:01:24
He told me about the January light on the station stairways.
:01:26
He told me that this city ought to be deciphered
like a musical score;
:01:32
one could get lost in the great orchestral masses
and the accumulation of details.
:01:36
And that created the cheapest image of Tokyo:
overcrowded, megalomaniac, inhuman.
:01:40
He thought he saw more subtle cycles there:
rhythms, clusters of faces caught sight of in passing
:01:46
as different and precise as groups of instruments.
:01:50
Sometimes the musical comparison coincided with plain reality;
:01:54
the Sony stairway in the Ginza was itself an instrument,
each step a note.
:01:59
All of it fit together like the voices
of a somewhat complicated fugue,
:02:03
but it was enough to take hold of one of them
and hang on to it.
:02:06
The television screens for example;
:02:07
all by themselves they created an itinerary
that sometimes wound up in unexpected curves.
:02:13
It was sumo season, and the fans who came to watch the fights
in the very chic showrooms on the Ginza
:02:18
were "justement" the poorest of the Tokyo poors.
:02:21
So poor that they didn't even have a TV set.
:02:23
He saw them come, the dead souls of Namida-bashi
he had drunk saké with one sunny dawn
:02:30
how many seasons ago was that now?