＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49) on X
The other day, I was casually watching TV when I came across a program called “Super Adversity Quiz Battle!! The Wall of 99 People,” in which champions of a memory-based competition called “Memory Sports” appeared and showed off some of their skills.
1. Memory Sports
(1) What are Memory Sports?
Memory sports are competitions in which participants demonstrate their short-term memory skills on the spot. There are also the World Memory Championship, the Japan Open Memory Championship, and the Japan Memory Championship.
The World Memory Championship was founded in 1991 by British author and educational consultant Tony Buzan (1942-2019) and chess grandmaster Raymond Keene as a global competition focused on improving human memory skills.
This is not a competition based on the amount of knowledge accumulated over the years or analogical reasoning and reasoning abilities, as in the case of “Todaiou Quiz.”
(2) Competition Events and Rules in Japan
The competition events and rules in Japan (based on the official rules of the World Memory Championship) are as follows:
① “Faces and Names”: Memorize in 15 minutes, answer in 30 minutes
② “Speed Cards”: Memorize in 5 minutes, answer in 10 minutes
③ “Random Words”: Memorize in 15 minutes, answer in 30 minutes
④ “Number Memorization”: Memorize in 5 minutes, answer in 10 minutes
⑤ “Fictional Timeline”: Memorize 100 fictional events and their corresponding years
(3) Memory Tips
According to a memory expert who appeared on television, the secret to memory techniques is “creating a place” and “creating a fantastic story.” It seems that the key is to go through places in order, pairing the object of memory with the place to create a story that helps achieve a vivid memory.
For example, imagine a place called “home” and create the order “front door” → “sofa” → “table” → “bathtub.” If the first items to memorize are “sunflowers” and “arrows,” you could create a story in which “the front door is covered in sunflowers, and an arrow flies out from among them.”
There’s a proverb called “an arrow standing on a stone.” This is an analogy that says, “If you put your heart into something, nothing is impossible.” This story, found in the “Han Shi Wai Zhuan” and the “Shiji: Li Guang Biography,” tells of a man who, thinking a stone was a tiger, shot an arrow and it went straight through. It’s also a perfect example of a fantastic story.
(4) Various Mnemonic Techniques
Mnemonic techniques can be broadly divided into the “locus method,” the “narrative method,” and the “initial method.”
The “locus method” involves imagining a place (this can be your home, a real place, or an imaginary place, and you can even place it on a part of your body) and placing the object you want to remember there. It is also known as the “memory palace,” “journey method,” or “basic association method.”
The “narrative method” is a method of coming up with a story and incorporating the object you want to remember into that story.
The “initial method” is a method of memorizing the object you want to remember by picking out the initial letter of the name. One example of this method is memorizing historical dates using numerical mnemonics (“The Japanese bush warbler sings in Heian-kyo” means 794).
As an aside, professional shogi players always hold a “post-game analysis” after a game to reflect on the game. This is possible because they have the “story” of how both players moved their pieces memorized.
2. The Rakugo Story “Atamayama”
Speaking of “fantastic stories,” there is a good example in rakugo called “Atamayama” (or “Sakuranbo” in Kamigata rakugo).
The story goes like this:
A short-tempered (or perhaps stingy) man eats a cherry, pit and all, which sprouts from the man’s head and grows into a giant cherry tree.
The neighbors are delighted and climb onto the man’s head, naming it “Head Mountain” and causing a commotion at a cherry blossom viewing party. The man becomes so annoyed by the noise above him that he uproots the cherry tree, leaving a huge hole in his head.
However, rainwater collects in the hole, turning it into a large pond, and the neighbors start fishing in boats.
When the man gets fishhooks caught in his eyelids and nose, he becomes so enraged that he throws himself into the hole in his own head and dies.
The original stories for “Head Mountain” are “The Plum Tree” from “Zashousan” published in 1773, and “The Skylight Pond” from “Kuchibyoshi” also published in 1773.
In fact, there are similar stories overseas as well. A very similar episode appears in “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” a novel written by Bürger and published in 1786. Baron Munchausen (1720-1797) was a real person who was apparently skilled at entertaining people by telling tall tales.
The main character, Baron Munchausen, goes hunting and finds a large deer. Unfortunately, he’s out of bullets, so he loads his gun with cherry pits instead and shoots, hitting the deer in the forehead but it still escapes.
A few years later, when he returns to the same spot, he finds a deer with a magnificent cherry tree growing about 10 feet from its head. The Baron kills the deer and gets some fine venison along with some cherry sauce.
The truth is unknown as to whether one side copied the other, or whether there were other interesting people in both Japan and the West who came up with the same idea at the same time, completely unrelated.
3. The story of Hayashiya Shozo
There’s an interesting anecdote about the rakugo performer Hayashiya Shozo VII (1894-1949). He was the father of Hayashiya Sanpei I (1925-1980), famous for his signature “excuse me” gesture of scratching his head, and the grandfather of Hayashiya Shozo IX (1962-present).
One day, one of his students invited him to visit a jazz cafe for future reference. Amid the deafening din and the passionate atmosphere emanating from the young Beatles men and women, he sat there with a frown on his face, saying, “What is this?”
Afterwards, he prefaced his remarks by saying, “I learned a lot,” and then said the following:
“When I ask the people who hang out at jazz cafes, they all say they love rakugo. When I ask them what they love, they all say, ‘Atamayama’ is amazing.” That kind of thing really resonates with young people today.”
The eccentric, free-spirited, and interesting ideas of “Atamayama” resonate with young people today.
Personally, I think there’s something irresistible about the “human interest stories” of classic rakugo…