anchor

昨日ふれましたように、佐村河内 守氏が十数年前よりゴーストライターを使っていたことが明らかになり、かつそのゴーストライターが実名を公表しました。

anchorは「[スポーツ]・・・の最終走者[泳者]を務める」（『ジーニアス英和辞典　第４版』大修館）つまりカタカナ語としても借用されている「アンカー」でお馴染みかと思いますが、文末にあるNHK anchorは「（（主に米））[放送]・・・のニュースキャスターを務める」（ibid）に相当し、「総合司会を務める」と解釈できます。

補足ですが、anchorの語源はギリシャ語で「曲がった」を意味するankuraに由来しており、ankle「くるぶし」やangle「アングル、角度」は同源語となります。また、米国アラスカの港湾都市Anchorage「アンカレッジ」は投錨地を意味するanchorageに由来しています。更に学生にはお馴染みの辞書名であるSUPER ANCHORには、錨の重さのようにしっかりとした揺るがない知識を得るための拠り所ないしは心の支えになって欲しい、という意味が込められていることをUG先生よりご教授頂きました。（Shou-VR*）

'Japan's Beethoven' admits using ghost composer
TOKYO —A deaf composer dubbed Japan’s Beethoven confessed on Wednesday to hiring someone to write his most iconic works, leaving duped broadcaster NHK red-faced, and casting a cloud over a figure skater set to dance to his music in Sochi.

Mamoru Samuragochi, 50, shot to fame in the mid-1990s with classical compositions that provided the soundtrack to video games including “Resident Evil,” despite having had a degenerative condition that affected his hearing.

Samuragochi, who has also spells his name Samuragoch, became completely deaf at the age of 35 but continued to work, notably producing “Symphony No.1, Hiroshima”, a tribute to those killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of the city.

In 2001 Time magazine published an interview with him, calling him a “digital-age Beethoven.”

“I listen to myself,” Samuragochi told the magazine. “If you trust your inner sense of sound, you create something that is truer. It is like communicating from the heart. Losing my hearing was a gift from God.”

His reputation grew when public broadcaster NHK aired a documentary in March last year entitled “Melody of the Soul”, in which it showed the musician touring the tsunami-battered Tohoku region to meet survivors and those who lost relatives in the 2011 catastrophe.

The film shows Samuragochi playing with a small girl whose mother was killed in the disaster and apparently composing a requiem for her, despite his own struggles with illness.

Viewers flocked in their tens of thousands to buy his Hiroshima piece, which became an anthemic tribute to the tsunami-hit region’s determination to get back on its feet, known informally as the symphony of hope.

But on Wednesday morning, the composer’s life was revealed to have been a fraud, and an NHK anchor offered a fulsome apology for having aired the documentary.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japans-beethoven-admits-using-ghost-composer