Takeshi Kitano: Born as a human being, the older you get, the more willful you are

Why do older people feel lonely?

I often think that being an artist is a chore.

Of course, when your schedule is full, there is indeed a feeling of stars and moons, and at the same time, you can make a lot of money. However, the "fame tax" brought about by the celebrity effect cannot be ignored. As a celebrity, if something goes wrong, it will be attacked by the public. It is not uncommon for many artists to terminate their work contracts simply because their sons or daughters have stabbed their sons.

Moreover, there is no personal privacy as an artist. I often want to go to the Chinese restaurants near my house and order a beer or dumplings in the corner lanes - I originally came from a poor family in Adachi Ward, so I really like these street restaurants - and as a result, when I go to eat at these small restaurants recently, I am always photographed by customers who happen to come to eat or even the clerk with their mobile phones and upload them online. Not only that, but I sometimes think crankily – if there are guys who hate me in the kitchen staff... As a result, it was hard for me to go somewhere I hadn't been.

Therefore, in the end, it became that I can only go to some well-known high-end restaurants that I have been going to for a long time. From this level, the artist's life is also very resigned.

However, being an artist still has some advantages for people of my age, that is, as long as the public still likes to eat you, then you can achieve "lifelong office, never retirement". Thankfully, even though I'm over seventy now, I'm at the busiest time of my life. Because of this, I can still act recklessly on TV and in the literary and art circles. My dream is to become an artist like Kojin Tei Shisei, and in my old age, even if I am incontinent, I can perform on stage and be full. Artists just have a privilege, that is, as long as they can applaud, no matter how old and dull he is, he can show it in front of the audience without concealment.

However, what is the situation of office workers on the same issue? At my age, office workers should have retired long ago and started living on retirement wages. Office workers have always belonged to a company until retirement, have a certain connection with the society through the company, and have a certain title or position in the company. When they lose this, they will inevitably feel empty in their hearts, and they will inevitably feel lost. After office workers retire, the number of people who meet each other every day plummets, and they inevitably have negative thoughts that "I don't seem to be needed by society anymore." At the same time, loneliness will continue to strike.

For people of this age, their parents, peers, and even those younger than themselves have passed away one after another, and frequent encounters with "death" have made their situation even worse. I look back on my own experience, and there are many sad life and death partings. Especially in February 2018, I was really shocked when the coat ripple, who often starred in my movies, drove Hexi. A DEEP SENSE OF LONELINESS ROSE INSIDE ME, AND TEARS FLOWED UNCONTROLLABLY WHILE WATCHING NEWSCASTER (TBS TV NEWS SHOW) LIVE. That's when I realized that the problem of loneliness in the elderly was all around me.

What brings security to elderly people in similar situations is definitely the kind of book that advocates that "loneliness is a kind of happiness". I've heard that books with words like aging and loneliness have become popular recently, and the main target audience for such books is not the elderly of our age, right? Such books are full of words and opinions affirming loneliness in old age, such as "Loneliness is an opportunity for us to learn to get along with ourselves and become mature" and "Life is not only happy with family and friends".

But what happens if you blindly follow these views? If you rush into these books because of the words in them, what is the difference between this and the fanatical religious believers believing that "the believer is redeemed"? People who can say the phrase "loneliness is wonderful" are celebrities or people of high social status. The people who write famous books on the subject of loneliness are all very well-known authors. Because the author is a generally recognized writer, readers also accept the idea that "loneliness is wonderful" as a matter of course.

And I can only see that some uneasy old people jumped nervously after hearing someone whisper in their ear "one can live well".

My book is fundamentally different from those "celebrations of solitude." "Aging" and "loneliness" are cruel, and if you do not start from this point of view, then everything is empty talk.

Even "today's pawn" is good

If only some books begin to "accept loneliness", then this degree of influence is not enough for a person to cut off from everything around him.

When we got a copy of "Loneliness Celebration" in our hands, we actually realized - "Maybe I'm a little lonely?" At this time, we will be more concerned about what others think of us, that is, we are very concerned about the eyes of others. We don't want to be seen as "worthless old people" or "poor old people." Because people have such vanity, we are comforted by books that affirm the value of loneliness. "We are not chosen by loneliness, but we actively choose loneliness", people's subconscious has this emotion that they want to promote to others.

All in all, I want to say that no matter how hard a person tries, he cannot completely abandon the so-called "hope to be accepted by others" sense of identity.

Especially people like us who have been living in front of the audience will understand this feeling better. Being accepted by the audience at my age will make people feel more thrilled than ever. At this time, money and reputation are just the things that come with it, and the first thing we get is the emotional value experience of "being accepted" and "getting praise". That's why I still do a solo talk show from time to time, performing my funny jokes live in front of a crowd. In addition, I also joined the stand-up comedy master Tachikawa Tan Haru, and ascended to the high seat under the stage name Tachikawa Umeharu (Meichun and "selling spring" are pronounced the same in Japanese, and here is Kitano Takeshi's black humor). It's an addictive feeling to be recognized and accepted.

I have to say that I was very lonely when I was doing creative work such as thinking about funny baggage, drawing, and writing novels. This is because, during these creative hours, I can only rely on myself and cannot get help from others. However, in fact, if you can make "wanting to be recognized by others" as the goal in advance, lonely work can sometimes become less difficult, and even bitter and fun.

It would be strange to put aside the foreshadowing and just impulsively treat "loneliness" as something to be grateful for. No matter how enlightened we are, it is impossible not to feel lonely when we are completely alone.

Perhaps those guidebooks to later life can be sold well, and the audience is not limited to the elderly, but also because there are too many people who believe that they can "live the rest of their wonderful lives". In the same way, some health books that promote longevity are always ahead of the curve.

However, contrary to expectations, life will gradually become less interesting as we get older, and become faltering and incapacitated. There is no such thing as a dream-perfect old age – this is the truth in reality. Aging is more cruel than imagined, and if you want to live a good old age, you must start by accepting aging. In short, the aging process is accompanied by the decline of bodily functions, and you will feel that your body is not listening to calls anywhere. Then, we are pursuing "dashing aging" at this time, which is itself an unreliable thing. In the end, whether you are dashing or not, it is based on the judgment of others. If we don't get caught up in this, there will be no reward.

Don't please young people

Many years ago, I made a movie featuring a group of retired gangster masters, called "Dragon Three and His Seven-Man Party".

This group of uncles are penniless, have no fixed place, and in a word, they are "socially vulnerable groups". In the story, this group of inconspicuous old immortals will not only engage in "guess who I am" telephone fraud, but also come to the door to forcibly sell products, and even bully some middle-aged and elderly groups who are younger than them at will. Of course, this work also contains my personal style of more obvious black humor and many nonsensical funny jokes. However, after you read it, you may feel a dull pain in the depths of your heart. This film is the number one in all my works, even among popular works.

At that time, we invited Fuji Ryūya to play the protagonist Ryuzo. Of course, Fujiryu himself is a beautiful man who is very recognized by everyone, but even he is just as detestable after dressing up as a smelly old man. For example, farting in front of people, etc., completely ignoring the appearance, is simply miserable.

However, if we think about it from another angle, the so-called "bad old man with nothing" can also be considered the strongest heavenly group of "fearless". They don't have to worry about being laid off from the company, nor do they have to worry about not being popular with girls, because for them, unpopularity is a matter of course. No matter what failures they encounter, the future will not be affected in the slightest. I'm afraid there is no one in this world who can be more qualified to act recklessly than them.

Not only them, but in fact, all elderly people can be themselves as they like completely regardless of the eyes of those around them. However, most middle-aged and elderly people in today's society, unlike me and Yoshichi Shimada, live well-behaved lives and always feel that they must "become respected elders in society and in the family." So they put on heavy chains.

In addition, there is a big trap in this idea, which is that the criteria for judging whether an old man is respected or not are often set by guys who are younger than us. Therefore, the so-called respected by society or exemplary old people are, in the final analysis, just "liked by young people".

In this way, whether you realize it or not, as long as you want to become a socially recognized and respected old man, you actually subconsciously have the idea of pleasing young people. When we want to express our desires and opinions openly, we may wonder: "Isn't this too unsteady?" As a result, unconsciously, his true temperament was suppressed.

Born as a human being, the older you are, the more willful you are. Instead of pursuing "being liked" or "respected", wouldn't it be nice to choose to live a comfortable life despite being disliked?

The story to be told below may not be as apt as an argument for the above point. There is such a rich old man who once invested three billion yen in 4,000 women, and married a young girl fifty-five years younger than himself at the age of seventy-seven. In the end, the old man died mysteriously at home. That's right, he is the old man known to the world as "Don Juan of Kishu". A large amount of stimulants were found in his body, and at that time, it was suspected that the man had died from homicide.

I may not be strict in saying this, like this Don Juan, even if people will point fingers after his death and comment: "It is because of this way of life that this will end up like this." However, we have to admit that Don Juan himself lived as he wanted until the end of his life, at least without regrets in his life. I think it's important not to care what other people think, but to focus on whether you're satisfied.

I want to die as a wicked person

Let me say more, even if you want to win the love of young people with a sleek lifestyle, you will not get any decent rewards. Young people are already exhausted just by coping with their own affairs every day, and they don't remember much about the old man and the old woman. When we remember us after we die, when our families reunite at Obon or New Year, it is usually a good person.

At community gatherings, when talking about a deceased elderly person after tea and dinner, the phrase "is a good person" usually does not appear. At this time, people usually miss the old people who are willful and always cause trouble.

The loneliest thing is to live carefully and cautiously under the eyes of the world all your life, but in the end it is forgotten. If so, it is better to be a "wicked person", maybe it can remain in someone's memory.

Therefore, whether at home, in the workplace, or in the community where we live, there is no need for us to strive to be a "good old man". For me, the ideal funeral is when people clapp their hands and applaud while saying, "This old guy is finally dead." If we change to this way of thinking, then the rest of our lives may change from the ordinary before and become colorful!

People who say such powerful things as "I'm always young" just lack the ability to know themselves objectively.

No one wins

The war against "aging"

After I finished publishing this old man's theory, I seemed to hear a group of middle-aged and elderly readers retorting: "We are not as old as you say, right?" Indeed, in recent years, there has been a claim that we have entered the "era of a hundred years of life." The pension age has also been adjusted from sixty-five to seventy, and there is a trend to continue to do so.

In addition, I don't know if it is affected by the level of medical care or the quality of food, compared with the past, the elderly now do look much younger. Shockingly, in the national anime "Miss Conch", the age of the conch's father Haupei Isono and mother Isono Shu is actually in their fifties! From the perspective of modern people, the appearance of these two characters is not to say that they are in their seventies, even if they are said to be in their eighties, there are many people who believe it. The concept of "old age" has indeed changed dramatically over the years.

In addition, people's perceptions of men vary depending on the environment in which they live. For example, in baseball circles, the Matsusaka generation, born in 1980, is already considered an old player. If we look at the political circle, those politicians are just starting out at the age of sixty, and they are really young.

Life is not as clear as the seasons, and there is no clear definition of how old you are. But aging is indeed sneaking closer to us. Because of this, we need more the ability to "recognize ourselves", which can be described as "people have self-knowledge".

However, it is not as simple as we say casually, and this ability is not easy to come by, because each of us carries an obsession with "once been." Although we can feel in our hearts that our physical strength is not as good as before, we always want to fight against it, or always hope to be as energetic as when we were young. For example, we sometimes pretend to be tender in strange ways, sometimes we overexercise, and sometimes we wear wigs to hide the traces of age.

However, even if we fight aging, there is no way to defeat it. The ability to make such judgments is our ability to "recognize ourselves," which can also be said to be "the ability to objectively examine ourselves" or "the ability to judge situations." In fact, I have absolute confidence in this ability of mine.

I developed this ability at a young age. When I realized that the "explosiveness" of my language was beginning to decline, I immediately began to think about the next "new way out". I didn't think about how hard I was going to continue my comedy career. Like the sports world, the crosstalk world also has high requirements for reflex nerves. Of course, it's not that you can't speak crosstalk as you get older, but I decided to change careers anyway. Only by not expecting too much from yourself can you make judgments calmly. So I thought very thoroughly about what the "next self" should look like.

So, since then, I have been desperately thinking about how to transform into an actor, like some of the popular variety shows "Genius Kitano Takeshi hosted the uplifting program" (Nippon TV), "Fengyun! Kitano Takeshi no Jo (TBS TV) and "Takeshi Kitano's Sportsman" (TV Asahi) were gradually developed based on the thinking of that period.

In the 80s of the 20th century, I once played a criminal like Kiyoshi Okubo (who was hanged for rape and homicide). I played this role in order to draw a clear line between "Takeshi Kitano" and "actor Takeshi Kitano".

Taking this as an opportunity, I starred in the movie "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" directed by Nagisa Oshima. After the movie was released, I once secretly ran to the cinema to see how the audience reacted to the movie, and it turned out that in the opening part, as soon as I appeared, the audience burst into laughter. Sure enough, everyone was too impressed with me as a funny artist and didn't treat me as an actor at all. That's why I wanted to play roles like murderous maniacs and rapists to dispel everyone's stereotype of me. Moreover, I do feel that my approach has played a role in my smooth entry into the film industry in the later stage.

Later, I did become a director. Every time I shoot, I feel like I have a rational self next to me. Although I also shot with the idea of "Lao Tzu's movie being the first in the world", I always felt that there was another self overlooking everything above my head. Therefore, I could not enjoy the smug feeling in my heart. Even if there is a moment when I feel very engaged and forgetful, in the next moment, another self immediately runs out to sweep me.

If I had been particularly attached to a certain point then, I might not be where I am today. I always feel that it is this realization of mine that has allowed my current career to continue.

Looking forward to the world after death

I hate the phrase "prepare for the aftermath" because it is incompatible with my view of life and death. The so-called preparation for the aftermath is actually "preparing for the death that will be faced". I don't like to think about that because I feel that there is a sour smell of "imposing meaning on my own death."

There is life and death. I don't think we can give life and death extra meaning. I have already died in an accident once, which belongs to "picking up another life". Wouldn't it be too damn if I still acted in a hurry and panic in the face of death?

People often fear death, partly because they still have nostalgia for this life, and partly because no one tells us what the world will be like after death, and this unknown is very disturbing.

I also often wonder, "What happens when people die?" "However, I think it's more of an expectation than fear. Of course, in the end, no one can elaborate on what it is like to die in its full form. Is there anything in the world after death, only absolute nothingness? Is it possible to enter a transparent world after death? In this world, is everything that cannot be understood by physical and chemical thinking finally understandable? Thinking of this, I am very excited. About the universe, about human beings, about the gods, what we can't understand when we are alive, is it possible to realize at the moment of death, "Ah, so it is." In short, imagining death like this, to "look forward to the world after death", is like giving one's own death an insurance.

Kiki Kirin, who died some time ago, once said that he felt a "giving up" emotion when facing death, and screenwriter Juga Hashida also mentioned the need to create a "society where you can choose death independently." Maybe their feelings are very close to mine. In a sense, if we feel that what we want to do in this life has been "done enough", then the final hope is that we can arrange a place or time of death by ourselves?

It is impossible to think about the meaning of death from the perspective of philosophical speculation. However, it is more difficult to understand the meaning of living by comparison. The question "why we live" becomes more and more difficult to answer as we get older. In my filmography, there are places where I just think, "Where should I die?" "Especially when I was filming Sonata, I really kept thinking about it.

When I was a child, I lived in a slum in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, and I was very poor at that time, so I thought that if I could eat a good meal and watch a baseball game in Shigeo Nagayu, I could call it a life. However, after making a little money, embarking on the path of an artist, and gaining a little recognition in the film industry, I felt that even if I tried hard to do better in the future, "it would not be much different from now." In other words, maybe I understand the upper limit of my ability, so I don't expect too much. From now on, it is almost impossible for me to suddenly grasp something that I have not been able to do so far. Instead, I can have reliable estimates of what I can do. Therefore, I will not have any unrealistic excessive expectations for the rest of my life.

Even so, we covet "life". Perhaps this is because we simply fear "death" as an absolute being, and simply want to escape.

When I was young, I had the expectation that "I was born to be useful", so I had a certain attachment to life. These thoughts are also because they are young, and if they think like this when they are older, they may be a little shameless.

Knowing the limits of one's own ability, you can judge what can be done and what cannot be done, and people naturally become calm and calm. When we accept the fact that "people always have to die", we can always relieve the unrest of our minds in the face of death a little. If there really is an "ideal old age", then we will not have the above panic and anxiety at all.

Put confusion and mistakes

All become art

The thorny topic of "death" is starting to get lengthy. In the face of death, even if we are mentally prepared and make a lot of plans in advance, we will inevitably tremble with tension when the limit comes. I think the ideal way to die is to leave suddenly and die a crunchy death. For me, perhaps in an ordinary tavern drinking cheap shochu and eating a dish, it is ideal to suddenly collapse and pass away.

However, I do have unfulfilled wishes. That is, his achievements in acting are still a lot worse than those of Ting Zhisheng in ancient and modern times.

In his later years, as long as Mr. Zhisheng showed his face in front of the audience, even if he did nothing, the audience would think "too interesting" and laugh. Mr. Zhisheng once collapsed due to a cerebral hemorrhage, and after regaining consciousness, despite the dissuasion of his family and doctors, he insisted on climbing the high seat of the performance even if he could not speak.

Among stand-up comedy masters, there are many different types. Gui Wenle, an older generation stand-up comedy artist, likes to control the length of each segment, is good at grasping the rhythm of the performance, and everything on the field is in his calculation, never out of control. On the contrary, Mr. Shisei belongs to the type that often gets the names of the characters in the scene wrong. Sometimes, I really can't remember the name of the character, so I just say "oh, it's not an important name anyway" in an attempt to fool through. Legend has it that even if he fell asleep on a high seat drunk, the audience would feel that they had "seen a scene that has not been seen in a thousand years" and were extremely happy.

One day, Mr. Zhisheng was incontinent in the corridor. The disciples who came to help him clean up the scene couldn't help but complain. At this time, Mr. Zhisheng said sharply: "If you don't even want to do this little thing, how can you become a qualified little common man?" "No matter how many times I hear this joke, I will laugh out loud, why do disciples of stand-up comedy artists have to become a little common man?

Mr. Shisei is a person who makes a joke about his aging. I yearn for his state, and I think there is probably an artistic realm that must go beyond skill and even beyond self-esteem.

Of course, if you can retire, it is also a beautiful thing to live a leisurely old age. However, we artists have always lived in the audience's sight, so we still like the feeling of being on stage and in front of the camera anyway. Perhaps for me, this insistence is the same as Mr. Shisei's obsession with the high seat.

I want to be able to show my whole in the situations I love, including some embarrassing, shameful parts. This kind of display may be the prerogative of the artist, but it is more like a fish having to swim in the water, or even stop swimming and die. The way we choose to live may seem silly to some people with a higher level of cognition, but I find it very cute. Even if you are not an artist, as long as you can feel the cuteness in it, then this cuteness can also be an inspiration and inspiration in your life.

Pay attention to the grass and read the classics together