Kintsugi : 金継ぎ
The last few weeks haven't exactly been what I planned. I took the kanji kentei level 8 test, however, I hadn't done enough writing practice to pass it. By my estimate, I'll have scored around fifty percent. But, with four months before the October sitting, I've got plenty of time to not just scrape a pass - next time I'm aiming to pass it with a 90%+ score. Not such a bad thing, considering having a good core ability at this level bodes well for future tests.
Listening and reading practice have continued reasonably well. I've got my Wanikani apprentice level down below 100; however, it introduced some kanji that I hadn't reviewed for ages, so that has gone up to around 120. So, whilst being on top of it, I'm still very aware that taking a couple of months break at the beginning of the year resulted in around six months stagnentation in going forward.
However, the most valuable lesson I've learned recently relates to kintsugi 金継ぎ
金継ぎ
My father asked me if I'd heard of "Kintsugi" since he read about it in a Sunday newspaper supplement. At the time, I hadn't heard of it, although, I had seen it whilst travelling in Japan.
The literal meaning of "kintsugi" is "gold joinery". You sometimes see it in the form of ceramics lined with gold veins.
The story of kintsugi goes back to the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa in 15th century Japan. He accidentally broke his favourite bowl and sent it off to China to be repaired. However, the Chinese repaired it using ugly metal staples which did not appeal to the Yoshimasa. So, he asked local Japanese craftsmen to find a way to fix it in a more aesthetically pleasing manner.
They used a resin to join the broken pieces and then, unable to hide the joins, they used gold powder to render the joins beautiful. Yoshimasa was delighted; in fact, he declared the repaired bowl was more beautiful than the original.
Kintsugi follows a Buddhist principle, that beauty is found in the imperfections of objects (wabi-sabi); the dinks and dents, moss growing on stone, the cracks and crannies of ancient objects. For these tell a story of the objects life. I think of kintsugi as wabi-sabi on steroids. Rather than try to hide the scars of damage; celebrate them by decorating them in gold.
Hence, the philosophy of kintsugi represents not just the beauty found in the uniqueness in the patterns of the gold veins, but the significant moments in the life of an object.
Now consider the robustness of an object that has been repaired with a resin. The first time you drop a china bowl and it breaks into pieces; the breaks occur where the china is weakest. It is thus stronger after repair than it was before it was broken. Break it again and again, you end up with something far more robust than it could have been in its original form.
This is not just true for inanimate objects such as bowls and plates. The human soul is also a conduit for kintsugi - you have an argument with a lover and after resolving the argument, the relationship is stronger is it not?
This realisation got me thinking about language learning and how kintsugi relates to it.
Kintsugi in language learning
I think it's a platitude to say that language learning is all about making mistakes and learning from them. We know that in order to speak a language better, we must speak, make mistakes, learn from the mistakes and over time, not keep making the same mistakes. Gradually, we see progress.
But what about those times when our language learning is hit by disaster? What about those times when everything seems broken?
Sometimes, saying "I have to make mistakes in order to make progress" just isn't enough. It doesn't address the pain we feel or the magnitude of the situation. Sometimes we just need a little kintsugi to give us perspective.
We need to fix a problem so well, that in time, we look back on our exasperation as that pivotal moment in time where we first acknowledged there was indeed a problem and then we fixed it. Not only did we fix it, but we did such a good job of fixing it, that we see the necessity in appreciating that we had to break something in order to see where it was fragile.
My Japanese Hitchhiking Story
I was out hiking in the Yoro-keikoku (Yoro Valley), Chiba prefecture. I'm into photography, particularly long-exposure photography, so while out hiking in this beautiful valley, I lost track of time taking a photo of a waterfall.
I knew that the sun would set within an hour, yet I probably had a two or three hour hike to the nearest station. So, I thought it would be better to climb out of the valley and hitch a ride to the station.
I hitched a ride with a passing telephone engineer and for the first minute or two, was happily conversing in Japanese on typical first time conversations - where are you from?, why are you in Japan?, where do you want to go? etc. Then, as we traversed the windy lanes towards the railway station, his Japanese became incomprehensible to me. Oh no ... no matter how many 「もう一度うお願いします」(one more time please) I uttered, I got the sense my replies were not hitting the mark. Now, this has happened to me in Scotland talking with a Glaswegian guy ... so in some respects, I wasn't going to beat myself up about my inability to make sense of what this Japanese telephone engineer was saying. Only, it kind of bugged me ... was it the fact that I was able to speak so flawlessly on familiar topics that signalled that he didn't have to speak to me like I was a young child? Maybe. But still, after a few years devoted to the Japanese language; that evening, my inability to converse felt like my Japanese was broken.
That's when I decided that I needed to fix my listening skills. I'm not too shabby at reading kanji ... my vocabulary, my grammar knowledge isn't too bad ... but listening ... hmmm ... not so good. So I've switched my focus onto improving my listening skills. I'm in the process of repairing my broken Japanese; it's a work in progress, but I certainly look at the moment where I couldn't comprehend what that telephone engineer was saying as the significant moment in time where my fragile Japanese bowl dropped to the ground and broke. Thus, revealing where my language skills were weak, where I should focus on repairing them and just as in kintsugi, make them stronger than ever.
I've taken this approach to life in general. It's really liberating to not see failures in a negative light, but to celebrate them as being potential scars to decorate in gold.
In reflection
I remember when I first started learning Japanese, I saw fluency as this pristine object of desire. A year into the journey, I acknowledged that in order to arrive at fluency, I had to make mistakes. But I was still focused on an illusion of perfection - not the battle-scarred lines of failure and repair.
Now I see the language as a kintsugi project; one that will have its own unique pattern of golden veins; the times when I couldn't comprehend a word someone was saying; the time I forgot my speech at a Japanese speech contest and just ad-libbed my way into being voted the most entertaining (despite being grammatically bad) etc etc.
There will be times when I career off the tracks and tumble down a mountain, crash my language into trees and get stuck between the rocks. I used to consider those times painful, after all, I still saw the goal as perfection and those failures scared my mind. All that's changed is that I now see those scars as beautiful cracks.
And that's it ... celebrate the cracks, the breaks, the failures - don't leave them discarded on the floor, fix them, make the whole thing stronger and more beautiful. We look back and see them as the moments which shine when we reflect.
Listening and reading practice have continued reasonably well. I've got my Wanikani apprentice level down below 100; however, it introduced some kanji that I hadn't reviewed for ages, so that has gone up to around 120. So, whilst being on top of it, I'm still very aware that taking a couple of months break at the beginning of the year resulted in around six months stagnentation in going forward.
However, the most valuable lesson I've learned recently relates to kintsugi 金継ぎ
金継ぎ
My father asked me if I'd heard of "Kintsugi" since he read about it in a Sunday newspaper supplement. At the time, I hadn't heard of it, although, I had seen it whilst travelling in Japan.
The literal meaning of "kintsugi" is "gold joinery". You sometimes see it in the form of ceramics lined with gold veins.
 |
| Esty.com (Kintsugi Plates) |
The story of kintsugi goes back to the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa in 15th century Japan. He accidentally broke his favourite bowl and sent it off to China to be repaired. However, the Chinese repaired it using ugly metal staples which did not appeal to the Yoshimasa. So, he asked local Japanese craftsmen to find a way to fix it in a more aesthetically pleasing manner.
They used a resin to join the broken pieces and then, unable to hide the joins, they used gold powder to render the joins beautiful. Yoshimasa was delighted; in fact, he declared the repaired bowl was more beautiful than the original.
Kintsugi follows a Buddhist principle, that beauty is found in the imperfections of objects (wabi-sabi); the dinks and dents, moss growing on stone, the cracks and crannies of ancient objects. For these tell a story of the objects life. I think of kintsugi as wabi-sabi on steroids. Rather than try to hide the scars of damage; celebrate them by decorating them in gold.
Hence, the philosophy of kintsugi represents not just the beauty found in the uniqueness in the patterns of the gold veins, but the significant moments in the life of an object.
Now consider the robustness of an object that has been repaired with a resin. The first time you drop a china bowl and it breaks into pieces; the breaks occur where the china is weakest. It is thus stronger after repair than it was before it was broken. Break it again and again, you end up with something far more robust than it could have been in its original form.
This is not just true for inanimate objects such as bowls and plates. The human soul is also a conduit for kintsugi - you have an argument with a lover and after resolving the argument, the relationship is stronger is it not?
This realisation got me thinking about language learning and how kintsugi relates to it.
Kintsugi in language learning
I think it's a platitude to say that language learning is all about making mistakes and learning from them. We know that in order to speak a language better, we must speak, make mistakes, learn from the mistakes and over time, not keep making the same mistakes. Gradually, we see progress.
But what about those times when our language learning is hit by disaster? What about those times when everything seems broken?
Sometimes, saying "I have to make mistakes in order to make progress" just isn't enough. It doesn't address the pain we feel or the magnitude of the situation. Sometimes we just need a little kintsugi to give us perspective.
We need to fix a problem so well, that in time, we look back on our exasperation as that pivotal moment in time where we first acknowledged there was indeed a problem and then we fixed it. Not only did we fix it, but we did such a good job of fixing it, that we see the necessity in appreciating that we had to break something in order to see where it was fragile.
My Japanese Hitchhiking Story
I was out hiking in the Yoro-keikoku (Yoro Valley), Chiba prefecture. I'm into photography, particularly long-exposure photography, so while out hiking in this beautiful valley, I lost track of time taking a photo of a waterfall.
 |
| Waterfall in the Yoro Valley, Chiba |
I hitched a ride with a passing telephone engineer and for the first minute or two, was happily conversing in Japanese on typical first time conversations - where are you from?, why are you in Japan?, where do you want to go? etc. Then, as we traversed the windy lanes towards the railway station, his Japanese became incomprehensible to me. Oh no ... no matter how many 「もう一度うお願いします」(one more time please) I uttered, I got the sense my replies were not hitting the mark. Now, this has happened to me in Scotland talking with a Glaswegian guy ... so in some respects, I wasn't going to beat myself up about my inability to make sense of what this Japanese telephone engineer was saying. Only, it kind of bugged me ... was it the fact that I was able to speak so flawlessly on familiar topics that signalled that he didn't have to speak to me like I was a young child? Maybe. But still, after a few years devoted to the Japanese language; that evening, my inability to converse felt like my Japanese was broken.
That's when I decided that I needed to fix my listening skills. I'm not too shabby at reading kanji ... my vocabulary, my grammar knowledge isn't too bad ... but listening ... hmmm ... not so good. So I've switched my focus onto improving my listening skills. I'm in the process of repairing my broken Japanese; it's a work in progress, but I certainly look at the moment where I couldn't comprehend what that telephone engineer was saying as the significant moment in time where my fragile Japanese bowl dropped to the ground and broke. Thus, revealing where my language skills were weak, where I should focus on repairing them and just as in kintsugi, make them stronger than ever.
I've taken this approach to life in general. It's really liberating to not see failures in a negative light, but to celebrate them as being potential scars to decorate in gold.
In reflection
I remember when I first started learning Japanese, I saw fluency as this pristine object of desire. A year into the journey, I acknowledged that in order to arrive at fluency, I had to make mistakes. But I was still focused on an illusion of perfection - not the battle-scarred lines of failure and repair.
Now I see the language as a kintsugi project; one that will have its own unique pattern of golden veins; the times when I couldn't comprehend a word someone was saying; the time I forgot my speech at a Japanese speech contest and just ad-libbed my way into being voted the most entertaining (despite being grammatically bad) etc etc.
There will be times when I career off the tracks and tumble down a mountain, crash my language into trees and get stuck between the rocks. I used to consider those times painful, after all, I still saw the goal as perfection and those failures scared my mind. All that's changed is that I now see those scars as beautiful cracks.
And that's it ... celebrate the cracks, the breaks, the failures - don't leave them discarded on the floor, fix them, make the whole thing stronger and more beautiful. We look back and see them as the moments which shine when we reflect.
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