Memory, Identity, Japanese

I’ve been thinking on and off about memory the past few years. I seem to be quite forgetful and that makes me want to improve my memory, but I am yet to take up the task with a long-term focus. Listening to a bit of Andy Matuschak’s interview inspired me to think about it a little more. He echoes what I’ve been recently thinking: our learning is constrained by our memory.

In order to follow a complex argument that has more steps than we can hold in our working memory requires us to recall earlier steps that may be prerequisite knowledge for understanding the current step. For me, even just working through that first sentence lends credence to this idea of the necessity of a good memory.

One of my music students in the UK mentioned to me a few months ago how memory is the reason we can maintain an identity through time. What really makes me feel that I am continuous with my 5-year old self other than my memories of that time, and the memories recollected and shared by those who knew me then, and my memories involving these people, and my memories of them narrating their memories, and the memories of the intervening time, and so forth? In this view, just one person’s memory seems like the entire grapevine in itself. No wonder memories are so plastic.

It seems like an interesting idea. I wonder to what extent memory determines identity. Could there be aspects of having a sense of self through time that don’t rely on memory? Thomas Reid seems to think so. If I’ve understood his position correctly, memory provides evidence for one’s identity but does not actually create the sense of one’s identity.

Anyhow, rather than being a failure of storage, it seems to me that forgetting is a failure of retrieval. Echoing what many memory champions have said, learning in a way that makes the information memorable and contextual, and connecting it to what you already know sets up the pathways for easy retrieval later. I’ve known this for a while but haven’t applied it more than half-heartedly.

So, I thought learning Japanese would be a good way to practice these memory skills. I’ve been fascinated with kanji and since just the recommended number is more than 2000 (!), along with the multiple readings (onyomi and kunyomi) and the corresponding vocabulary, grammar and phonology, I’m interested to see how I accomplish this.

When learning German (in which I am still not fluent!), I switched over to using my phone and the internet in German. Naturally, that makes my phone next to useless if my friends ever need to even briefly use it. I wonder what they’ll think if I switch over to Japanese one day.

Future self, will you know Japanese and have more command over your memory? I’ll do my best so that you will.