Channels, Fall 2016

Channels • 2016 • Volume 1 • Number 1 Page 149 investment or fulfillment in his vocation. It comes as no surprise, then, that the unnatural environment quickly morphs into an encounter with the monstrous fantastic. The videographer describes Ikki and the other performers of the Birthday Song as “aliens from another planet” and shortly afterwards the room itself suddenly transforms into a mountain, and the sound mixers begin to float up the slope and out of sight. Ayano’s contact with the aesthetic elements of wilderness and solitude therefore serves as a contrast to his encounters while at work, grounding and refreshing his sense of self. It seems unusual to look for aesthetic principles in Hajime’s obsession with the game of Go, but Go itself is organized around values similar to those expressed in traditional aesthetics. The goal of Go is simply to surround more squares with occupied squares than one’s opponent, which means that the perfect Go move involves many of the same attributes as an aesthetic production said to be sabi : it has disproportionately significant impact because it is minimalistic. The elegance of one stone impacting several, different, growing enclosures while simultaneously blocking or rearranging an opponent’s strategic options demonstrates a sabi -like priority on simplicity, and the nuance of the game requires sound intuition in addition to sound reasoning. The United States Go Association sums up the aesthetic component of Go by describing a well-played game as “a beautiful art in which black and white dance in delicate balance across the board” (Welcome to the American Go Association). The elegance, simplicity, and purpose inherent in the game of Go represent the antithesis of the monstrous in Hajime’s life. Hajime’s connection to the monstrous fantastic correlates more obviously to the chaos and isolation he experiences every day. In the first scene of the film, a flying commuter train erupts from his forehead as the narrator explains that his crush had suddenly moved away. He had never spoken to the girl, and he is reluctant to speak to Aoi when he suddenly falls in love with her. A scene in which four older boys write him a love letter asking for a meeting in a nearby noodle shop and then wait in the shop to humiliate him demonstrates his isolation. The train remains a symbol of isolation and randomness, as Hajime is repeatedly seen sitting alone in a nearly empty carriage while strange encounters, like that of the two cosplayers and later the yakuza with the baseball bat, take place around him. The sabi aesthetic of controlled simplicity present in the game of Go serves to ground Hajime in order and intentionality. Games of Go provide him with companionship, first in his father, later in the school Go club, and finally with Aoi. By contrast to the crude practical joking and outlandish fandoms of other characters near Hajime’s own age, members of the Go club watch each other play in respectful silence and honor their opponents by bowing at the beginning of each game and reciting the centuries- old formula, “to a good game” ( The Taste of Tea ). In this way, both the beauty of the game and the stability of tradition help to reestablish Hajime’s place in the natural order of things, connected both to his contemporaries and to the passage of time. Such a detailed analysis of the aesthetic qualities in everyday occurrences in the film runs the risk of forcing a subtle and intuitive discipline too sharply into rigid academic categories. However, the exercise of dissecting specific elements of the beautiful serves to uncover a correlation between the characters’ appreciation of traditional aesthetic elements and their connection or re-connection to themselves and the natural world