Komatani-Sensei

K-T told me today he likes insects. And plants. He used to collect cicadas with a net and a plastic box when he was in shogakko (little people school). I can't imagine him as a kid, he's already living caricature enough without my mind setting to work on his face. No, he's not caricature, he's just bright character. He snips off the fluff on his tie with scissors. He clamps his specs further on to his face with flat hands, to read far-off script. He's great.

Cicadas screech and shell the room you're in with a winding, circling screech that is staggeringly insistent and incorrigibly shrill, a granular whine for the soggy heat of summer in Japan. Screech I supposed you would call it. Cry? Call? Song? Komatani Sensei used that last word to describe the sound of his favourite cicadas.

This all came about from a 6 year old (....no, 7 year now) interview he'd been listening to. Tom Hanks circa Meg Ryan. K-T has a transcript in a magazine he's kept, to accompany the tape of the c.d. featuring the interview. One of the questions posed to Hanks by the interviewer posed to me by K-T was 'What profession would you choose if you could change it all?' (it wasn't precisely this, but something like it). K-T said a scientist, and then explained he likes insects, in particular cicadas, and that as a boy he had chased them down with a net and a plastic box.