Letter to K, On a teacher of linguistics.Translated by Google

 

 Dear K,

It is now a distant memory, but Eiichi Chino was born in 1932 and I was born in 1947, so we are relatively close in age.

After studying the basics of modern Chinese at the Chinese Department of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, I transferred to the Department of Humanities, Faculty of Humanities, Wako University in 1969.

I learned Russian from Mr. Chino.

I returned in 1979 as a major student in the Faculty of Humanities, where I studied linguistics with my teacher, especially the Prague linguistics circle of the 1920s.

I kept the etiquette as a master and pupil, but because I came from the same foreign language background,

After the lecture, the two of us often continued talking about the language
until late at a coffee shop on the second floor of a two-story wooden building near Tsurukawa Station on the Odakyu Line, with creaky staircases .

I knew that I had been involved in an anthology of Professor Kawasaki's writings, so one day the sorting out of Professor Chino's writings became a hot topic.

I already had a family and knew that I was poor, so I went to the point where I would be able to procure
the copying fee from my stationery expenses as much as possible.

However, in the spring of 1986, I finished Wako, lived in a small Sekinan Bunko, and returned to a life centered on language.

Dr. Chino was extremely busy as the president of Wako, and this plan fell through.

It still remains in my heart.

By the time I learned of his condition, I could no longer visit him, and he passed away in 2002 without being able to meet him.

In the fall of 1985, just before I left Wako , I was sitting on a quiet train on the Odakyu Line .

I will omit the details, but while listening to the teacher's story, I was at a loss for an answer and just kept silent.

I still don't understand why the teacher told such a poor and untalented me .

From the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies​​to the University of Tokyo, to Prague, back to again the TUFS, and then to Wako, it seemed like a long journey.

Even now, sometimes I wish I could go back to the days when we talked under that low, dark light.

And maybe it wasn't just me, but maybe it was the same for Mr. Chino.

Now that I'm older, I have something to think about.

He even showed me a draft of an article contributed to your company's magazine "Language" .

Those things come back to me now.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the teacher who was the author and me who was one of the readers for the days of "Language" , and perhaps to the youth of learning.

Yours sincerely,

T.A.

2 August 2023

Hills West Tokyo