午夜剧场

Do you have friends? I think many would answer yes. If asked, "Are those friends human or animal?" most would reply that they are, of course, human. While there is much discussion regarding friendship between humans, friendship with animals has rarely been debated. The author, Dominique Lestel, delves into this issue.

Dominique identifies as a philosophical ethologist and actually conducts animal research. However, as one might expect from a professor at the ?cole Normale, there is a sophisticated philosophical analysis behind his work, which proved quite challenging for the translators. While friendship is often discussed in terms of emotion and sentiment, Dominique focuses on the sharing of time and space as a phenomenon. This applies to human-human, animal-animal, and human-animal relationships alike. Furthermore, he points out that the interspecies relationship between humans and animals is asymmetrical. Animals are given names by humans, "personified," and even have biographies written about them. On the other hand, humans need animals boundlessly. Humans are a lonely, isolated species whose close relatives have all gone extinct. Dominique's writing extends to animal death, play, and even musical performances (!) with humans.

Animals are integrated into our communities. They are companions, labor, and food. While it may seem that humans unilaterally exploit animals, when it comes to proliferation, humans are the ones being utilized. Compared to a total of 200,000 wolves on Earth, there are over 400 million dogs. In a hetero-community composed of different species, different members mutually regulate each other's behavior. A house cat must relieve itself in a designated spot, but a human must prepare that spot. Robots are also entering these hetero-communities. Machines are made by humans, but for humans to become companions to machines, they must learn their language. Elderly people are making tearful efforts to become companions to their smartphones. Dominique is currently focusing his efforts on joint research with Japanese roboticists.

By the way, I don't know a single word of French. The reason this book could be published is that Ms. Wakabayashi, who lives in France, and Mr. Shishikura from the publishing house provided the initial draft translation, which was then meticulously supervised and translated by Yoichi Sumi. This process was quite enjoyable in its own way.

Shigeru Watanabe

Nakanishiya Shuppan

160 pages, 3,300 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.