Culture Reflections

Shuji Terayama TV Commercial

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Shuji Terayama – the avant garde film-maker, poet, essayist and counter-cultural provocateur – was a devotee of the racing track. He briefly owned a racing horse and contributed a regular column on the gee-gees to a national paper. In 1973, he appeared in a TV commercial for the Japan Central Racing Association, reciting some lines of his own invention. My translation is below.

We will be talking about Terayama at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese  Foundation’s Japan House in London on May 30th. See the details here.

Seagulls learn their song while flying. Life is growing older while playing.

Play is like a second life.

In play you can experience losing in a way that would be impossible in real life.

Every person contains this theatre. In it are comedy and tragedy, meetings and farewells.

You can be the main character and a member of the audience at the same time.

Anybody can have two lives. That’s what playing shows us.