Regarding the 10th article, "The Vivid 'Edge Sound' Resonating Behind the Beautiful Melody: Yuzuru Hanyu's Danny Boy."
Good evening, everyone. I am Yuki Oki.
For this installment of the "Article about an Article" series, I am discussing the piece, "The Vivid 'Edge Sound' Resonating Behind the Beautiful Melody: Yuzuru Hanyu's Danny Boy." The full text is available here.
I imagine there are many of you who absolutely love this program (I love it too). Danny Boy was first performed at "Yuzuru Hanyu notte stellata 2024."
I remember being overwhelmed in the press box (I'm always being overwhelmed...). It seemed like there was a blank space of time—a few seconds? A few dozen seconds?—after the music started.
I remember thinking, "Wait! Was his breathing shallow just now? Or rather, was he even breathing?" And then...
"Oh no! I didn't take any notes at the beginning!" (Aren't you a print journalist?)
I was entranced by the beauty, struck by the beauty, and swallowed up by the beauty. Being too beautiful is sometimes a sin, isn't it? (Laughs). Thinking, "What have you done to me in those first few seconds (I want to believe it was just a few seconds)... Yuzuru-kun," I came back to my senses and started taking notes.
Once I regained my composure, the first thing I felt was, "The edge sound is incredible." As if to contrast with the gentle melody and elegant skating, I could hear the sound of the skate blades carving into the ice.
In the press conference after the premiere, Yuzuru Hanyu said, "The concept I put into Danny Boy is hope." I nodded as I listened, thinking, "Yes, that's right."
But, I don't know. It wasn't quite despair or disappointment, but I felt a little bit of sadness and transience, which are the opposite of hope. The background of this song likely contributes to that, but it's not just that. "What is the true nature of this?" When I thought about that, I realized, "Maybe it's the edge sound." It started to seem to me that the edge sound represented that sadness and transience. However, at the time, I doubted my own intuition.
I believe we can only feel hope as hope because its opposite exists. While hope makes up the majority of Yuzuru Hanyu's Danny Boy, perhaps essences like sadness and transience are included as a secret ingredient. That is precisely why I feel the hope stands out even more.
Danny Boy was performed again at the 2024 Fantasy on Ice. In the press box at Makuhari, I thought, "This feeling really wasn't a mistake." And that eventually led me to write this article about the edge sound in this program.
Regarding the thoughts I put into the final sentence of this article: There are things that were good because Yuzuru Hanyu is Yuzuru Hanyu. However, I also think there were many things that were painful and difficult because Yuzuru Hanyu is Yuzuru Hanyu.
As long as one is an athlete, one focuses on oneself to the extreme and pushes performance to new heights. From the moment he set the goal of winning consecutive Olympic titles, he walked toward it. I suspect there were many sacrifices in that process. And he must have experienced things he otherwise would not have had to. He swallowed even those things. Even though he might have wanted to spit them out, it appears as though he swallowed them.
That Danny Boy is one of the things that only a Yuzuru Hanyu can express.