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When I entered grad school in 1982, Professor Jacquline Pigeot of Paris 7 University was staying in Kyoto. This was just after she had published her classic book on medieval travel literature, Michiyuki-bun: poétique de l'itinéraire dans la littérature du Japon ancien. She gave a special lecture that was attended by Japanese literature expert Professor Satake Akihiro, and Nakagawa Hisayasu, who worked on French literature. Professor Pigeot made reference to intertextuality, a concept in literary theory which was then all the rage. She said, “Nakagawa, this is…?” To which Professor Nakagawa replied in a flash, “It is what we translate as kan-tekusuto-sei, or tekusuto sōgo kanren-sei in Japanese.”

In March 2023, I spent a fortnight at the university, which had just changed its name to Paris Cité University. I was there for a symposium on Genji monogatari, which we were co-hosting with INALCO *1. My task as a guest researcher was to oversee a seminar, the title of which was “Les jardins de quatre saisons (shihōshiki ) et les trois palais du Bouddha: Jardins et paysages dans la littérature du Japon ancien.” Owing to strikes, we had no option but to conduct the seminar online. Even so, Professor Pigeot made her way to the university and took part in person. It was our first meeting for forty years.

Professor Pigeot was also the mentor of my counterpart, Professor Daniel Struve. After the seminar, the three of us went to a local restaurant. After the Weiss beer arrived, we were left to our own devices. As we sat there kicking our heels, a waiter told us that the chef was on strike, and the restaurant was not serving food. Somewhat stunned, we moved on to a second restaurant, and there we had a meal with wine from the south of France; finally, we were able to relax. That was when I mentioned to Professor Pigeot my memories of intertextuality. “I remember that well,” she said with surprise. That was a time of great happiness…

My lecture at the seminar began with Rokujōin, the vast villa of Hikaru Genji, and I took in the season-defying vista of the minuscule Hōjō hut, which belonged to Kamo no Chōmei. I referred to similarities between the latter and the La Rotonda, a house on a hill designed by the sixteenth century architect, Andrea Palladio. I also referred to my surprise at coming across a café called La Rotonde, as I wandered through Montparnasse a couple of days before the seminar.

La Rotonde in Montparnasse (photo by the author)

And so to November of last year, 2024, when I set foot on Egyptian soil for the first time. This was to be the final overseas symposium of my career at Nichibunken. I learned much from what I saw and heard there. For example, in the Egyptian view of life and death, the separation between the east and west banks of the River Nile is the separation of this world and the other. Again, I learned that the four sides of King Khufu's pyramid at Giza, which is on the west bank of the Nile, face almost exactly the four directions of east, west, south, and north.

The great pyramids of Giza; the equipment in preparation for a concert (photo by the author)

This overlapped with the worldview articulated in the Hōjōki, and I was moved again, as I had been in Paris in March 2023. This was my first encounter with pyramids since the one I saw outside the entrance to the Louvres on that occasion.

The glass pyramid outside the Louvres (photo by the author)

My talk at Cairo University began with the slide “Egypt as Topos,” and I cited from the preface to Kashima Shigeru’s book, Pari no honya-san, where he reflected on the joy of the total freedom he unexpectedly felt on arriving in Paris. In the end, research is about encounters and synchronicity. Or so I always told myself; I knew then that I was right. This was the thrill I had experienced time and again since joining Nichibunken back in 2010. As it says at the end of Hōjōki, “these final words of mine” are the beginning of an end. I feel a little sad.