春の匂い
ストックホルムもご多分に漏れず、今年は暖冬でしたが、それでも庭の木々・草花が萌え出すには、５月になるのを待たねばなりませんでした。
芝の踏み心地が柔らかく、空気の厳しさを感じなくなって、ふと気がつくとプリムラが咲き始めていて、白樺の芽もふき、春の到来が話題となります。
五感のうち、「匂い・味・温度・肌触り・痛さ・快感」は、皮膚の感覚の領域ですね。
現代は、ＴＶ・ゲーム機・携帯電話・音楽配信、と、いわゆるＩＴ技術が生活を支配しています。　考えてみると、エジソンの発明が代表する、新文明の系列とその発展が、読書・演劇・演奏といったこれまでのコミュニケーションにとって代わってしまいました。　生の会話・対話すら無くなって行くようです。　距離感は、皮膚の感覚です。いくら音量を上げても、皮膚感覚に裏づけされない限り、距離感は近づきません。　ＴＶ・アニメの世界は、根本的に欠如している皮膚感覚を補おうと、とめどなく過激な表現をとります。　悪趣味で低脳な、グルメ番組が、どんなに頑張っても、食の快楽は伝わらず、ひたすらに、グロテスクになって行くのみでしょう。
皮膚感覚を失うと、感覚の共有・連想の相似性も期待できません。　なんでそんな、という事件に出会い、ただただ、うろたえ、手をこまねいているのは、避けたいものです。

The smell of the spring
Stockholm had an unusual warm winter, a strange winter as in the other parts of the world. But still we had to wait until May for the buds coming out.
When we feel the lawn of the garden soft and the air is not so sharp then we find primroses and buds on the trees. People realize the spring has come.
Among the five senses of ours, “smell, taste, temperature, skin feeling, ecstasy and so on” could be categorized as our skin sensations.
Today, our life is dominated by TV, computer games, mobile telephone, those which are called IT techniques and products. The contemporary civilization, it may be originated by inventors like Edison and others, is expelling our traditional means of communication such as reading literature, attending theater and concert hall. Even the conversation, the basic face to face communication and skin ship, is dieing out.
The sense of distance is sense of skin. You would never get closer feeling only through the high volume of the sounds, or shocking pictures, if it were not backed up by the sense of skin. In the world of TV and animations, they try to compensate this lack of the sense of skin, therefore their manner of expressions are getting to its extremity. So many so called “Gourmet programs” are on TV. Those feeble-minded TV figures would never send us the fantasy of gourmet. Just getting grotesque. We can’t expect and be certain that we share  our commonsense, common associations, if we have lost the sense of skin.
We meet so many strange, unusual criminal cases now days. We shall not just being baffled and muddled. Those who commit these cases have lost this fundamental human sense, the sense of skin.