＜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
(Reference) Original article in Japanese
・「記憶力の衰え」と「メモの活用法」。岡潔・前田裕二・南方熊楠の逸話も紹介
１. My Declining Memory and How I Use Notes
I turned 72 in September 2021, and recently I’ve been noticing a decline in my memory. My wife even teases me, saying, “You rarely forgot things before, but lately you forget a lot!”
Previously, for tasks outside of work, I would make brief notes on my calendar, write them in my planner, or, in some cases, write detailed information on memo paper.
When I was younger, these tasks were mostly just reminders or notes I wrote down in case I forgot, even though I knew them in my head.
However, since I started noticing a decline in my memory, I changed my method to writing tasks on memo paper and discarding it once the task was done. I made it a habit to look at the notes daily, and in my daily life, I tried to forget about the tasks and avoid thinking about unnecessary things.
Recently, a TV program featured a segment on aging, and it highlighted an example of someone who tries to prevent mental aging by “memorizing their shopping plans instead of writing them down.”
Certainly, consciously engaging in the act of (short-term) memory might activate the brain. However, I believe it’s better to write down my shopping plans and “buy everything correctly, without any mistakes or shortages,” and that’s what I do.
I try to prevent mental aging by thinking about other things. Frankly, I don’t want to use my brain on things that aren’t very important.
When I do this, various ideas pop into my head, or I have sudden flashes of inspiration, while cycling or walking.
As I mentioned in my article on the “benefits of walking,” this is probably due to the release of the brain chemical serotonin.
2. Kiyoshi Oka’s “Method of Using Notes”
When I was in high school, I remember being impressed by an article in a Gakken learning magazine featuring a photograph of a brilliant mathematician who was a professor emeritus at Nara Women’s University and had achieved international recognition.
In February 2018, a television drama titled “The Wife Who Raised a Genius” was broadcast, and that genius was Kiyoshi Oka (1901-1978).
Nobel laureates in physics, Dr. Hideki Yukawa and Dr. Shinichiro Tomonaga, also attended lectures by Kiyoshi Oka when he was an assistant professor at Kyoto University, and they left comments saying that his lectures were “more stimulating than physics classes.”
He received the Order of Culture for his achievement in discovering solutions to mathematical problems considered difficult worldwide, but apparently, he kept the medal wrapped in newspaper and left it lying around carelessly. He was also known for his eccentric behavior, such as taking walks on sunny days with an umbrella and rubber boots, and drawing mathematical formulas on telephone poles (which were made of wood at the time) or on the ground whenever inspiration struck him.
I’m currently gathering information from various angles to write blog posts. Therefore, I don’t think it’s necessary to memorize things that aren’t very important, which is why I frequently use “schedule memo paper.”
I believe that increasing the number of times I “think deeply” is more effective for brain activation than repeatedly using “short-term memory” like “shopping lists”…
3. Yuji Maeda’s “Memo Utilization Method”
I wrote about this previously in an article titled “Yuji Maeda, CEO of SHOWROOM, a ‘tipping’ platform, is a ‘memo fanatic’ with unique ideas!”, so please take a look.
4. Minakata Kumagusu’s Method for Dealing with Memory Loss
Naturalist Minakata Kumagusu (1867-1941) was a genius with an astonishing memory and linguistic ability, so much so that Kunio Yanagita, who knew him, called him “the pinnacle of Japanese potential.”
In his youth, when writing papers, he could remember which books and pages contained the necessary data, and he would assemble what he remembered in his mind and write fluently.
However, even he, in his later years, seems to have suffered from memory loss due to aging.
The measures he took were “creating an index that allowed him to instantly search the contents of books” and “using the Japanese-language papers he had published.” Furthermore, when he absolutely couldn’t remember something, he would “write letters to acquaintances to ask about the sources of the literature.” Nowadays, the internet can cover a lot of this…
He would apparently talk to himself in his detached study late at night, saying things like, “Why can’t I remember something this simple, you idiot?”, “Professor Minakata is an idiot,” and “How did things end up like this?”