"Frenzy on the Ping-Pong Table" and "Alphonse's Wax"—A Story About the "Ghosts" That Dwell in Tools

I saw the news that Romania had won the world table tennis championships. While the achievement itself is wonderful, I suspect many people were left scratching their heads at the scene that followed. In their joy, the team members climbed onto the ping-pong table.

To anyone who works with precision machinery, that sight is more than just "bad manners"; it borders on terrifying. A ping-pong table is not merely a wooden board. It is a piece of precision equipment, finished with dense materials and adjusted to millimeter-level flatness. As expected, the match was delayed to readjust the table. I can understand the excitement of victory, but I couldn't shake a sense of disgust, as it seemed to show a lack of respect for the very "stage" upon which they had fought.

Seeing news like this reminded me of Noa Izumi, the protagonist of "Mobile Police Patlabor."

She nicknamed her beloved labor "Ingram" as "Alphonse" and cherished it by waxing it every single day without fail. To an outsider, the sight of someone naming a massive piece of industrial heavy machinery and talking to it might seem ridiculous, or perhaps an inefficient obsession.

However, what that work depicted was the practical benefit brought about by "excessive love for tools."

The Ingram is equipped with an OS that learns the pilot's operational habits. The accumulation of Noa touching the machine every day, polishing it, sensing irregularities, and operating it as if in conversation, is etched into the machine as data. That is what leads to an overwhelming synchronization rate in critical moments and a "tenacity" that goes beyond the manual.

I like the cyberpunk worldview of works like "Ghost in the Shell," and I am interested in the concept of a "ghost" (soul) in AI and cybernetics. Much like the Tachikomas, I believe that attachment to tools or machines is not merely a matter of spirit, but something that crystallizes into a form of "intelligence" or "function."

Turning back to the feeling of climbing onto a ping-pong table: from the perspective of Western rationalism, tools may be nothing more than "means to achieve an end," and once used, they are just material objects. However, from a Japanese sensibility—or the cyberpunk perspective I favor—tools are "partners" with whom one fights, and there is something within them that deserves respect.

Now in my 50s, having handled various tools and systems throughout my work and life, I think that in the end, the things that truly help me are the "tools" I have maintained and treated with respect on a daily basis.

I have no intention of denying the culture or sensibilities of others. But to me, the madness of Noa, who quietly continues to apply wax, seems far more trustworthy than the frenzy of someone trampling a table adjusted to millimeter precision with muddy shoes.

If you do not treat your tools with care, the tools will not respond to you in kind. Is that not a truth that remains unchanged, whether in the world of sports or in a cybernetic future?