リレー連載 　Found in Translation　   1

　

　

「さとり世代」

“The Enlightened Generation”

Tom Gally

　

「さとり世代」とは 　『朝日新聞』が教育面のシリーズ記事「いま子どもたちは」で今年の4−5月に「さとり世代」について連載．その第1回(4月24日)に掲載の解説によれば，主に2002−10年度の学習指導要領で学校教育を受けたゆとり世代(1980年代半ば以降生まれで現在の年齢は10代−20代半ば)とほぼ重なるとみられ,「明確な定義がないが，(1) 車やブランド品，海外旅行に興味がない　(2) お金を稼ぐ意欲が低い　(3) 地元志向　(4) 恋愛に淡泊　(5) 過程より結果を重視　(6) ネットが主な情報源　(7) 読書好きで物知り――といった特徴があるとされる」．(編集部)

　

　

　　The first computer password I ever used was satori.

　　The time was around 1979, and I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago.  Every term, the university gave each student 25 dollars' worth of computer time, which we could use to run programs through the terminals[1] located in the library.  A friend of mine had become hooked on[2] a text-based computer game―one where[3] the computer would type out a situation (“You are standing at the front gate of a castle.”) and you were supposed to type in commands (“Knock on the gate.”)―and he suggested that I try it, too.

　　I spent a few dollars' worth of computer time trying to play the game, but I could never seem to guess the right commands.  (“I don't understand what you mean,” the computer would keep responding.  “Please try again.”)  So I told my friend my user name and password, and he used my remaining money to keep playing the game.  The password I had chosen was satori.

　　I had probably learned the word from the title of a book by Jack Kerouac, Satori in Paris.[4]  Like a lot of young Americans, I had gone through a period when I was engrossed in Kerouac's autobiographical novels―On the Road, The Dharma Bums, others.  The word satori also appears in the poems of Kerouac's friend Allen Ginsberg, which I also read.)

　　According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word satori first appeared in English in 1727, in the translation of a German book about Japan.  In the 20th century, the word was used first in writings about Japanese Buddhism; later, it took on a hipster cachet[5] through the works of Beat writers like Kerouac and Ginsberg.  But it was still an unusual word, and I think I chose it for my password to show off my exotic vocabulary.

　　Although it might be translated as “an epiphany” or “enlightenment,” satori's nuances are difficult to convey through any single word in English.  Last year, I wrote a paper for a European academic journal about the use of Japanese-Japanese dictionaries (kokugo jiten) by learners of Japanese as a second language.  Because some of the journal's readers might not be familiar with such dictionaries or able to read Japanese, I decided to annotate in detail the dictionary entry[6] for one Japanese word.  I needed a word that a learner might want to look up and that[7] would be difficult to understand solely from the translations in bilingual dictionaries.[8]  After some thought, the word that I chose was satoru, the verb corresponding to satori.

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　　The mass media like generations.[9]  During the past few decades, the American media have tossed around[10] terms such as the Greatest Generation (those who grew up during the Depression[11] of the 1930s and served[12] in World War II), the Baby Boom Generation (people born after the war), Generation X (those born from the mid-1960s to around 1980), Generation Y (their successors,[13] also called the Millennials), and Generation Z (today's teenagers).  In Japan, we have seen dankai no sedai (Japan's baby boomers), shinjinrui (the new breed), dankai junia (the baby boom juniors), and yutori sedai (the pressure-free generation).

　　The yutori sedai, who were born from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, got their name from the relaxed educational standards―fewer class hours, less demanding curricula―that took effect in 2002.  This lighter load, combined with a rebellion against their parents' competitive status-seeking[14] during the economic bubble of the 1980s, has supposedly made the yutori generation less brand-conscious,[15] less ambitious about work and money, more accepting of things as they are.[16]  Because this same combination of wisdom and resignation[17] supposedly characterizes the transcendence of people who have achieved Buddhist satori, and because yutori and satori rhyme,[18] and because there's something a bit comical about referring to unambitious young people by an exalted Buddhist term, this cohort[19] is now being called the satori sedai―the satori generation.

　　I have long doubted whether the generational categories favored by the media really exist.  Although I was born in 1957, the peak year of the baby boom in the United States, I see little of myself or of friends my age[20] in the media stereotypes[21] of “boomers.”  Among college-age Japanese[22] now, I know a few who are indeed calm and resigned, but I also know some who are driven[23] and striving and many more who are somewhere in between.  Overall, they don't seem very different from young people twenty or thirty years ago.

　　In any case, it's better to think of people not as types or groups or generations but as individuals.  Rather than yutori sedai or satori sedai, I would like to propose a new term: hitori sedai, the generation of each person, the generation of every one of us, now and forever.  Maybe that's the term I'll use for my next password.

　

　

〈著者紹介〉 Tom Gally 東京大学大学院総合文化研究科准教授．米国カリフォルニア州出身．シカゴ大学大学院で言語学・数学両修士課程修了．1983年来日，1986年から和英翻訳などに携わり，2002年から東京大学で教鞭を執る．『新和英大辞典 第5版』では編集委員，『英語の数量表現辞典』と『辞書のすきま すきまの言葉』(以上研究社)では監修者を務めた．著書に『英語のあや』(研究社)，訳書に『英語で楽しむ寺田寅彦』(岩波書店)など．

　

　

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