A Man

by Keiichirō Hirano

And the despair that set in when they learned that all the suffering they’d forced upon him was utterly pointless. If that’s how it was going to turn out, they should have set aside the days that remained in his short life to serve him his favorite foods, to take him to the zoo he so enjoyed, to spoil him with whatever he asked for, to teach him the joy of living if only briefly. Like there was ever any need for such harsh rearing.

With no one else there, no room for mistaking the other, no need to distinguish them from anyone else, even then—especially then!—we call out to the beloved by name. She wondered how he might have felt in such moments to have his wife speak the name of another, to have her affection permeate every nook and cranny of that name and envelop him forever in its lingering resonance.

Such experiences made her wonder if there might even be people out there who, unable to love their biological parents, could not feel that the name they were born with was their own . . .

But irrespective of capitalism and mass consumer society, didn’t art in fact originally function as publicity? For example, a blazingly vibrant sunflower in a flowerpot. A horse galloping across a prairie. A life of loneliness. The tragedy of war. Hatred borne inside. Loving someone. Being loved by no one . . . Couldn’t all artistic representation be thought of in the final analysis as an advertisement for these?

There is a certain kind of loneliness that can only be soothed by finding yourself within the tale of another’s trauma.”