ことしわたしは「年男」なのですが、還暦を過ぎてなのであんまりお呼びでない（笑）。しかし自分的には「第２のスタート」気分も大きくなって来ています。ちょうど仕事人生の結節点も超えたので、ようやく昔人の「還暦」が自分にもやってきたという感覚。
上の画像、新年の冬場の写真ではなく夏まっ盛りのような房総の「入道雲」。昨年訪れた千葉県一宮の芥川龍之介に所縁の「芥川荘」旅宿建築の探訪時のものです。
住宅雑誌の主幹として永年生きてきたのですが、その環境からスピンアウト。けれど個人的にはやはり「建築・住宅」には強くこだわりを持っている。そういうタイプだけれど加齢が進んできてその住空間での人間の生き様みたいなこととの「合間」のようなことに心が向かっていく。
そんな心境にピッタリだったのが、この芥川荘探訪でした。このブログでも何回か書きましたが、この房総・九十九里の海浜の宿で夏目漱石が期待した文学青年・芥川が東大を卒業したばかりの時期に、のちに結婚した女性に求婚のラブレターを書いていた青春まっ盛りの場所。
その文章の碑には青春期の男の心情がそのままストレートに記され、なんとも微笑ましかった。
そういう心情の背景装置として九十九里の浜辺があり、防砂林のなかに茅葺きの平屋建物があった。北海道人としてはこういう房総のまぶしい真夏という体感は羨望のさらに先にある。
たまたま現地をふらりと訪れる機会を得て、一種、官能的に受容したのですね。
やはり芥川龍之介という人物、その書いた世界観という読書体験があって、なお、かれも感受した住空間の体感を共有できるということがひどく新鮮で、再生感が強くわき上がっていた。
そんな心理に房総のこの「入道雲」がエールを送ってきてくれたように感じられたのです。


翻って年末、友人を訪ねたらかれのふるさとのオホーツクの海辺の町の漁船の羅針盤をみた。満艦飾に飾り立てられたその町の最盛期を象徴するような船の写真も添えられていた。人口減少していく北海道内の地方・地域の先を見据えながら、われわれ世代はその「羅針盤」を預かっている立場であることが、しのばれた。
わたし自身はひとつの整理は付けられたけれど、これからも人間としての生き様は続いていくし、なにより未来の人たちへのバトンタッチの責任はまだまだある。
日々、時々刻々と身の回りの状況は生々流転、いっときも留まることはない。つねに自分の位置を冷静に確認してどのように真摯に生きていくか、試され続けていくのでしょう。

English version⬇

Happy New Year 2024!
The energetic iridescent clouds of summer in Boso gave me the energy for a second start. I would like to continue to live my life with a firm sense of direction. ・・・・.

This year I am the “New Year’s Man,” but since I am over 60 years of age, I am not really called upon to do so (laugh). However, I am beginning to feel like I am starting a second life. Since I have just passed the nodal point in my professional life, I feel that the “60th birthday” of the old-timers has finally arrived for me as well.
The image above is not a photo taken in winter at the beginning of the New Year, but rather, the “iridocumulus” in Boso that looks like it is in the height of summer. It was taken during my visit last year to Ichinomiya, Chiba Prefecture, to explore the architecture of “Akutagawa-so,” an inn associated with Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
I have spent many years as the lead editor of a housing magazine, and this is a spin-out from that environment. However, personally, I still have a strong interest in “architecture and housing. I am the type of person who is interested in architecture and housing, but as I get older, I find myself more and more interested in the “in-between” of the human life in the living space and the architecture of the house.
This visit to Akutagawa-so was a perfect fit for such a state of mind. As I have written several times in this blog, Akutagawa, a literary young man whom Soseki Natsume had hoped to meet at this seaside inn in Kujukuri, Boso, was in the prime of his youth when he wrote a love letter of courtship to the woman he later married when he had just graduated from the University of Tokyo.
The monument to his writings was a straight description of the sentiments of a man in his youth, and it was quite amusing to see.
The Kujukuri beach served as a backdrop for these sentiments, and the one-story thatched building stood in the midst of a sand forest. As a Hokkaido native, the experience of the dazzling midsummer in Boso is beyond envy.
I happened to have the opportunity to visit the area on a whim, and I was receptive to it in a kind of sensual way.
I had the experience of reading about Ryunosuke Akutagawa and his worldview, and the fact that I could share the experience of a living space that he had also experienced was extremely fresh, and a sense of rebirth was strongly stirred up in me.
It was as if this “Irido-no-Un” in Boso was sending me a cheer.

When I visited a friend at the end of the year, I saw a compass of a fishing boat in a seaside town in his hometown in Okhotsk. It was decorated in full sail and had a picture of a boat that symbolized the town’s heyday. It was a reminder that our generation is in a position to keep a “compass” as we look ahead to the declining population of Hokkaido’s rural and regional areas.
Although I myself have been able to put things in order, I will continue to live my life as a human being, and above all, I still have the responsibility of passing on the baton to future generations.
Day by day, moment by moment, the circumstances around me are constantly evolving and changing, and I never stop for a moment. We will continue to be tested to see how we can live our lives with sincerity, always calmly checking our position.

Posted on 1月 1st, 2024 by 三木 奎吾
Filed under: 日本社会・文化研究