Oh

[flemmings]

Seidensticker is dead. Rather an unlikable git in many ways, but still, an institution. And he died in Tokyo, which is devotion. If I had a worrisome medical condition at an advanced age, I'd come home to where there are western doctors. They at least are accountable. Japanese doctors are regarded as God, and think themselves God, and like God reserve the right to slay their worshippers without repercussion.

(Spellcheck suggests 'Seidensticker' wants to be any of Sadistic, Hedonistic, Modernistic, Dynastic, Sternest, Stochastic, Statistic, Stylistic. All of the above, say I, though I need to look up Stochastic.)

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

My first reaction, to my surprise, was "NO!"

I don't think I've ever *loved* his translations, the way I've loved translations by Arthur Waley and Burton Watson and Donald Keene (and I feel like I've misspelled every single name, mea culpa), but he was one of the giants in the field. His Genji is still the only one I've ever owned.

RIP.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

The obit says he wasn't married and left no children. I have to say, parts of the Tokyo Diary made me go hmm when I read it.

Ah well. No business of mine, but his alone.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Is this Tokyo Diary the one he kept while translating Genji, first published as Genji Days?

And anyway, yeah- as a sunny day in May and no particular secret. But his generation didn't talk about it openly.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's the title I meant. Mind like a sieve. Thanks.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

I guess at that age, at any age, not many would risk a long haul flight after suffering head injury. The obit. mentioned that he had no immediate family, so perhaps he was happy going where he was.

hmmm 'Stochastic':a.Now rare or Obs.1662.[ad.Gr -(insert Greek alphabet here)- to aim at a mark, guess] Pertaining to conjecture.

So says my doorstopper of "The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" 3rd Edn. 1959.

Hope it helps some. ALso I'm clueless about how to insert the Gr. symbol thing I think my lappie is able to do that but I haven't the foggiest. ^__^

My spellchecker always wants to turn Hakkai into a 'Hake' and Gojyo into 'Go joy'. ^__^

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The obit is pretty dense but that might be the policy of the IHT, about whose political stance I know nothing. 'Never married' 'no family.' What about 'long time companions'? though I fancy he probably didn't have many of those either. He was a prickly man, and unless he mellowed immensely in the last twenty years I can't see him happy to go anywhere.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I suppose there's always his unnamed "associate". Who knows.

*rereads obit* Hey, wait a minute...since when was Murasaki Shikibu a "courtesan"?! Hmph.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

In Econometrics (and probably Statistics in general), stochastic variable = random variable. So stochastic = random?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I gather from Wikipedia that yes, it means random at a guess by chance; and still a math term. Except for something I probably read in an early Trek novel about a school of err maybe philosophy founded by Bonner the Stochastic, which name won't leave me alone. I think it's probably an injoke.