:42:04
They wanted to give a political meaning to their generosity,
and their generosity has outlasted their politics.
:42:11
That's why I will never allow it to be said
that youth is wasted on the young.
:42:34
The youth who get together every weekend at Shinjuku
obviously know that they are not on a launching pad toward real life;
:42:39
but they are life, to be eaten on the spot like fresh doughnuts.
:42:42
It's a very simple secret.
:42:45
The old try to hide it, and not all the young know it.
:42:48
The ten-year-old girl who threw her friend from the thirteenth floor of a building
after having tied her hands,
:42:53
because she'd spoken badly of their class team,
hadn't discovered it yet.
:42:56
Parents who demand an increase in the number of special telephone lines
devoted to the prevention of children's suicides
:43:01
find out a little late that they have kept it all too well.
:43:05
Rock is an international language for spreading the secret.
:43:09
Another is peculiar to Tokyo.
:43:21
For the takenoko, twenty is the age of retirement.
:43:24
They are baby Martians.
:43:26
I go to see them dance every Sunday in the park at Yoyogi.
:43:28
They want people to look at them,
but they don't seem to notice that people do.
:43:33
They live in a parallel time sphere:
:43:35
a kind of invisible aquarium wall separates them
from the crowd they attract,
:43:38
and I can spend a whole afternoon contemplating the little takenoko girl who is learning
:43:42
no doubt for the first timethe customs of her planet.
:43:59
Beyond that, they wear dog tags,
they obey a whistle, the Mafia rackets them,