When You're Tired of Being 'Yourself'—How I, Who Was Lost in Individuality, Made Form My Ally (With a Voicy Collaboration Broadcast)

I visited my ally Yuko Yoshida's Voicy and recorded a conversation!

Are you okay? Please don't accidentally play it on the train, burst out laughing, and get weird looks!

When You're Tired of Being 'Yourself'—How I, Who Was Lost in Individuality, Made Form My Ally (With a Voicy Collaboration Broadcast)

Snack Yusendo on the 21st of every month

On the 21st of every month, Snack Yusendo is held at the Mitaka Classical Salon Yusendo.

For the November 21st session, the first half girls' night was fun as always, but since it's a girls' night, the content is of course a secret. After everyone else left, Yuko-san and I talked for a while about the ego and self-consciousness, and it led to the idea of 'let's record a Voicy on this topic.'

In the last few minutes, some rather surprising remarks pop out, so please be careful not to listen in public! Not in front of your children either!!!

Only friends would do ×× for me

Actually, a little before this recording, I went to see a group exhibition by a close friend of mine.

Well... considering the age of mid-20s, it's not unnatural, but how should I put it,

'My irreplaceable my-world✨️✨️✨️'

It was full of that atmosphere, and if it hadn't been a close friend's exhibition, it's content I probably wouldn't have gone to see in the first place. I wouldn't have gone to see it even if it were listed in the 'Ginza Gallery Guide'.

I liked the sketches from their student days that were in their portfolio much better. They have the ability for sketching and the basics, having studied at a proper school. And yet.

Even if she were to read this, I wouldn't want to write anything that would hurt her, not even by chance...

I know it all too well because I've been down that road myself. Isn't that just how it is when you're young?
You feel that every emotion you experience—whether happy or sad—is supreme,
and that if you express that supreme thing to the world just as it is, it should be valued for its preciousness, or at the very least, respected.
That's the mindset you live with. I think that's true to a greater or lesser extent.

Well, I suppose I should respect it. I want to respect it.
But I just couldn't find any value in it myself...

That, in turn, is the same as how I evaluate my own creative work from my twenties.
In my twenties, no,the poetry collection I spent five years meticulously crafting and released into the worldlooks the same way to me now.

Your self-consciousness is so loud♡
Only your friends will accept and love that kind of individuality♡

Even so, since my direction was toward mastering the Kyogoku school of waka, glimpses of that are present in the poetry collection from five years ago, and it must have been different from the output of my twenties.
I believe there were those who saw value in it. My gratitude is endless.
Thank you for purchasing my immature works (including those who didn't think they were immature).

Well, however, I don't need that kind of creative work anymore. The runaway self-consciousness that made me feel restless if I didn't create that kind of work is no longer within me.

My 2020 poetry collection is currently available for free online alongside the print version,
so please try reading that and comparing it with my current work.
For example, the poems I submitted to the Oki Gotoba-in Waka Grand Prize, the poems submitted to the Reizei Family Shiguretei Library, or the 'Dai-ei Dohyo' series I continue on X.

'This is Kajima Waka!'
The expression of ego like that is completely absent, isn't it? I wonder if I'll look back on this in a few years and think, 'It was still too naive.'

The poetry collection from five years ago, where the paring down was still naive, far too naive (you can read the whole thing for free)

My current waka works, where neither the face nor the voice of Kajima Waka can be seen at all

The significance of the Nijo school, the staggering nature of the Kyogoku school

Creative work that only resonates with people interested in you is self-satisfaction.
Aim to create work that resonates with the hearts of people who have no interest in you.

I am not in a position to use waka for self-satisfaction, and because I do not wish to be that way, I naturally arrive at this philosophy and stance.

Well, if I push only this to the forefront,

it might seem as if I value Twitter tanka that can be read by someone with no knowledge of Japanese literature or waka, or Twitter tanka that are just emotional outpourings that can only be empathized with by those with young sensibilities, simply because they
“resonate with the hearts of total strangers and get a massive number of likes.”
But that’s obviously not the case.

Creative work that resonates with something in the hearts of people who have no interest in you

—I am not saying that if it does that, I can 100 percent guarantee it is not self-satisfaction.
If the readers' level is low, even creative works like XXXs will get likes.

The embarrassment of realizing that what you thought was an irreplaceable 'you' and your irreplaceable individuality was actually banal and common everywhere.
The unbearable feeling of wanting to bury your past self—who was expressing themselves.... without realizing that—and pretend it never happened.

By going through things like this somewhere along the way and despairing at the illusion of 'being yourself,' boys and girls become adults, and self-satisfied expressers become true artists.

People who have gone through that despair and work faithfully to the basics, yet still have an individuality that seeps through—that is the individuality that is worth looking at.
Individuality that insists, 'This is my individuality!' is just XXXs and XXXs.

I love the Kyogoku school, so I do sometimes speak critically of the Nijo school,

but you know, the Nijo school is great.
It only came into being because of the demands of the era, but the Nijo school, which was able to grasp those demands and respond to them, is indeed great.

'Your individuality? Never mind that, first master the form.'

It might sound cold, but that’s just how it is.

In the first place, 'your individuality' and 'my individuality' are not that significant.
At the very least, the probability that the 'individuality' we think of as 'wanting to express, wanting to show, wanting to be accepted' is something wonderful is extremely low. Especially when you are desperate to show it off.
It only looks precious within the narrow perspective of your short life,that is actually quite mediocre! It’s banal!!! I’ve seen over 100 tanka with similar ideas!!!
It’s because you’re a child who doesn’t understand that, that you expose self-conscious seXXXX songs to the public!!!
(I’m not asking if your actual age is a child. It’s a matter of the spirit.)

There are people who have mastered that form to the point where they can compose any number of excellent poems within those bounds—among those people, and furthermore, literary youths who also possessed classical education and a rich sensibility, could not be satisfied within that form, and in the midst of that, they encountered Kyogoku Tamekane’s unique poetics, awakened to the idea that 'wordskotoba can be free!!!', and eventually led to the later Kyogoku school. (Even so, in the very beginning, everyone was composing and spreading shocking, outrageous poems. Even people with that much ability... Freedom is that difficult.)

First, master the forms.
Develop the strength to compose excellent poems even when you are dead drunk or asleep.
Individuality, uniqueness, and freedom come long, long, long after that.

Shall I tell you a story of growth that isn't about Waka, from me, Waka Kajima, who says such harsh things?
It is, of course, related to the composition of Waka, but I think it can be enjoyed as a regular piece of reading.

The 'Raising of the Baseline of My True Self' that I Achieved Thanks to a Piece-of-Trash Man

I have Asperger's (ASD), and about a year ago, a young friend with ADHD said to me,
"I know that if I do this and that, people will like me, but that's not like me, and if you ask me if I want to be liked by everyone that much..."
When she said that,

"Our 'true selves' can be raised through tireless effort. The version of you that is raised will be loved by many while still being your true self."
That is what I told her.

The reason is, a few years before that, I fell madly in love with someone who was socially inept, and that was when I, an Aspie, realized something.
"Oh no. I have absolutely no interest in the other person. Because I have no interest, I don't know how to get them to like me."

This was someone I liked. Even though I liked them, even though I liked them so much I wanted to be with them,
I realized that I had
zero interest in dyingin observing and trying to understand what kind of person they were, what kind of life they had led, what kind of personality they had, what kind of women they liked, or what kind of behavior would be effective in getting them to like me. Asperger's, at its peak.

(Why did I fall for someone I couldn't take an interest in? Because their appearance was exactly my type.)

Thinking about it, there wasn't a single relationship I had been in up until then that had happened as it should have.
I mostly lived as I pleased, and by chance, the other person liked me, and I liked them back, so we dated.
I had almost never dated someone because I liked them first. Even if I had, it was ancient history and not a useful reference.

Getting someone you like to like you back is like luck; I thought the only effort I could make was to keep myself well-groomed.
But then, people I didn't want to be liked by would like me too, so it was a 'well, I'm checkmated' kind of situation.

I can't like the people who like me.
The people I like don't like me back.

I think this is a common experience for girls, but
at the point where this is a common experience, that girl (including my past self) wasa child.

So, I put in the effort to research, think, consult others, and try things out.
Specifically, I looked into 'what I should do to increase the chances of being liked by someone I want to be liked by.'

You shouldn't leave it up to fate to be liked by someone you've fallen for.
I'm not a college student. I'm an adult over 30.

The other person is human, and preferences vary, so even if you do your best, things might not work out.
However, that doesn't mean the effort to increase the chances of being liked is wasted.
You should make that effort, and then cry if you end up together or cry if you get rejected,
but you shouldn't be saying things like 'they don't like me'—that's something a middle schooler would say.
This is a story about how you aren't making the 'appropriate (and not self-centered) effort to be liked.'

And so, I thought about behaviors that would increase the chances of being liked by a typical 40-year-old (at the time) single, high-achieving man with no girlfriend, and I put those conversations into practice. Well, the fact that he was a 40-year-old single man with no girlfriend was information I learned during those conversations, but I gradually closed the distance between us.

Even though I say 'put into practice,' for the first six months of falling in love, I was just watching from afar... but I did put in that effort for a good six months or more; I spent a fair amount of time on it.
It's not some casual thing where you start today and get results next week.

So, there were many times during that process when I felt like giving up.

In the first place, my difficulty in taking an interest in others is one of the ways my Asperger's, a developmental disorder, manifests.
I would suppress that trait, telling myself,
'The other person won't understand those circumstances, and since you're the one who fell in love, stop whining about it,'
and I would create a personality that would be loved by that community and that person, and act accordingly. That whole process felt like 'completely denying myself,' and it was exhausting.

At times like that, one of my best friends told me, 'I went through that for a while, too.' She has ADHD. I get it. She is very ADHD.
According to her,

'It doesn't mean your personality, Waka-chan, is going to disappear.
If you put in the effort now, gain the skills, and become more comfortable living in society and easier to love, then after that, it becomes your new normal. You won't need to put in that effort to be loved anymore. You'll be doing it naturally.
And on top of that, your true self will shine through.'

Oh, she's a goddess!!!!!!!!!
But come to think of it, I say the same thing when I'm teaching Waka-style coaching!!!

Encouraged by those words based on her own experience, I diligently repeated efforts such as
'taking an interest in the other person,'
'observing the other person,'
'thinking of about 20 things to talk about in advance,'
'and simulating the flow of the conversation to some extent.'
It was heart-wrenching.

As a result of getting to know him, I discovered he was such a piece of trash that I hesitate to even write about it here, so I didn't date him and instead said, 'You're the worst. Goodbye,' and parted ways.

My best friend's words were true; nowadays, almost no one sees me as a 'socially awkward person who has no interest in others,' and
furthermore, I think I am often perceived favorably as a unique character who is 'a crazy person who has staked their life on waka poetry.'
I wonder if being able to stake my life on waka is because I'm on the spectrum after all.

After that, I naturally got a boyfriend, too. I fell in love with someone, was liked back, and we dated. The thing I could never achieve before~.
Of course, I made an effort, but I didn't make an 'extraordinary effort.' I had already done about 20 years' worth of effort in the six months prior.

The friend who asked me for advice also
'You can't take an interest in people? You don't seem like that at all.'
said to me.

Just as my best friend did for me, I can also tell her with confidence,
'You should just live by expressing your individuality with your "true self" that has been raised to a higher level. If you put in a little effort now, your future self will have an easier time.'

I think waka, and any genre of creative work, is the same... really.

I hope thistrash-manAsperger's episode serves as hope or a hint for someone.

P.S.

I will also post the broadcast related to the Voicy broadcast I introduced.

This is the original broadcast

The broadcast of 'The Sound of Waves' mentioned in this

Waka Kajima's comment on the 'The Sound of Waves' broadcast

Yoshida Radio, who picked up that comment

Participate in Waka Monogatari

In order for me, Waka Kajima, who lives by going all-in on Waka, to continue creating, studying, and sharing Waka without issue, I would be grateful if those who have the means could share their support.
I would certainly be delighted, and I am convinced that it would also be a joyous thing for the future of Japan and the world.

“Watching this reckless way of life gives me courage.”
“There is hope in a future where such a straightforward person can live healthily and safely.”
“Supporting this person seems like it will help realize a bright future for the humanities.”
For those who think things like this and have the means, I would truly appreciate your support.

I am who I am today thanks to the support of my readers through tips on note, memberships, and various other forms. Thank you.

In particular, in 2023 (Reiwa 5), I received the Kojiki Compilation 1300th Anniversary Grand Prize at the Oki Gotoba-in Waka Grand Prize, and because I signed up for the event tour including the awards ceremony, I had to raise the tour fee (just under 90,000 yen) and travel expenses separately from my living costs.
Thanks to everyone's support, I was able to participate in that tour safely.
Also, the following year, I received the Jonangu/Tobadono Award and went on that awards ceremony tour as well.

Everything was made possible only through your financial support. Once again, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude. Of course, I am also very happy to receive your support in spirit.
Each and every one of these acts of support expands my capacity and leads to me giving back better Waka work to the world.

For both Reiwa 5 and 6, the details of the tours are being serialized in this magazine. Please look forward to the updates.

Let us continue to enjoy the work of making the world more beautiful in our respective fields.

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