Break It Down

Extracts from a Life

I was brought up in the violin factory, and when I had a fight with my brothers and sisters we even used to hit one another with violins.

Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.”

As a child I was taught to recite the haiku of the Japanese poet Issa, and I have never forgotten them.

Ah, my old home town,

Dumplings that they used to make,

Snow in springtime, too.

I cannot live without children. But I love grownups too, because I feel a great sympathy for them—“After all, these people too must die.”

One day, as usual, I set off for my father’s violin factory, where a thousand people were employed. I entered the office, discovered an English typewriter, and started punching the keys.

Just then the chief of the export department came in. “Master Shinichi!”

I lied and said I had merely been touching the keys.

“I see,” he replied simply.

Coward, I thought. Why did I dissemble?

I went to a bookstore, filled with severe anger against myself. Fate led me to a copy of Tolstoy’s Diary. I opened it at random. “To deceive oneself is worse than to deceive others.” These harsh words pierced me to the core.

Several years later when, at twenty-three, I went to Germany to study, the book went with me in my pocket.

Here follows a little episode of self-praise.

I was then under the strong influence of Tolstoy.

It was in 1919. I received an unexpected letter in early spring inviting me to join an expedition for biological research. The expedition party on board numbered thirty.

At that time I was inseparable from my violin. It had become a part of me.

Our ship circled the islands. While we walked side by side on the beach, we discovered a most unusual patch of moss of reddish-cobalt color growing high up a sheer cliff.

“I very badly wish to have some of that moss,” said Professor Emoto, looking up anxiously.

“I will get it for you from here,” I boasted, and borrowed a small scoop from a research member.

It turned out to be situated much higher than expected. Heavens! I thought.

I threw the scoop, under the scrutiny of the whole party.

“Oh, wonderful marvelous!” they cried.

As I listened to their applause, I vowed in my heart never again to do such a foolish thing.

Art is not in some far-off place.

I took lodgings in the house of a gray-haired widow and her elderly maid. Both the landlady and the maid were hard of hearing so they did not complain no matter how loudly I practiced the violin.

“I shall no longer be able to look after you,” said Dr. M., a professor of medicine, “and so I have asked a friend of mine to keep an eye on you.” The friend turned out to be Dr. Albert Einstein, who later developed the theory of relativity.

Einstein’s specialties, such as the Bach Chaconne, were magnificent. In comparison with his playing, mine, though I tried to play effortlessly and with ease, seemed to me a constant struggle.

At a dinner party, an old woman wondered how it was that a Japanese could play the violin in such a way as to convey what was German about Bruch.

After a brief interval, Dr. Einstein said quietly, “People are all the same, Madame.”

I was tremendously moved.

The whole program that evening was Mozart. And during the Clarinet Quintet, something happened to me that had never happened before: I lost the use of my arms. After the performance I tried to clap. My blood burned within me.

That night I couldn’t sleep at all. Mozart had shown me immortal light, and I now felt as though I were under direct orders from Mozart. He expressed his sadness not only with the minor scale but with the major scale as well. Life and death: the inescapable business of nature. Filled with the joy of love, I gave up sadness.

I was doing what I wanted to do.

Holding his chopsticks in midair, my father looked at me with a sparkle in his eye. “Well done, Shinichi!”