「奇跡のシンフォニー」のＣＤが届く

　先日、August Rush（日本語タイトル：奇跡のシンフォニー）という映画を観たと記したが、ＣＤ店にオリジナル・サウンドトラック盤が無いとなると無性に欲しくなるもので、アマゾンに注文していたら今日になってやっと届いた。

　早速ＣＤを聞くと映画の色々な場面が思い出されるが、添付されている説明書きを見ると、曲の作曲者演奏者の姿などが分かって楽しく、その人のアルバムを聞いてみたいという気にさせてくれる。


　昨年、「ONCE ダブリンの街角で」を見た時は、ロックが中心なのでＣＤは買わなかったが、この映画ではロックだけでなくクラシックやギター曲、ゴスペルなど色々な音楽が入っているので楽しめる。　ただ、２番目に母親役がチェロでバッハ曲を奏でたと思ったら、父親役のヘビメタのような強烈な音に変わり、ここだけはちょっと抵抗があった。　また、主役が初めてギターをたたくようにして弾く場面があるが、これはKaki Kingという女性のギタリストが弾いているとのことで、本人自身のアルバムも聞いてみたい。
　７番目のRaise it Upという曲は、ゴスペル曲になっているのだが、アカデミー主題曲賞にノミネートされた曲だとのこと。　コーラス隊でこの曲を歌う可愛い黒人少女は１１歳のジャマイア・シモーヌ・ナッシュという名らしい。
　収められている１８曲の中で、やはり一番良いのは１番目のMain Titleだ。　映画の冒頭で見られるのだが、畑の中で麦がそよいだり都会の喧騒の中で聞こえる全ての音が音楽に通じると、主人公が詩を朗読するように話しかけてくる。
　アメリカにあるwww.augustrashumovie.comというサイトを訪ねると収録されている曲の一部を聞くことが出来る。　なお、本映画は、アイルランドのダブリン出身の女性が監督しており、もう一つの映画「ダブリンの街角で」に共通するものがあろう。

　

　ところで、今日ヤフーの記事を見ていたら、イギリスのフィナンシャル・タイムズ紙が、

「行方不明の日本、サミットで見えないホスト役」
という論評を載せているとのこと。　早速、FT.comを尋ねたらCommnet & Analysis→ColumnistsのPhilip Stephensの中にあった。　これを辛口の論評と日本紙は伝えているが、海外からの眼は、全くその通りで、金だけ出して何も言わない日本の首相連中を、内心ではリーダーとしての知恵も知識も資格もないと感じているのであろう。
　本文を読むと、日本の大臣や官僚がいかに井の中の蛙であることが良く分かる。　今やアジアは中国とインドが中心であるとはっきり云っている。　既におくれを取っている日本がサミット開催国だと喜んでいるばかりで、何の方策も取らないのは不思議を通り越して、愚かではないかと、この記者は指摘しているのだと思う。
　この記事を見て怒るだけの気概を持つ政治家や役人はどれほどいようか？　政治や行政の貧困さはこういう形で指摘されているのだ。（英文本文は、続きに記載）

今日の暦から　：　毎日１回便通の習慣

Japan goes missing: invisible host at the summit

By Philip Stephens

Published: July 3 2008 19:18 | Last updated: July 3 2008 19:18

I have a question. Where is Japan? The world leaders and accompanying media hordes heading this weekend for the shores of Lake Toya need not turn to their atlases. The question is one of psychology rather than geography. Japan is still the world's second most powerful economy. Politically, it is all but invisible.

Next week's Toyako summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations promises a rare moment in the sun. Prime ministers and presidents will pronounce on everything from oil prices and global warming to nuclear proliferation and the fight against malaria. As many as 14 leaders from emerging powers will make cameo appearances. Lunch with the Chinese, coffee with the Senegalese?

The international media will devour every inconsequential cough and comma. Summit host Yasuo Fukuda will appear on front pages from Berlin to Buenos Aires. When it is all over Japan can slip back into the shadows.

The summit sherpas say we should expect nothing of great significance, though their political bosses must insist otherwise. Japan's preparations have won few plaudits. Ponderous planning has sometimes revealed as many divisions among ministries in Tokyo as among other capitals.

The goal is consensus: better bland accord than public discord. Others in the G8 have used their summits to promote pet projects ? Britain trumpeted aid for Africa, Germany climate change. Japan seems to lack any burning priorities.

This is all of a piece with its barely visible profile in the global arena. I spend a fair part of my life on the international conference circuit. Never before have governments ? of rising as well as mature powers ? devoted as much time to peering into their crystal balls in search of a new geopolitical landscape. By and large ? I can think of one recent exception ? Japan is absent from such events. What is more, Japan's place in the new order rarely merits mention by its peers.

Scroll back to the late 1980s. Japan was the rising power. Academics and journalists fell over themselves in the rush to predict that its economic might was destined to eclipse that of the US. When foreign policy experts declared that the 21st century would belong to Asia, they were not thinking about China and India.

Politicians in Washington fulminated as Japanese companies snapped up such American icons as New York's Rockefeller Center and Hollywood's Columbia Pictures. US motorists swapped their Fords and Chevrolets for Toyotas.

And now? Well, western consumers still buy Toyotas; and Sony and Toshiba continue to produce all manner of electronic wizardry. But Japan has become an afterthought in the discourse about the fast-shifting balance of global power. The Asian century is about China and India.

There are some obvious explanations for this reversal. More often than not political presence mirrors economic performance. Before the ink was properly dry on those forecasts of an ineluctable march to economic hegemony, Japan entered the great deflation of the 1990s. The asset price bubble burst, banks went bankrupt and the economy went into free fall. Japan lost a decade.

The economy has regained its balance, though its growth rate remains low. An ageing and shrinking population holds little prospect of a return to the dynamism of the 1980s. For all that, Japan's disorientation is about more than the miscalculations of economic policymakers. Financial implosion robbed politicians of their confidence; the collapse of the Soviet Union remade Japan's geopolitical co-ordinates.

The aftermath of the second world war and the ensuing cold war with communism hitched Japan firmly to the US and Europe. Geography played second fiddle to ideology. A US security guarantee filled the gap left by the tight constitutional constraints on Japan's own military.

For all intents and purposes, this Japan was part of the west. It might have seemed different and, sometimes, economically threatening. But it was an ally against communism, like Europe sheltering under the US nuclear umbrella, and provided an Asian pillar for the market economy.

Just as the collapse of the Soviet Union weakened the glue in the transatlantic alliance, so it put a question mark over Japan's long-term relationship with Washington. The re-emergence of China then amplified the uncertainties. If the speed of China's rise has disconcerted Americans and Europeans, it has terrified Japan.

You can see why. This is a relationship steeped in historical rancour. Nationalist rivalries are never more than an inch below the surface. In two or three years China will displace Japan as America's closest economic rival. Within a decade it may have toppled the US as the pre-eminent power in east Asia.

Japan's reflex response has been to draw closer to the US. But China's rise also forces it to face up to an Asian identity it has always shunned. A few weeks back, Mr Fukuda tried to square the circle by turning a page in the atlas. Japan, he said, should be seen in the context not of east Asia but of the much greater number of nations bordering the Pacific. This community bound Japan to the US, Australia and New Zealand as well as to the countries of south-east Asia, China and Russia. It was a nice try, but to my mind dodged my question.

Some would say there is no answer. Japan confronts many overlapping options. It is patching up relations with Beijing after a dangerous confrontation in 2005. Simultaneously, it wants Washington to do more to contain China. A US presidential victory for the Republican, John McCain, could hold out the prospect of a new alliance of Australasian democracies. Japan, meanwhile, could abandon the constraints on its own military.

The most cogent answer I have heard is from a young Japanese diplomat who posits that his country's natural role is as a bridge between Asia and the west and between mature and rising powers. In this guise Japan would act as a stabiliser in a region that would otherwise be dominated by China: friends with Beijing but also balancing it.

For what it is worth, I think that Japan's pre-eminent interest lies in working to extend and strengthen the rules-based international order to draw in China and other rising powers. More than anything else, this part of the world needs a robust mutual security system.

As things stand, Japan looks like a nation without a compass. All of the choices mentioned above require decisions about its identity. Now there is something to ponder as the sun sets on Lake Toya.

philip.stephens@ft.com