Nostalgic Seasons

The arrival of a new season is a joy. I am happy with both spring and autumn, and I do not think it would be better if hot summers or harsh, cold winters did not exist. No matter how comfortable it might be, I think I would find it unbearable if the climate were the same all year round.

If Chiko-chan were to ask me, "Why are people happy when the seasons change?" I would not be able to give a clear answer, and I would surely end up being scolded by her. If I were asked, I think I would answer, "Because the new season is nostalgic."

It might sound a bit pedantic, but I think there are two elements that bring joy to people's hearts: the excitement of encountering something new, rare, or unknown, and the sense of relief or comfort in encountering something known or familiar. Let us call the former "novelty" and the latter "affinity."

The reason travel is fun is that you can fully experience both of these. Especially when traveling abroad, the greatest appeal is feeling the novelty of seeing rare scenery and customs for the first time. Even so, when I say "This is delicious" at a restaurant and the staff smiles back happily, or when I see a house where someone is enjoying planting flowers in a small garden, I often feel, "Ah, even though the country is different, we are the same." I believe the joy of traveling lies in being able to fully feel both "we are the same" and "we are different." If it were a domestic trip, perhaps the weight of affinity would be greater than that of novelty.

The reason we are happy when the seasons change is not just because of the surprise of something being different—like a plum blossom that wasn't there yesterday blooming this morning, or the mornings and evenings becoming cooler in autumn—which is the element of novelty, but I think the sense of affinity, that "this season has come around again," is greater. Perhaps people feel a sense of nostalgia, thinking, "This season that I know so well has come around again." Thinking of it this way, it is understandable that people who have experienced more cycles of the seasons are more sensitive to seasonal changes than children or young people.

Conversely, people are more interested in novel things when they are young. Babies are bundles of curiosity, picking up everything and putting it in their mouths to check it out. As you know, it is written in "The Pillow Book" from over 1,000 years ago that "it is adorable to see a baby crawling, spotting a tiny speck of dust, and picking it up with its lovely fingers to show an adult."

The recent trend of enjoying "Showa Retro" is, for some reason, not limited to older people. I hear that there are surprisingly many fans of Showa Retro among young people. While older people feel nostalgia there, perhaps young people feel a sense of rarity or freshness in that era they have never experienced themselves?

There seems to be a general principle that as people get older, their preferences shift from rarity to familiarity, from novelty to affinity. If I may be so bold as to speak about myself, on a New Year's card I sent ten years ago, I wrote, "Perhaps it is because I have aged / I have come to like old things / much more than new ones," alongside a photo of the path along the earthen wall leading to the Nigatsu-do Hall of Todai-ji Temple. Calculating it, I was still in the final year of my 50s. It seems I was quite "precocious" as an old person.

June 22, 2022