"We must try to explain everything we think to children. . . . Words that are really rooted in the bones of the Japanese people: Those words are accessible."
Poet Shuntaro Tanikawa said this to me back in Nov. 1981; and I asked him what kind of words they were.
"What I mean," he explained, "is words that go down easily with the Japanese. For instance, we have native Japanese words to express love, such as itoshii (beloved), horeru (to lose one's heart) and suki (to love) . . . these words really hit home, as opposed to Chinese compounds such as renai (love). In fact, it should be possible to write philosophy only using hiragana (the native Japanese syllabary)."
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