Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World

So says Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally .

Standing there looking at the shelves just made it impossible to ignore the fact that I was going to die before I had the chance to see them all. I couldn’t help but think of all the movies I hadn’t seen, all the meals I hadn’t eaten, and all the music I hadn’t heard.

When you think about it, it’s the future you’ll never get to see that you regret missing the most when you die. I realize it’s strange to use the word “regret” about things that haven’t happened yet, but I couldn’t help thinking something along the lines of “if only I would be alive.” It’s a strange idea. Although really, when it comes down to it, none of these things matter, in the end—like all the movies I was about to make disappear completely.

Eventually we ended up at the shelf that held Chaplin’s entire back catalog.

I found I was whispering to myself:

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”

The dream I’d had earlier that morning came back to me.

“Th-th-that’s from L-Limelight , right?” Tsutaya missed nothing.

In Limelight , the little tramp, played by Charlie Chaplin, tries to stop a ballet dancer, whose hopes have been dashed, from committing suicide. He tells the dancer:

“Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.”

He was right, even jellyfish are here for a reason—they have meaning. And if that’s the case, then movies and music, coffee and pretty much everything else must have some kind of meaning, too. Once you start down that path, then even all those “unnecessary things” turn out to be important for some reason or another. If you’re trying to separate out the countless “meaningless things” in the world from everything else, you’ll eventually have to make a judgment about human beings, about our existence. In my case, I suppose it’s all the movies I’ve seen, and the memories I have of them that give my life meaning. They’ve made me who I am.

To live means: to cry and shout, to love, to do silly things, to feel sadness and joy, to even experience horrible, frightening things… and to laugh. Beautiful songs, beautiful scenery, feeling nauseous, people singing, planes flying across the sky, the thundering hooves of horses, mouth-watering pancakes, the endless darkness of space, cowboys firing their pistols at dawn…

And next to all the movies that play on a loop inside me, sit the images of friends, lovers, the family, who were with me when I watched them. Then there are the countless films that I’ve recorded in my own imagination—the memories that run through my head, which are so beautiful, they bring tears to my eyes.

I’ve been stringing together the movies I’ve seen like rosary beads—all human hope and disappointment is held together by a thread. It doesn’t take much to see that all life’s coincidences eventually add up to one big inevitability.

“S-s-s-so, I guess that’s all, right?”

Tsutaya put Limelight in a bag and handed it to me.

“Thanks.”

“Um, I d-d-don’t know what’s going to happen now, but…”

Tsutaya started to choke up and couldn’t get any more out.

“What’s wrong?”

Tsutaya hung his head and began to cry. He cried like a baby, tears flowing down his cheeks.

I was reminded of when Tsutaya would sit on the window ledge at school and look so lonely. But as I watched him sitting on his own there by the window, it actually felt like I was drawing strength from him. He would never do anything other than what felt most important to him—and he had no problem doing it alone, at his own speed, without needing validation from the people around him. Seeing him there, just doing his thing, just being himself, somehow made me feel like things would be OK. At that point in my life, nothing was really that important to me. Looking back, it wasn’t him who needed me. It was really me who needed him.

All the feelings I’d been bottling up suddenly came pouring out and I began to cry too.

“Thank you.”

I managed somehow to get the words out.

“I-I j-just want you to stay alive,” Tsutaya said between sobs.

“Don’t cry, Tsutaya. It’s not all that bad. I’ve got a good story and someone to tell it to. You remember what they said in The Legend of 1900 . And right now, Tsutaya, that’s what you mean to me. It’s because you’re here that I’m not completely done for.”

“Th-thank you.”

Having said the words, Tsutaya just stood there and carried on crying.

“So how’d it go? Did you decide?”

I’d made it to the movie theater at last, where my girlfriend was waiting.

“Well, this is it.”

I handed her the package.

“ Limelight , eh? Interesting… Good choice.”

She opened the DVD box and then looked a little stunned. There was no disc inside. The packet was empty.

The store always rented out DVDs in their boxes, so every once in a while there would be a screw-up like this. But how about that for timing!

Tsutaya, this is a pretty crucial error!

On the other hand, as Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

So true! You never know what you’re gonna get. It’s pretty much the story of my life! Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

“What do you want to do? We’ve got a few films on hand here.”

I thought for a moment and then came to a conclusion. If we’re being honest, I’d reached it quite some time ago.

What’s the last film you’d want to watch? The answer was quite simple, really.

I walked into the theater and sat down.

Fourth row from the back, third seat from the right. This was our spot all through our college years.

“OK. Roll ’em!”

Her voice rings out from the projection room. The show begins. Light is projected onto the screen. But there’s nothing there but a blank space, a rectangle of white light illuminating the screen.

I had chosen nothing.

As I gazed at the blank screen I remembered a photograph I once saw. It was a picture of the inside of a movie theater. It was taken from the projection room and showed the seats and the screen. The photograph captured one entire film, and was taken by opening the shutter at the beginning of the film, and then closing it when the film ended. In other words, the photograph recorded one entire two-hour-long film. The result of absorbing the light from every scene in the movie was that the picture shows nothing but a white rectangle.

I suppose you could say that my life is like that photograph. A movie that shows my whole life, the comedy and the tragedy. But if you put that all into one still photo, all that would be left is a blank screen. All the joy, anger, and sorrow I’ve been through, and the result is that my life shows up as nothing more than a blank movie screen. There’s nothing there, nothing left. Only an empty blank space.

Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after a long time, it makes a totally different impression than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed. It’s you that’s changed, and seeing the same film again makes that impossible to forget.

If my life were a film, it would have to find a way of showing my changing perspective. That’s to say, how I see my own life has changed over time. I would feel affection for scenes that I’d hated before, and laugh during scenes where I’d originally cried. The past love interest is now long forgotten.

What I’m remembering now are all the good times I had with my mother and father. Only the good times…

When I was three years old, my parents took me to the movies for the first time. We saw E.T. It was pitch black inside the theater, and the sound was so loud. The theater was filled with the buttery salty smell of popcorn.