Beyond the Window: The Camera That Happened to Be Running
Column 'Beyond the Window,' installment 7: reading today's article about a patrol boat's camera clearly recording a Yuragi opening, the editor-in-chief recalls how little was recorded in 1975 and writes about the relationship between preparedness and chance.
Reading today's front page, I kept coming back to the same line — that Kubota, aboard the patrol boat, kept his distance but never turned the camera off. He must have been afraid, and still chose to record rather than retreat. This city has always had people like that in it.
In 1975, the year the Yuragi began, I was a rookie, and I've gone back through the company's archives from that time more times than I can count. There are almost no photographs. The few that exist are either out of focus or show something no one can explain. I once asked a senior photographer from back then about it. "I was scared, and my hands shook too much to hold the camera steady," he told me. Whatever those shaking hands captured is gone now, nowhere to be found.
■ Somewhere Between Preparedness and Chance
Today's footage wasn't captured because anyone had specially prepared for it. It was simply that the camera always kept running for routine safety checks happened to be pointed the right way. There's no clean line to draw between preparedness and sheer chance, and that blurry feeling is, honestly, what this job is like. Without preparedness, chance has nothing to land on. But preparedness alone can't make chance happen either.
■ On Hands That Didn't Shake
Kubota said that before any fear set in, he was checking whether the camera was running. That means there was a hand that didn't shake. Between the shaking hands of 1975 and the steady hand of today, there are fifty-one years. Over that stretch of time, I think this city has slowly built the habit of recording things even while afraid of them.
Tonight, too, Yurari sits on the desk holding its teacup. Whether the faint glow at the tip of its antenna tonight is from the air pressure, or something else, I still can't say. But one thing is certain: this creature always ends up in the corner of somebody's camera frame.