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A Happy New Year!

I’ve just come back to Keio Academy of New York.

According to the Zodiac calendar, 2024 was the year of the dragon, whereas 2025 is the year of the snake.

I find this sequence very interesting, for my family name Tatsumi (「巽」）  consists　of the image of dragon (Tatsu「辰」＝「龍」) symbolizing power and that of snake (Mi「巳」＝「蛇」) representing transformation. This chimera （Dragon-Snake!）embodies radical transfiguration. Accordingly, the scenario of my life seems to have always already been inscribed deep within the very nomenclature. This is the reason why 60 years ago I was fascinated with Conan Doyle’s representation of dinosaurs as paleontological dragons in The Lost World (1912) and initiated into science fiction.

By the same token, however, given that the zodiac calendar also functions as the twelve points of the compass, my name “Tatsumi” refers to the geographical direction of the southeast, to which Far East people find the Americas. At this point, you should not forget the title of Kawada Shoryo’s biography of John Manjiro Drifting toward the Southeast ： The Story of Five Japanese Castaways (漂巽紀畧) which narrates the way a fourteen year- old boy Nakahama Manjiro (1827-1898) was rescued by Captain Whitfield’s whaleship John Howland and the way he was to master English, Mathematics and Navigation in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.  It is well-known that with his help the convention of Kanagawa, that is, the Japan-Us Treaty of Peace and Amity between the Tokugawa Shogunate and the United States was signed successfully. Appointed as translator, he also joined the Japanese Embassy to the United States in 1860, making friends with Fukuzawa Yukichi and Katsu Kaishu.

Thus, I’ve always been amused by the etymology or the very “speech act” of my own name, which from the beginning had already destined me to become an Americanist.