This year’s Hinamatsuri arrives with rain.
Winter-like cold lingers, and though it is already March, I put on a down jacket once more.
It has been a week since the Winter Olympics ended.
In Japan, attention now turns to the WBC—baseball’s turn in the spotlight.
Soon there will be grand sumo, then Major League Baseball, and before long, the FIFA World Cup.
Beyond sports, countless events unfold.
Last year there was the World Expo.
Stepping back, I cannot help but marvel at how much there is.
At times it feels as though we are gently led—if not carried—by an endless current of entertainment.
How much stimulation does a human being truly need?
I would not call myself particularly devoted to such events.
And yet I have visited Urayasu more than once, I enjoy traveling, I cheer and sigh over sports, and I watch films.
When something happens, I take interest; when I go or see it, my heart is moved.
Whether all of this can be reduced to a single word—“entertainment”—I am not entirely sure.
In the age of streaming, even experiences themselves are delivered to us.
They serve as show windows to possible emotions, inviting us to sample what once required presence.
But as when walking through a vast department store, there are moments of quiet fatigue before the abundance.
And at the same time, many experiences begin to appear curiously level—
as though their emotional heights have been carefully standardized.
Human ingenuity has diversified the forms of inspiration.
Yet if these emotions could somehow be measured, would their differences truly be so great?
Even if one were to travel into space and float in zero gravity, perhaps the difference would lie only in the gap between imagination and reality.
It might not alter anything essential within oneself.
What weighs more heavily is not the absence of wonder, but the excess of information.
In such moments, I feel I can faintly understand the mind of a hermit sage—
one who withdraws not out of disdain, but to preserve clarity.
If I could become such a person, perhaps life would feel a little lighter.
It is only a passing thought.
