels, is inextricably woven into them.

He points out that in some cases, the cruelty of 'imperialism' is challenged, while in others, the existence of colonies is merely touched upon as background for the plot, but in any case, the affiliation between the work and 'imperialism' is deeply imprinted.

He saw through the created schema of 'West/Non-West' and how it easily transitions into schemas like 'civilized/savage' and 'justice/immorality'.

Also, the groundless and unreflective premonition that colonies would last forever.

Literature and 'imperialism,' which share these things, cannot escape a complicit relationship where they nourish and strengthen each other.

The idea of the 'postcolonial' (thinking that it was not Columbus who discovered the 'Indians,' but the 'Indians' who discovered Columbus) is born from 'contrapuntal thinking'.

While 'contrapuntal thinking' sounds extremely difficult, it is at the foundation of Japanese culture, particularly in comedy, as 'boke' (funny man) and 'tsukkomi' (straight man) (which can also be rephrased as 'tayu' and 'saizo'). Yes, this refers to Shunsuke Tsurumi's 'Tayu Saizo Den: What Runs Through Manzai'.

'Tayu Saizo Den: What Runs Through Manzai' by Shunsuke Tsurumi

I think it can be understood that 'tsukkomi' is vertical thinking and 'boke' is horizontal thinking.

Nothing is born from 'tsukkomi' alone.

When a bit of humor is introduced, things move forward and new perspectives emerge.

Fools often appear in Shakespearean plays as well.

When one got too pushy and was scolded by the king, the line they said was, 'If the unreasonable prevails, the fool must withdraw.'

We may not be kings, but we surely need the leeway to at least keep a fool in our service within our hearts.

If I recall correctly, the story of Sakichi Toyoda was in the Japanese language textbooks of elementary schools in the past.

It is a story about how he went to see exhibitions of British looms many times and eventually built the same thing, but in Japan, only such imitation was encouraged.

There is an English term called 'first penguin'.

It is said to refer to a person who, like the first penguin to dive into the sea, challenges unknown fields without regard for danger.

In the U.S. game software industry, there is something called the 'First Penguin Award' named after this.

It is an award presented to developers of creative and innovative software.

Perhaps we need courageous Japanese people to emerge, like the person who first ate a sea cucumber.

[Reference Book 4]
'The Eye of the Sea Cucumber' (Chikuma Gakugei Bunko) by Yoshiyuki Tsurumi

Serendipity is also known in older times as 'Columbus's Egg'.

Kekulé's discovery of the benzene ring (he dreamed of snakes biting each other's tails while riding a double-decker bus in London) and Walter Hunt's invention of the sewing machine needle with an eye at the tip (a dream where the spears of primitive people chasing him had holes in the tips!) seem obvious once you know them, but that is not the case.

When Columbus returned from the New World in 1493, he was invited to a grand welcome ceremony at the court in Barcelona, but not everyone praised him.

People began to pour cold water on him, saying, 'Anyone would hit land if they just went west. It's obvious.'

In this respect, it seems the world has not changed much even today.

At that moment, Columbus pointed to an egg and posed a riddle: 'Is there anyone here who can make this egg stand up?'

Several people tried, but no one could make it stand, and it ended up with some people getting angry.

Columbus pulled the egg toward him, tapped it lightly on the table, and showed them how to make it stand.

This was the event known as the so-called "Columbus' Egg."

However, while this story is introduced in Benzoni's "History of the New World" (1565), according to Voltaire (in "Essay on Customs," Chapter 145), it was actually Brunelleschi who did it before Columbus.

Brunelleschi is said to be the "inventor" of linear perspective and the man who completed the Duomo (cupola) in Florence.

When the competition for this difficult architectural project was held, he arrived armed with a "groundbreaking idea."

However, he claimed he could not show his model because his ideas would be stolen.

It was suggested that "if anyone can stand an egg on a flat piece of marble, why not trust that person's originality and entrust the project to them?" While all other applicants failed, Brunelleschi did not hesitate; he crushed the end of the egg and stood it on the marble.

When others complained that anyone could do that, it is said that Brunelleschi laughed it off, saying, "If I had shown you my model, you would have replied that you intended to build the cupola in that same way."

This happened half a century before Columbus, and it is possible that Columbus, who was born in Genoa, had heard this story somewhere.

Incidentally, Brunelleschi's idea was to make the cupola double-shelled.

It was a brilliant success to place an outer roof 80 centimeters thick on top of a 4-meter-thick dome, creating a lightweight yet large, hollow cupola.

As I wrote in the section on "Misunderstandings," there is a postscript to the "Columbus' Egg" story.

The "new discovery" that raw eggs could stand upright on the first day of spring (Risshun) became a hot topic shortly after the first day of spring in 1947.

Newspapers at the time reported that it had been successful in Tokyo, Shanghai, and New York.

Experts at the time explained the supposed principles, such as "the density of the contents increases when it is cold, lowering the center of gravity" or "it doesn't fall because the contents are fluid," but the evidence was weak.

It seems it was also unclear whether this was only possible on the first day of spring.

Physicist Ukichiro Nakaya analyzed this with a cool head and attempted experiments.

【Reference Book 5】
"Essays by Ukichiro Nakaya" (Iwanami Bunko), by Ukichiro Nakaya, edited by Keiji Higuchi

The conclusion is that they can stand properly at any time.

You don't have to break the bottom like in "Columbus' Egg"; the bottom has tiny protrusions like a tripod or trivet, and you just need to patiently search for the center within a narrow range.

"For hundreds of years, eggs didn't stand because everyone thought they wouldn't."

It is quite possible that human history is significantly swayed by such trivial blind spots.

This insight remains a highly useful perspective for making judgments even today.

Question common sense.

Question the underlying assumptions.

Verify things that concern you for yourself.

I believe this attitude is especially vital in our modern age, which is overflowing with vast amounts of information.

Another important point is that once you know an egg can stand, it is easy to make it stand.

As long as you have the hypothesis that it can "stand," the rest is simple.

Incidentally, one should understand that the Renaissance was not necessarily born from internal factors, but rather from the infusion of classical Greek and Roman knowledge into Western Europe via the Islamic world.

It was an external perspective that gave birth to the Renaissance.

In short, since one cannot achieve a satisfactory understanding on one's own, what is needed is to have a good friend (or someone who understands) who can objectively point out mistakes and offer advice.

Also, 1492 is the year Columbus reached America, but it is also the year Islamic forces were driven out of Western Europe.

It is ironic that Columbus's discovery was made possible because Granada, the last Islamic stronghold in Spain, fell, giving Queen Isabella the financial leeway to support his adventurous voyage.

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