More: Nino: It 07/2010


Episode 19: The Reason I Don't Cling


March. Arashi's talk show, which began years ago in the late night time slot, has ended. During the last episode Nino wasn't especially overwrought with emotion; he looked like he was having fun, like usual. "That deep emotion was inside of me. I just thought it wasn't necessary to show it. It's not as if every single viewer is overwhelmed with emotion, right? Because everyone has a different sort of energy, even if I show that, it's not like everyone will sympathize with it. (smiling)" "Everyone is different" is one of Nino's favorite phrases. During the shoot, he squats among some puddles, and settles immediately into his own world. He always gives off the impression of being an only child, despite being the younger brother of a sister two years his senior---

Speaking of which, I don't have any memories of playing with my sister. And my mother and father worked. But it wasn't like I was a latch-key kid, either. My house was within the grounds of my grandpa's factory, and I was the little master. (smiling) When I would get home from school, the people who worked at the factory would play with me. But I don't really have any memory of being spoiled.

Nino was a child who wasn't spoiled, and became an unpampered adult. But then, can he allow himself to be spoiled? For example, by his parents, or a lover?

I wonder. With my parents, I might not really have a strong sense of filial piety. I'm grateful, but since I've become an adult, I don't really think "Now it's my turn to take care of you." Your parents are your parents your entire life. I want them to be that existence that takes care of their children till the end. As for women, if there's such a person for me, I think I would want to take care of them. Even a guy like me. (smiling) All around me there are women who are serious about their work, and it's those types of women I want to take care of. Conversely, the types who can't do anything for themselves from the get-go, who want people to take care of them and are dependent, I don't feel any urge to take care of them. What would they do if I died? It would be hard to be with a woman who didn't have the will to carry on for herself.

No matter who he has that's important to him, "being alone" is the base of living.

Women and men, fundamentally, can't understand each other, right? Instead of saying women and men, saying people and people might be better. That might sound sad, but there are an infinite variety of humans, and with so many people in the world, coexistence and working together is seriously difficult. Even people that boast, "I have so many friends that my cell phone memory is full" at most have 1000 entries, right? But of those 1000 people, how well does this person know all of them? I don't think it's so easy to connect with people… As for me, I'll only spend time with the people that I get along with, or even if we don't really understand each other, the people that I care about.

I'm naturally drawn to the people I need at the time.

Right now, the people that I spend time with aren't only the ones I've known forever. There are some that I meet, and after only three hours of being together during recording, we exchange phone numbers and go out drinking together. And there are people that no matter how long we've worked together, we don't meet outside of work. I feel like I'm naturally pulled towards the people that are important to me at the time. A while ago at Takahashi Katsumi-san's birthday/cherry-blossom viewing party there were quite a lot of people. I talked the whooole time with Tsutsumi (Shinichi)-san. Apparently the two off us gave off this aura that kept everyone else from being able to come near us. (smiling) Tsutsumi-san is an incredibly interesting person. He has so much experience under his belt, but he doesn't show it (which I mean in a good way), and you wouldn't think he's in his forties, truthfully. He's someone that can happily say things in a loud voice, truths that people don't bother to say, like "Five plus five is ten!" From a woman's point of view, he'd be a boy! Or possibly he's too straightforward to the point that they end up seeing him as dodgy. (smiling) I think that his surprising simplicity is interesting, and actually quite deep.

Nino says that, as a person, what he likes are "People that are deep, more than people that are knowledgeable."

Those who are knowledgeable have rich conversations too, and whatever worries you go to them with they can give you clear answers. They have an extensive field of experience, so they can say "this sort of issue needs this"… and show you more and more of the inside of their drawer. So they're broad, but when each problem comes with a set answer, it ends up making them shallow. A deep person gets lost deep inside their own thoughts, and then ends up forgetting what the hell they were talking about. (smiling) But they realize that the more you ponder over something, the less you're able to grasp the answer to it. That maze-like feeling is intriguing. Aren't conversations more interesting when they don't have a goal or an answer? For example, if an M-1 Champion* guests on a talk show, they'll talk about the M-1, just as they would on other shows, and you can imagine what they'll say, so it gets boring. Personally, I find conversations that go where they will more interesting. That may be hard to make happen on television, though. (smiling)

One reason that listening to Nino is interesting may be that there's no answer or exit to what he says. Upon mentioning that, he answers with an unusually shy smile: "I'm really not that interesting."

* As I understand it the M-1 Grand Prix is a competition among manzai comedian groups.