seemingly unrelated events are actually the consequences of other events or actions, and everyone in the film is acting according to what they believe to be their best interests without realising that what they do affects everyone else.

Ginza Boulevard

“Indeed. If you are comparing human society to oceans and rivers, individual human beings could certainly be considered to be their molecules.”

Here he was, observing this unseeing, unknowing young man from afar. And the object of his observation was totally unaware. To Copper, it was somehow a strange feeling.

Still, Copper couldn’t help feeling that somewhere unbeknownst to him, there were eyes watching him steadily.

Nonetheless, to see yourself as a single molecule within the wide world— that is by no means a small discovery.

human beings have a natural tendency to look at and think of things as if they were always at the center.

general public, of course, thought it foolish to take up such views and risk abuse for no good reason—

there may be nothing more deep- rooted and stubborn than the human tendency to look at and think of things with themselves at the center.

Even among adults, the human tendency to think about things and form judgments with ourselves at the center remains deep- rooted.

In the world at large, people who are able to free themselves from this self- centered way of thinking are truly uncommon.

Most people slip into a self- interested way of thinking, become unable to understand the facts of the matter, and end up seeing only that which betters their own circumstances.

likewise, when people judge their own affairs with only themselves at the center, they end up unable to know the true nature of society.

It represents a change to a new and broader way of thinking: the Copernican way.

There wasn’t another student like Uragawa at the school, one whose collars were hand- washed at home instead of being sent out to the laundry, whose handkerchiefs were used hand towels cut in half.

There’s no way anyone can explain such things in a word or two to you. And even if there were, it’s not the sort of thing where you could just listen and take it all in and say right away, “Okay, now I get it.”

person discovers the pleasures of painting, sculpture, and music only by experiencing them. You will never be able to make someone understand this if they have not encountered great art.

If it means anything at all to live in this world, it’s that you must live your life like a true human being and feel just what you feel. This is not something that anyone can teach from the sidelines, no matter how great a person they may be.

In the years to come, you will slowly begin to read these works and study the ideas of great people. But even when you have read the books and learned the ideas, the ultimate key to the mystery will be— Copper, of course it will be you. You, yourself and no other. For it is only through the life you will lead, building on your many experiences and impressions, that you will be able to understand the truths in the words of these great thinkers. You will never really know these writings just by reading them, the way you would study mathematics or chemistry.

The things that you feel most deeply, from the very bottom of your heart, will never deceive you in the slightest. And so at all times, in all things, whatever feelings you may have, consider these carefully.

To put it a slightly more difficult way, you must make a habit of thinking honestly, with your own experience as a foundation, and— Copper, this is very important!— if someone fakes this part, no matter what kind of great- sounding things they think or say, they are all lies in the end.

The most important thing— more than what other people think, more than anything— is that you should first know for yourself, truly and deeply, where human greatness lies.

Think of your friend Kitami’s words: “No matter what anyone says… !” You must have that kind of willpower in your heart.

There are lots of people in the world who act just for appearance’s sake— in order to seem great in the eyes of others. That type of person worries first about how they are reflected in other people’s eyes, and they inadvertently end up neglecting their true selves, as they really are. I hope you don’t become that sort of person.

And that is why you absolutely must attend to the things you feel in your own heart, the things that move you deeply. That is what is most important, now and always. Do not forget this, and think carefully about what it means.

Over such a great distance, he thought, all the way from the earth to the moon up there, an invisible power is working.

if he had never had that first idea, he never would have started all that research, so the idea is also quite important.

I thought it over thoroughly, and this kind of great idea comes from a surprisingly simple place.

“So you see, Copper, the things that we call obvious are tricky. When you think about a thing as if it were self- evident and follow it wherever it may lead, soon enough you run into a thing that you can no longer call self- evident.

That’s why, because of my idea, I feel that human particles are all connected like strings in a net, with countless other people that they haven’t met or even seen, and without even knowing it. That’s why I decided to call this the Net Rule of Human Particle Relations.

People are each limited to what a single individual can experience on their own. But people have language. We can transmit our experience to others, and we can listen to the experience of others and share in that knowledge. On top of that, since we invented the alphabet, we can share our experiences with each other in writing.

When we unite those different points of view into the broadest possible thing, without creating contradictions, we call that a field of study.

So we must pursue our studies as far as we are able and learn from the experiences of the people who came before us. Otherwise, all their labor will have been in vain. And since they worked so hard, it would be a mistake not to apply our efforts to problems that they didn’t manage to solve. It’s only through that work, which builds on all that came before, that a discovery can be considered to belong to the human race. And what’s more, it’s only those discoveries that we can call great.

For people to be in an inhuman relationship is quite a shame. Even between perfect strangers, human relationships have to be human.

There is nothing more beautiful than people nurturing goodwill toward their fellow beings. And those are the human relations that humans truly deserve.

with her hair done up in the style called kushimaki— a twisted bun fastened with pins and a comb.

some copper coins

“Then let’s just do it now— that’ll be easiest. We’ll just do it in baby steps, little by little, until we’re done.”

Even if his reply was only of limited consolation to Uragawa, it helped Copper a lot. Without Uragawa’s knowing, the words raised Copper’s spirits.

You didn’t think of yourself as the least bit superior to Uragawa or put yourself on a higher level,

you have not an ounce of contempt within you for the poverty of Uragawa’s family.

Copper, as you make your way toward adulthood, you will eventually come to understand that to lead a life of poverty is often to go about one’s life feeling inferior to others.

No matter what kind of magnificent garments they wear or grand mansion they inhabit, fools are fools, boors are boorish, and their value as people shouldn’t be elevated for those reasons.

Therefore, someone with true confidence in their value as a human being should be able to live unaffected, even if their circumstances shift a bit this way or that.

Someone who feels inferior because they are poor can never be much of a human being.

least, Copper, until the day that you have stood in the place of the poor and tasted the bitter pain of poverty and then stood up to the world time and again, without losing your confidence, you are not qualified to do so.

If you were to start to feel even a little proud of your family’s good life and to look down on people less wealthy than you, more thoughtful souls would be right to laugh at you.

a human being who doesn’t understand the essentials of being human, in other words, is a pitiful fool.

the world today, the vast majority of people are poor. So the vast majority of the people in this world are unable to live their lives in a way that is really human— this is the problem of our time, greater than any other.

Meanwhile, those employees have not a single thing to support themselves other than their own labor. They live from day to day on the work of their bodies.

So why, in a society of such advanced civilization as ours, does such a repugnant state of affairs remain in existence? Why has such misery not been eradicated in this world?

If you survey the whole wide world and then on top of that look back at yourself now, you would probably describe your present state as arigatai, wouldn’t you?

That you extend your talents in leaps and bounds and become a person truly useful to the world!

And what about you? What will you create? You take many things from the world, but I wonder what you will give back in return? You use things without thinking twice about it, but at the same time, you still haven’t created a thing.

But while you may not have noticed, there is something else, a big thing that you produce day after day. What could that be?

But you must never ask anyone else. Because you’ll never know if someone else’s answer makes sense for you or not. It’s necessary to find it for yourself.

But if a person can go to a place where they can say they no longer need their life, even when they’re not desperate or crazy, well, that’s what I think is fantastic.”

“When I think how sometimes people can be brave enough to overcome any fear, any hardship, it gives me a feeling I can hardly describe. To charge right at the things that are painful and difficult, break through to the other side, and take pleasure in that— don’t you think that’s truly fantastic? The greater the suffering, the greater the joy in overcoming it. So you don’t fear death anymore! I think that’s what a heroic spirit is all about.

Copper thought that for Mizutani to live in a nice house like this one, and in a situation where everything he wanted was bought for him, and despite that for his everyday life to be so lonely, was a really strange thing.

Now, I know that at some point I have told you that when something makes a deep impression on you, you should remember it and reflect on its meaning later, right?

During the early years in which he raced to the pinnacle of power, pulling himself up from adversity by his bootstraps, he was so youthful, so brilliant, so energetic that just to read his biography is to have your eyes opened wider.

so, then we can admire Napoleon’s great vitality, and while we do, we can also ask the question, “What in the world did Napoleon, with this wonderful vitality, accomplish?”

Copper, this is not just about Napoleon. You must ask questions like this of any great person or hero.

But more than humbling ourselves to these people, we must be bold enough to ask questions. Such as “What did they accomplish using these extraordinary abilities?” Or “Of what use are their extraordinary accomplishments?”

And with extraordinary abilities, isn’t it possible that one might just as easily accomplish extraordinarily bad things?

Ohhh that is true

Next, you’d surely see that no matter what things those extraordinary people did, they were exceptionally fleeting, unless their work was firmly bound to the current of the stream.

At that time, European countries generally used what was called a mercenary system to make up their armies. Soldiers received a salary and fought in return for their pay.

When you, too, become an adult, you will eventually come to know how many small, virtuous people there are who have the best intentions but who cannot realize them, all because of weakness.

The world is full of people who are not bad, but weak, people who bring unnecessary misfortune upon themselves and others for no reason but weakness. A heroic spirit that’s not devoted to human progress may be empty and meaningless, but goodness that is lacking in the spirit of heroism is often empty as well.

She brought him an ice pack for his forehead and had him take aspirin for the fever.

the same time, he had become keenly aware that a person’s conduct was made up of actions that, once done,

For the first time, Copper knew what it was like to examine his own thoughts and actions, carefully and closely.

No matter what you do, you can’t change the past. Think of the present instead. Go and do what you have to do now, and be brave.

Over and over, these thoughts rolled around in Copper’s head. But every time he realized he was daydreaming, Copper would shut down his imagination, return to his textbook, and try not to be distracted by anything else.

No good, no good! It’s no good to think of that now, Copper told himself and tried not to think any further ahead.

“Jun’ichi, dear. Even when we become adults, it often happens that we think back on things with regret. We wonder, Why didn’t I do what was in my heart that one time? When just about anyone takes a serious look back at their lives, we all may have one or two things like this.

These aren’t the sorts of things where we stop to think how it will work out for us personally. We act to show the warm and beautiful things we feel in our hearts, just as they are, and after that, we might have a brief moment now and then when we think, Oh, I’m glad I did that.

I might not have realized for a long time after how each and every event in our lives happens once only and will never be repeated. How we have to work to nurture that which is good and beautiful in our own hearts.

you think only of that one thing, you’ll never be able to change it, but if your regrets help you to really learn an essential thing about being human, that experience won’t have been wasted on you. Your life afterward, thanks to that, will be better and stronger than it was before. Jun’ichi, that’s the only way for a person to become great.

Human beings are so great that they demonstrate their greatness by recognizing their own misery. A tree does not recognize that it is miserable.

As we move through our lives as human beings, all of us, young and old, encounter sadness, hardship, and pain, each in our own way.

Of course, those are not things anyone ever wishes for. But it is thanks to sadness, hardship, and pain that we come to know what a true human being is.

So although there’s no doubt that everyone wants to avoid physical pain, in this sense, it’s something that we should be grateful for, something we need. Because of it, we know that a failure has occurred inside us, and at the same time, we also come to know exactly what the natural state of the human body should be.

Copper, we must find a way to draw knowledge from all our suffering and sadness!

Of course, there are also people who believe that they are unfortunate, because their own selfish desires haven’t been gratified. Others go through various hardships for the sake of the most superficial vanities.

Not getting sec

what sort of thing is this unique pain so special to humanity?

But among all those miseries, there’s one that pierces our hearts most deeply, that wrings the bitterest tears from our eyes. It’s the awareness that we have committed a mistake that we can’t go back and fix.

That’s it. It’s truly painful to admit one’s own mistakes. Most people think up any excuse they can to avoid it. However, Copper, when you have made a mistake, to recognize it bravely and to suffer for it is something that in all of heaven and earth, only humans can do.

It’s hard to admit our mistakes. But in the pain of our mistakes there is also human greatness.

we were not born with the ability to conduct ourselves with morality, there would be no reason for bitter tears.

We have the power to decide on our own who we will be. Therefore, we can also recover from mistakes.

At the front of the small Buddhist altar that sits on a shelf in nearly every Japanese home

He had all sorts of feelings, but when he tried to write them down, somehow, they wouldn’t come together. Before Copper knew it, his thoughts had left the notebook and wandered off toward the kitchen.

I think there has to come a time when everyone in the world treats each other as if they were good friends.

how it paints a portrait of the city of Tokyo in 1937,

He was the son of a successful stockbroker and planned to be a lawyer, but in school his interests shifted.

it’s a unique book, and particularly valuable to us now, when violence against citizens is on the rise, and independent thinkers are being attacked by their governments both here and abroad.