From asahi.com
For a time during the Meiji Era (1868-1912), the Japanese haiku magazine Hototogisu invited readers to keep a diary for a week and submit it for publication.
Here is a school teacher’s entry on the 11th of an unspecified month: “Jolted awake at 6 a.m. by wife who told me the alarm had sounded. Dashed off and reached the school five minutes before eight o’clock.”
None of the published journals had anything to do with news-making events or some celebrity trying to look “just like anyone.”
Among the authors were a foundry worker and a parent with a sick child. They were all just ordinary citizens telling the world about their daily goings-on. What does this mean?
Covers of the haiku magazine Hototogisu, published from the Meiji to early Showa eras, in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in April 2024 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Come to think of it, I believe the desire to record—and share with many people—one’s thoughts, impressions of things one has seen and so on, has always been ingrained in human nature.
In our digital society, the fulfilment of that desire was made dramatically easier by blogs.
Gaining prominence in the early 2000s, they grew popular as a digital journal and a tool for sharing one’s messages on the internet.
In Japan, an anonymous blog by a desperate young mother caused a national sensation. Her child had been denied admission to a day care facility, and she took her fury out on the nation: “Day care didn’t take in my kid. Drop dead, Japan!!!”
But all things come and go.
I just read the news that gooBlog is shutting down in November. Unless something is done, all the data will be lost.
Line and Yahoo have already discontinued their blog services, seemingly signifying “the end of the blog era.”
I am sure many people have found encouragement in blog entries by authors who were in predicaments similar to theirs, such as when facing work-related issues, struggling with child care, having health problems, and so on.
It is truly unfortunate to lose all those records of “invisible words” that bound one to someone else.
Columnist Takashi Odajima (1956-2022) once noted, “The motivation to write is maintained by the act of writing.”
When I struggle with writer’s block, I remember his words and sometimes visit his blog.
—The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 2
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