(c) Francine Adam

2011 The Japan Foundation Award

Retired Professor, School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences

Augustin Berque

[France]

The Japanese characters I chose for “Berque” were “辺留久,” meaning “a person who stays for a long time in remote regions.” Thinking about the background to this, when I chose those characters, I was preparing my doctoral thesis about the colonisation of Hokkaido, and my head was full of those remote regions. Back then, you had the time to take a ferry and see the real thing, Tsugaru Strait, humming “Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyugeshiki” (“Tsugaru Strait Winter Scenery”) to yourself. Now, when you come out of the long Seikan Tunnel, it’s the scenery of the Oshima Peninsula you see. . . . I am now in my latter years, and, with the assistance of the Huainanzi, I have come to write “Saiō Beruku 塞翁辺留久”, referencing a proverb that reminds us of the irony of fate. When I was young I intended to write my doctoral thesis about the western regions of China, but I was forced to abandon this project due to the Cultural Revolution. Thanks to that bad luck, I switched to the northern regions of Japan, and eventually, that led to the good luck of being given a Japan Foundation Award around 40 years later.

Augustin Berque

(Original text in Japanese)

The Japan Foundation Awards (2011)