12 - Swimming in the ocean that has no West or East

Summary

By choosing a scenario about whales for his abortive opera project, Takemitsu was reflecting a preoccupation that had long been dear to his heart. More than once in his final years – for example in a letter sent to Peter Serkin a few days before his death – he expressed a wish to ‘get a more healthy body as a whale’ and ‘swim in the ocean that has no west and no east’. Takemitsu's choice of words here evokes more than simply his whimsical intention to be reincarnated as a whale; it is also poetically suggestive of his lifelong quest as an artist for a kind of cultural transcendence, an internationalism of outlook. In this final chapter, I propose to discuss the degree to which Takemitsu may have been successful in the realisation of more general, aesthetic goals of this sort, and thus try to arrive at some kind of critical assessment of his status as a composer.

It is important at the outset of any such discussion to draw attention to the precise wording of Takemitsu's wish: he wishes to swim in an ocean that has neither West nor East, not in one that somehow links the two. One still comes across the misunderstanding that Takemitsu saw himself in some way as a bridge between these two cultures, perhaps because the early success of November Steps left some listeners with the indelible impression that his life's work was devoted to reconciling the differences between the symphony orchestra and the shakuhachi.