Apparition of the Seventh Sense.

There is a novel by Midori Ozaki called 'The Seventh Sense Wanderer'.
It is a story about a girl who wants to write poetry that resonates with the 'seventh sense,' which lies beyond the so-called 'five senses' like sight and hearing, and even beyond the sixth sense of intuition.

When I read it a long time ago, perhaps when I was in high school, I didn't really understand what it meant to resonate with the seventh sense. But now, having experienced the existence of Yuzuru Hanyu and his skating, I understand it well.
Skating that resonates with the seventh sense—it was right here.


Of course, there are times when a certain scene is burned into your eyes, or a specific phrase just won't leave your ears,
but I also think that what remains last in human memory is the 'feeling one had when experiencing an emotion.' Not the emotion itself, but the 'feeling when holding that emotion.' Of course, that is something the 'brain' feels, but where do we feel our heartbeat, the surging in our chest, the sensation of blood circulating—sensations that are both any and none of the five senses?

I was just re-reading the note I wrote when I watched 'notte' two years ago, and I was surprised to find that I had forgotten 90% of the content, thinking, 'Oh, so this is what I was thinking, this is what I was saying.'
From the moment I write something myself, I forget 90% of what I wrote.

However, the feeling of 'wow' I had when I saw Carmina Burana remains.

The exhilaration I felt when watching this year's 'Happy End'—'What!?? This is insane!!!! Without exaggeration, this is the greatest masterpiece ever!!!!'—still remains. (Don't you say that every year?)(I genuinely think so every year, so it can't be helped.)

Even if I eventually forget the details of the choreography, the execution of the jumps, or what the music was like, the feeling of exhilaration remains.
I can recall the emotion from that time, the feeling of that emotion welling up.
And because the emotion of a first-time experience can only be obtained that first time, I go to watch figure skating just for that.



That said, 'resonating with the seventh sense' is hard to put into words, but I feel it isn't just a simple 'emotion' that can be converted into words like 'amazing,' 'moved,' or 'cried.'

The apparition of a memory that shouldn't exist, the pseudo-re-experience of feelings held when witnessing a phantom that could never happen in reality, a nostalgia or pathos like one feels when looking back on this memory from the distant future, a feeling that makes one want to cry.

Even though it is here now, it is not so much an emotion that is here now, but rather a feeling I am pseudo-experiencing for some reason, as if looking back at the present from the future. An illusion.
The transcendence and reversal of time and place.

The seventh sense.

This year's notte stellata 2026 had a slightly different opening production than usual. It started with Yuzuru-kun's narration playing in total darkness, followed by the audience's penlights (flashlights) all lighting up at once, which was just like a starry sky in the darkness. But after that, seeing Yuzuru-kun glide out from the front, I thought, without exaggeration, 'There is a goddess.'

I was surprised at how truly soft the traces he draws on the ice are when seen in person after he appears.

Yuzuru Hanyu is known for having 100 different 'animation directors' depending on the program or situation, but what surprised me quite a bit while watching from the arena short side this time was that the 'art style of his skating and traces' also differs depending on the song.
Skating has individual characteristics; there are those who are profound and heavy, the fluffy marshmallow skating like Yuma's, the aesthetic style like Jun-hwan's... etc.
In notte stellata, it didn't look like he was skating so much as it looked like the trail of a swan swimming on the water's surface. It wasn't 'traces made by cutting the ice,' but 'traces of a lake rippling.' It was such gentle skating and traces that I was genuinely stunned, thinking, 'Seriously, how is that even possible?' It was truly a god-like technique.
That was not on ice. It was a lake.
It seems that when it comes to Yuzuru Hanyu, he can even make you hallucinate that the texture of the ice has changed.

A phantom of a goddess. Just as stars are always there but can only be seen when darkness falls, she is a goddess who comes when people raise their faces in the depths of despair, spinning threads of light that keep them tethered to this world.


This is not a poem; it is a fact.
(Oh, I know the way to the hospital, so I'm fine.)



To digress slightly from notte, I love Yuzuru-kun's program, Ballade No. 1. Whenever I hear that music and see the program, the back of my eyes feel tight, and I feel like I've watched a movie that doesn't exist. This illusion.
My hearing isn't great, but every time I watch Yuzuru-kun's Ballade No. 1, I think about the hearing I will gradually lose in the future, thinking, 'Eventually, I won't be able to hear this song.' Perhaps it is this illusion of the impermanence of things that are not eternal—like the premonition of loss for a future like cherry blossoms destined to scatter—that makes me feel this way, as if 'this moment is lost the instant it is skated.'



Am I conveying this well?
I don't think I am.
After all, the sensations that can be conveyed in words are only a small fraction.


There is a common phrase like 'My thoughts are being put into words!', but personally, I don't really like seeing others say that or being told that myself.
Of course, the process of organizing thoughts into language is important, but I believe there are more thoughts in this world that cannot be turned into 'words'.


For example, the feeling that wells up from your body or the back of your eyes when you listen to wonderful music. Music.
You can describe your impressions in detail with words, or express the 'language' of music by putting melodies as notes on a staff, but what is there is more than just the vibration of air, and it should never be replaceable by a single simplified piece of information.


'Emo' (emotional), the Reiwa version of 'okashi' or 'aware,' is a very convenient word. The things 'emo' encompasses exist infinitely for each person, but what the word 'emo' conveys is probably not the word itself, but the emotions, concepts, and sensations we feel when we encounter something 'emo.' We are actually sharing sensations and concepts that haven't been turned into words. (I don't know if they are truly shared, though.)



Words are merely a package for arranging things concisely and clearly so they can be conveyed to others.
And they often lie (even to oneself).
Norms and ethics, such as 'you shouldn't think this' or 'you should think that,' can overwrite the true feelings that might have crossed your mind for an instant with words, and eventually, that becomes the 'truth'.
A few days after the earthquake, among those who lived far away, whose homes weren't destroyed, and whose families and friends didn't die, and who didn't suffer any direct damage, I don't think there was a single person in this country who didn't truly think, 'I'm tired of hearing about the earthquake forever, stop being so noisy about bonds, I want to see fun things, I hate this atmosphere where we have to pretend to be serious.' But perhaps, while many people lost their families, or were working desperately, sacrificing sleep and food to search for survivors, secure morgues, provide medical care, and fix broken cities, they felt they shouldn't think such things, so they overwrote them as if they hadn't thought them.
Or, they self-justify their awkwardness by wrapping such true feelings in a plausible-sounding grand cause, like, 'It's not that people who weren't affected shouldn't have fun; in times like these, people who are alive looking forward and keeping the economy moving leads to reconstruction.'

But even those people, seeing the situation where people died in a sudden disaster, must have had some emotional scars, and on the other hand, it must have been true that they had a hard time enduring the feeling of having to stay immersed in that pain head-on. Emotions are not zero or 100.
This, too.


When you put things into words, everything becomes 'plausible.' It's easy to cling to that 'plausibility.'
In the process of 'verbalizing' and organizing things so they can be conveyed to others without violating one's own ethics, in the process of peeling and shaping them like fruit on a plate, I feel that many things that are truly there are being stripped away.

Of course, the ability to convert one's thoughts into words varies from person to person, but one's own emotions, which can never be replaced by the five senses or language, belong only to that person. Yet, to hallucinate that everything has been spoken for by riding on the words of someone who is just a little better at manipulating language is nothing more than a simplification of thought and laziness, and it's a huge waste. Isn't there a part of your own emotions and thoughts that were stripped away in the process of piggybacking on someone else's words?

Thoughts that cannot be expressed by words alone.



I almost cried when I saw 'Arigato Usagi (lol)' written on the skates Yuzuru-kun wore at the time of the earthquake, which were displayed at the 'Yuzuru Hanyu and Sendai City Exhibition'.

The phrase 'Arigato Usagi' from the AC Japan 'Greeting Magic' commercial.
It's been 15 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake, so it might not ring a bell for high school students or younger, but for those over a certain age, it's something strongly linked to memories of the earthquake.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred, corporate commercials on TV were suspended due to the unprecedented disaster, and everything was replaced by AC commercials. As a result, we were forced to hear that phrase that stuck in our ears so much—'Konnichiwa (Konichi-wan)~ Arigato (Arigato Usagi)'—hundreds of times between news reports (to the point of almost becoming neurotic).


I wasn't a fan of Yuzuru-kun back in 2011, so I don't know the details of the feelings or the process that led him to write that; I might be completely off the mark.
Seeing that the other skate had gratitude written to the skates that let him jump, perhaps in the process of writing 'Thank you,' he suddenly remembered that 'certain phrase'—'Arigato Usagi'—that the nation, which had been more or less scarred by the sad news flowing in every day at the time, could share.
Maybe he added it like a joke, and maybe he wrote '(lol)' himself because he had suddenly added it like a joke.

Would you think, 'What do you mean by (lol)? Isn't it imprudent to make a joke!?' I couldn't think that.

I feel that the state of mind of the young Yuzuru at the time, who thought to suddenly add 'Arigato Usagi' in a joking manner and ended up adding '(lol),' is the very essence of the scars that the boys of that time and the earthquake left behind.



It is difficult to express to others that you are grieving.

Since humans are social creatures, it is impossible for a pseudo-'imaginary camera' (the image of oneself reflected in others)—thinking about what others will think if you say this (or do this), what kind of person you will be seen as, or what kind of person you want to be seen as—not to cross your mind for even an instant.

It's not like Audrey's Wakabayashi, but even if no one is watching, 'you are watching yourself.'

The shame of thinking, 'Hey, aren't you acting a little bit for this
camera

?'
The question of whether you are qualified to play the 'tragic heroine' with all your heart and soul.
I think the awareness of this pseudo-inner camera probably varies in size from person to person.
I remember when my paternal grandfather passed away a long time ago. Perhaps because it was a sudden, unexpected death while he was still relatively young, I remember my paternal grandmother clinging to him, saying, 'Father!'Time passed, and when my maternal grandfather passed away recently, my maternal grandmother, who was his spouse, and my mother, who was his eldest daughter, both had 'meh' faces and were indifferent throughout the funeral, when putting flowers in the coffin, when the coffin lid was closed and we saw him off, and when he was cremated. I think I was doing the same.I don't know what my grandmother or mother were thinking, but I don't think they weren't even 1% sad (maybe they really weren't thinking much of anything), and I thought, 'Ah, I see, this might be a genetic trait from my maternal grandmother.'

My kind-hearted younger sister, who I can't believe was born and raised by the same parents, who continued to contact, travel with, and visit our grandparents regularly even after becoming an adult, and who cried at the funeral, said about the fact that neither our grandmother nor our mother accepted the 'message card for the deceased to be put in the coffin' from the funeral staff, saying, 'It seems like they're being thought of as such a cold family.'
My mother, for her part, said about her own husband (my father), 'He wasn't even that close to them, but he only cries at times like this, I don't really get it.'
In front of human death and lamentation, the camera of others is always present.


The resistance to being seen by someone else while you are straightforwardly playing the 'grieving family' role, the shame of thinking, 'Aren't I acting like a character in a drama or movie right now?'

Actually, I am heartless, but I somehow understand the feeling of not accepting the message card. It's not because I have nothing to write, but because it's there even if I don't write it, and by writing it, the whole thing becomes fake.
It becomes a feeling 'for the sake of writing.'


Just because it isn't expressed doesn't mean it 'doesn't exist.'
I want to believe that.



I am not a disaster victim, and I have never directly experienced a major earthquake since I was born, so I don't know, but when it comes to 'qualification,' I think it is difficult to put the experience of an earthquake into words and grieve well.

There may be cases where the deeper the wound or the more undigested the thoughts are, the harder it is to tell others,

The gaze of an inner imaginary other (sometimes not imaginary) that asks, 'There are surely many people who are having a harder time than me, so am I qualified to be sad?'

Or the hesitation that you might make others worry if you reveal it.
There may be people who can only talk about it in a half-laughing way, like 'Yeah, everyone died, lol,' so as not to make others worry and to keep themselves from being dragged into despair.


People who lived in areas classified as disaster zones and lived in temporary evacuation centers but whose homes weren't completely destroyed, people who were terrified by the shaking that made them think the world was ending and whose homes were destroyed but were inland and didn't suffer tsunami damage, people who suffered tsunami damage but whose families were safe...
Compared to someone whose family died but whose body was returned to them, someone who is still searching for family members who haven't been found and whose whereabouts are unknown might not be able to grieve carelessly in front of them.

If you don't adjust the temperature and tuning well, stones will be thrown at you, saying it's rude to the 'real disaster victims.'
Or, if your 'method of expressing grief' differs from someone else's, a spear will come flying, saying, 'People who are really sad shouldn't be able to do such and such,' just because it's different from their correct answer.

A spear saying, 'Don't pretend to be a disaster victim, you,' an arrow saying, 'You are not the protagonist.'
Sometimes these are even thrown at oneself.


I think that when people are faced with someone who is lamenting and grieving but cannot do anything about it themselves, they feel awkward with themselves because of their helplessness, their own slight coldness in not even thinking they could do anything about it, or perhaps a very bad jealousy that 'this guy is the only one getting attention forever.'
This awkwardness sometimes turns into an attack, saying, 'Don't keep lamenting and grieving in front of me.'
The reason why bereaved families of sad traffic accidents, etc., are slandered (why?) when they raise their voices is probably this psychology.


What is a real disaster victim?
What does it mean to be a person who is truly grieving?
Is it only the person ranked first in the 'pity ranking' who is qualified to speak about grief?
But if you pursue that, aren't we who are alive now ranked higher than those who are dead just because we aren't dead?


Is that correct?
Is that way of thinking correct?
Of course, in terms of actual financial support from the government, etc., a line must be drawn somewhere,
but I don't think it's a word that others should throw at someone else regarding someone's grief or pain.

Drawing a line,
I don't hear well and can't hold a conversation more than half the time without a hearing aid, but I am not a 'real person with a disability.'
In Japan, if you are not a person with hearing loss of 70 decibels or more, you are not a 'person with a disability.' Therefore, as someone with hearing loss of about 50 decibels, I am neither a healthy person nor a person with a disability, but 'a person with bad hearing who has no choice but to buy a hearing aid for hundreds of thousands of yen on their own.'
Since it's different from being born completely deaf, there is no problem with language acquisition, I can speak for myself, and the reason I can write such long sentences like this is because I had no trouble acquiring Japanese. Conversely, I cannot use sign language at all.

If you stay on the line, people will say, 'Don't act like a disabled person,' and in fact, since conversations are somewhat established, they'll assume it's not a big deal. Naturally, they'll say, 'There are many people who are struggling more,' and since I can still enjoy talking about music, dramas, and membership perks with my favorite idols for now, people around me will likely conclude that it's fine.

A few years ago, Ren Meguro played a young man in a drama who 'could hear normally until high school, but his hearing declined and now he can't hear anything at all.' Well, medical conditions vary from person to person, so it's hard to make a blanket statement, but in reality, I think something like 'early-onset bilateral sensorineural hearing loss' is probably not that dramatic.

Rather than suddenly losing your hearing in a few years, it's more like you gradually find yourself asking people to repeat themselves more often. Because you ask so many times, people get annoyed, and even when working part-time or a regular job, you can't hear instructions well, which leads to friction. Because what you do is completely different from what someone instructed, you're thought of as a useless, stupid person. You cause annoyance to those around you who think, 'I called you many times, but you ignored me.' You feel awkward when others react or reply naturally to someone's words that you couldn't hear well, thinking, 'Can everyone else hear that right now?' Around this time, you start using hearing aids, but once your ears and brain get used to them, if someone suddenly speaks to you without them, you see them like a video where the TV volume is at 5—you know they're saying something, but you don't really understand what it is.

(By the way, the TV in my house is at volume 100, but I'm sure that would cause complaints, so I always wear headphones to watch it.)

Since I can't hear what people at work were talking about, I'm the only one who doesn't know things, and because I don't hear the conversations that suggest something happened, I'm always three beats behind the atmosphere, so I'm thought of as someone who lacks tact.
And then, when I return to my parents' home for the first time in over a decade, I'm stunned to find that even though I used to be able to converse without hearing aids when I lived there, now I can't understand a single millimeter of what they're saying without them.
Conversations in noisy environments or with many people from far-off seats are difficult, and even if there's something new I want to do, if it involves interacting with others, I increasingly give up, thinking I probably won't be able to converse well anyway.
Recently, I've also started giving up on watching Japanese movies in theaters right after they're released. There are quite a few parts where I don't know what they're saying without subtitles.
I have no choice but to wait for versions with subtitles or for them to come to Netflix.
I love the song 'Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,' which is my personal provisional number one for 'Subtitles Wanted,' but I still haven't been able to watch the movie; I gave up because I barely understood what they were saying. (Well, I think that's the case even for people with normal hearing, though.)
When I watched the live-action '5 Centimeters per Second' and was very moved, I later watched it again with subtitles and was most surprised to find that they weren't actually saying any of those things. It seems I had been creating lines in my brain using context, words, and imagination while not hearing well, and was moved by those lines I created myself. I have the talent of a creator.

Things like that progress very, very slowly over a period of more than a decade, and yet, I still have some hearing.


You might think it's fine if I have hearing aids, but hearing aids are not perfect at all.
They aren't something like contact lenses where 'if you put them on, it's almost solved.'
Well, maybe it depends on the price, but it's very artificial. It sounds like someone is constantly talking through a microphone, and if you turn up the volume, all the background noise gets louder too, so it's like being in a live venue or near a train where the noise is always loud while someone is talking. Conversely, sometimes voices are drowned out by the amplified noise.

And, while people with normal hearing are at about 0-20 decibels, even with hearing aids, I only get up to about 30 decibels at most (if I turn it up more than that, the noise also gets louder, and there's a possibility I won't be able to hear well), so it's just a matter of 'it's improved from a level where conversation is more than half impossible to something like an elderly person who is a little hard of hearing.' Unless medicine or technology makes an incredible breakthrough, I won't be able to hear like a normal person for now.
It can't be cured by surgery either.

But I have the mean-spirited thought that a hard-of-hearing person who doesn't use sign language doesn't 'look good' in a drama.
Or rather, it 'doesn't get across.'
You can't tell by looking, they look like they're talking normally at first glance, and it's difficult for others to understand exactly how much someone can't hear.

A long time ago, there was something like the Mamoru Samuragochi ghostwriter incident, where it turned out he wasn't completely deaf but had moderate sensorineural hearing loss of about 50 decibels, which means I'm about the same.
Being completely deaf is a total lie, and there shouldn't be any major problem with listening to music with earphones (though I can't compare it with people who can hear, so I don't know if there's really no problem), but if someone asks, 'So you can hear, then!?', it's that unsatisfying situation where I actually don't hear the same as a normal person.
Should I say it's like constantly taking an English listening test that I'm bad at?
It's so plain and hard to convey. I'm not defending him at all, but that's probably why Samuragochi-san needed icons or hooks like sign language, long hair, and sunglasses for his self-production.

I can't 'act like a disabled person,' it doesn't 'look good,' it's not something that can be cured, but it's not life-threatening either, so there's no dramatic story like 'I overcame surgery and survived safely.' Where does the struggle go for a life that is too plain and doesn't look good, where you just have to keep living while having things you can't do better than others?


Just as vision and hearing are a gradient, wounds and hardships are ultimately a gradient as well.
Just because you are in front of the 'line,' it doesn't mean that the hardship, sadness, or wounds suddenly become zero on the other side of the line. I think everyone has their own struggles.
That doesn't mean they 'don't exist.' Even if there are people who are struggling more, that person's struggle doesn't cease to exist in their own life.

The Great East Japan Earthquake was a major disaster in which over 20,000 people lost their lives, so special programs are aired on TV every year, and many adults remember 3.11 as 'that day.' Not a few people might even offer a silent prayer.
But there are other disasters. Wars are currently happening in the world as we speak. If we focus on the 'one' person whose 'life was lost,' the '1' who died should be the same, but we don't have to remember a disaster where 10 people died, while we should never forget a disaster where over 20,000 died.
Of course, we cannot carry all the suffering in the world. Drawing a line.

There are surely 'unphotogenic' sufferings all around our world that don't become dramas or news reports and are difficult for others to understand.
Of course, it's difficult for others to scoop up everything, but you don't have to convince yourself that they 'don't exist' either.

The thoughts that can be put into words are not everything, and the emotions that appear in one's attitude are not the only essence.
Just because you didn't show your wounded actions in an easy-to-understand way doesn't mean you weren't wounded. It doesn't mean you weren't sad. It doesn't mean the wound disappears.
Just as recognizing that 'there is a wound here' is the first step to healing it,
You don't have to package it in words for someone else's understanding or your own ethics, you don't have to tune the output for someone's imaginary camera; I feel a message from Hanyu-kun's 'Happy End' that it's okay to face the raw wounds and emotions that were supposed to be there.

Contrary to the title 'Happy End,' the song is rather on the heavy side,
A melody that feels like something is being rushed, as if being tossed about by the rough waves of fate, and Hanyu-kun's choreography, which is like a marionette, fits it perfectly (Is he serious about self-choreography??? What a genius choreographer...)

Unlike 'Notte Stellata,' which was like a lake, he is like a dancer and an artist. His outstanding performance with joints increased by maintenance-related updates, and the way he turns his body is not just turning—there are ingenious touches everywhere. When doing something contemporary like that, he doesn't end it with the self-indulgence that is sometimes common, like 'I understand what you want to do, but the technique might not be there.' It comes across clearly that he has ground his technique to perfectly express what he wants to do.

Without exaggeration, I thought, 'This is his best masterpiece ever...'

You might think, 'Doesn't this guy say that every year?', but I seriously think it every year, so it can't be helped.
I think this is a difficult thing. To carry the brand and expectations of 'Yuzuru Hanyu' and exceed the expectations that jump higher every year.
Especially this time, since he had a maintenance period of several months, there must have been a fear that if the people who saw it didn't feel any particular change, they might think, 'What were you doing?'
The quality makes you feel deeply that the maintenance period was indeed a period for updates.

Like the essence of Yuzuru Hanyu, the god of matching music, he performs choreography that matches every single melody that flows by. I am impressed, thinking, 'How on earth...', but what is particularly noteworthy is his spin.
I might get yelled at for saying this, but I don't really like spins in figure skating. They give the impression that the flow up to that point or the feelings you were riding on with the choreography and steps are severed or stagnated there. Aside from skaters like Mao Shimada, whose spins themselves are worth watching, I even have a tendency to think, 'Is a spin even necessary? Isn't it more fun to just keep doing steps?' (You...)

Hanyu-kun's 'Happy End' is as if it's wiping away my anti-spin view all at once,
It's a seamlessness that doesn't stagnate at all, melting into the music and choreography, further pursuing the expressive possibilities of the spin, as if to say, 'There is still more that can be done with a spin.' As if playing an instrument, while spinning, he uses both feet and his body to match the sound, pushing against the ice, and while the position changes, which make you think, 'What is that?', he skillfully changes the speed of the spin to match the length of the notes, such as quarter notes and half notes of the melody, playing the melody with the spin.

Scary.

(Scary)

According to my research, the title 'Happy End' was chosen as a jab at the band 'Happy End,' which Haruomi Hosono of YMO was a member of (as if to say, 'It's fine now, let's just end it nicely'), which I think is very ironical and great.

Judging from various interviews, I think the sentiment Hanyu-kun put into this program is something like, 'I am who I am, including my wounds and pain.'



Of course, a life where only happiness and good things happen would be better, and it would be better if accidents, illnesses, and disasters didn't visit our lives.
Even if one can come to terms with oneself, if outsiders easily say things like 'because of this illness...', it would surely feel like 'don't mess with me' to someone who is currently suffering.
Someone's pain is not there for the sake of an outsider's beautiful story.
The experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake has surely been used as a lesson since then and has saved lives, but since many people actually died, the phrase 'because of that earthquake...' is quite hesitant to use. Someone's life was not lived as a stepping stone for future 'learning'.

However, since time is irreversible, the past that has occurred cannot be changed, and the reality that has occurred exists no matter what.

Life is not a well-crafted story; sometimes something unreasonable visits without any foreshadowing, and sometimes it is never resolved.

But, whether good or bad, luck or misfortune, wounds, things gained or lost, things you can do or cannot do, 'this self now' only exists after everything has happened exactly as I have experienced it so far. The world as I perceive it now would not exist either.
If anything were even slightly different, that self—their thoughts, hobbies, preferences, values based on experience, the people and things they met—would not be exactly the same as the current self.

Some people might think now that they wouldn't mind if such a self didn't exist.
But the self that thinks that now is also a self that would not have existed in this world if something had been slightly different. That is acceptance.
We are the ones who happen to have survived as our current selves.




A story does not show the characters' actions 24/7 and tell every single move; a story is about selection and editing.
Life is less likely to go the way you want it to—birthplace, parents, gender, era, physique, appearance, intelligence, events, constitution, environment... there might not really be much of a self that you chose yourself. But among all the events and things that make up such a self, you can choose what to find, what to grasp, what to connect, and what to depict as your own 'story.' In that sense, you are the one who weaves a happy ending.

The wooden clappers (hyoshigi) that were very impressive and incredibly cool in 'Yae no Sakura'—I have an image that they are also used to tell 'stories.' (They were also used impressively as an important element in the Taiga drama 'Berabo')
The signal for the beginning and the end.
I thought it felt like his final competitive program 'Heaven and Earth,' and it seems he actually intended it that way (as a sequel to 'Heaven and Earth'), but
The fact that it ends without the curtain closing, after the acts marked by the wooden clappers, feels like the beginning of an unending story, which is nice.
Even if you encounter a tremor as if the world is ending, the world does not end.
We who have survived have no choice but to live on while carrying our wounds.



I call Hanyu-kun's style (?) 'Dawn Fujoshi' (there is such a classification in the otaku world) (I am not a fujoshi),
It's not a happy, road-like happiness that is always illuminated by the sun's light, but a way of perceiving the world that finds a glimmer of hope in the starlight you look up at while carrying pain and suffering. I think 'Dawn Fujoshi' is a good way to put it. (I am not a fujoshi)



When people talk about bonds or connections in the wake of the earthquake, it sounds like superficial platitudes, but at the same time, I also think that it might be connections that keep someone in this world.
The thought that I can't let that person be sad, or that I can't die until I see the continuation of this manga—that kind of connection to the world.


In this 'notte,' more than ever, the number of stalls at the venue kept increasing, and there were many people at Sendai Station wearing Hanyu goods as if they were on a school trip, and the restaurants in Sendai were also bustling,
For example, I felt a 'circle' mediated by the existence of Yuzuru Hanyu that ripples out beyond just donating once and being done with it.
There is a limit to the support one person can provide, but as long as the 'rippling circle' is connected, this circle will call for and expand into new circles.
I think it is a socially significant activity that makes full use of the popularity and influence of the existence of 'Yuzuru Hanyu' for practical purposes.
That is a circle born in a world that has come about precisely because he gave his all to skating, even while carrying the conflict and pain of 'is it okay for me to be the only one who escaped and is skating?' after that.
Skating may not directly and physically create something, but it can create even larger indirect circles. Connecting the influence and circles received to someone else, whether consciously or unconsciously, is what we who are alive can do, and I think that is what it means to live.

When I watched this 'Happy End,' which is self-choreographed, my honest impression was (at least for me),
'I guess a skater like Yuzuru Hanyu will never appear again in my lifetime...'

I know this way of saying things—using someone else as a stepping stone to lift someone up—is disliked, but when the season starts, I watch various skating, and even watching almost all categories and all athletes in this Olympics, of course, the matches have their own excitement and interest. But when Yuzuru Hanyu finally appears, I get a very strong feeling that 'a skater like Yuzuru Hanyu will never appear again in my lifetime...'

Of course, his skating itself is incredibly good, but rather than breaking down each element—like his jumps being good, his skating being amazing, his achievements being insane, or his face being cute—it's his overwhelming power to dominate the space that makes you feel you have to watch him, his firm vision of himself and his power to draw others into that story, his outstanding performance ability to physically execute those things, and the spirit of inquiry and research for that, and his creativity to generate new value and diversity in skating...

It's not just something that ends with 'that was amazing' for a moment; it's something that remains in your life afterward.
He is creating value, a world, and a circle of someone's life.
Thank you for choosing the world line where you become such a skater 🐰

I also think that if Yuzuru Hanyu hadn't existed, I wouldn't have thought of going to Sendai in my life (for me, born in Aichi, and I'm very sorry to say this, but until I was about a high school student, Tohoku really had an image of 'a distant, cold place I don't really understand.' Sendai is just a normal city, I'm so sorry).
Before I knew it, I was going to Sendai more often than I was going back to my parents' home. It's a nice city that makes me think 'I'm home,' even though it should have nothing to do with me, as if the city and nature coexist. It's already my second hometown (an illusion).

As the performance ended and I was heading to the night Shinkansen, I was about to think, 'Goodbye Sendai, I'll come again next year,' but then I remembered. It's not next year.

It's actually next month. (Since there is a solo performance, it's next month.)

I hope I can go safely next month too.
Hanyu-kun celebrates the birthdays of people born in that month every month in his membership, and I think he cherishes the preciousness that being able to celebrate someone's birthday at that age as a matter of course is actually not a matter of course at all (no one really knows if they can celebrate it the same way next year).
We who happen to have survived can make an effort toward a world where we can celebrate someone's birthday next year as a matter of course.


I hope I can go safely next month too.