The Image of Time

Ikue Omine

Since I heard that arriving home between two minutes ahead and five minutes behind time is the British common sense of visiting people, it became my criterion. However, the criterion of my Latin American friends was greatly different.

One and a half hours had already passed from the appointed time, the food had gotten cold and sloppy, and I had become annoyed. Finally, my Latin American friends came to my home, just saying, "How are you?" and hugging me with smiles. Or, when I was invited to a party, I said, "I must go now." at 10 o'clock. But my Latin American friends exhorted, "The party isn't over yet. Dance and really party!" with smiles and hugs again.

I learned unconsciously that time is something that flies and is consumed rapidly and energetically. However, Latin Americans may conceive of time as a repetition of people's lives that continues circularly and endlessly, as people in the town of Macondo in "One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Anos de Soledad)" (by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) do.

Looking back on Japanese history, there hadn't been a concept of 'time' from olden times until the Meiji era of about 100 years ago. People just felt the passage of time in seasonal-changing natural phenomena and such observations.

We often say, "We don't have time," and try to do things early and rapidly, but it may be time to reconsider our image of time, so that the earth may not go off like a mirage at the moment when progress is achieved, as Macondo did.