Mr Shintaro Ishihara was the Goethe of Japan. I was his pupil, someone in the same profession, and his escort runner. In this chapter, I have woven together more of my private recollections, spanning as long as twenty-plus years, and "my unfulfilled promise" to him. ー Shin Ushijima
Chapter 4.2: A Bottle of Fine Wine
Read other chapters in My Mentor, Shintaro Ishihara
I met Shintaro Ishihara at Kikukawa in Ginza in the days when I would also indulge in a few drinks, but I was no competition for Mr Ishihara. Aged 75 at the time, Mr Ishihara was incessantly sipping from the bottle of white wine sitting next to him at a pace I could not match. Yet, I was 17 years younger than he was.
After a while, lifting a third-empty bottle close to his face with both hands, he read the description on the label. Then he twisted his upper body to the left and called out to the proprietress at the back of the restaurant, "Hey, okami, this can't be the best wine you have. Bring something better. I'm sure you have Grand Cru."
The tone of his voice honestly revealed that if he drank wine, he wanted to enjoy the best available. I thought it was typical of Mr Ishihara, behaving as though he were a young man, seemingly creating an air of getting his way, "Let me just enjoy wine!"
Come to think of it, Mr Ishihara didn't need reading glasses to read the label.
I don't know when Mr Ishihara started wearing glasses, but I remember the peculiar impression it made on me when I saw him wearing them on TV. It seemed to me that Ishihara and glasses made a strange combination. That must have been a long time ago.
Flustered, the proprietress brought out a bottle of Grand Cru. Probably, the first-served wine may have been white Burgundy or Chablis Premier Cru. I didn't drink half as much as Mr Ishihara, and Mr Sakamoto drank even less.
A Memory of Chablis
The reason why I think it might have been a Chablis is that Ishihara had once written about his fond memory of that wine. It was a story about when he went scuba diving ー a local fisherman told him about secret spots for catching lobsters. And thanks to his tip, Ishihara was able to catch lots of lobsters with his bare hands. Back on board the boat, he immediately boiled and ate them. Of course, Mr Ishihara was with a woman with whom he was infatuated at the time. The wine they were drinking was Chablis. (The Life of a Man Called ”I,” Gentosha, 2022, p 7)
Mr Ishihara took the new bottle of Grand Cru in his left hand, gazed at it lovingly, slightly squinting with his eyes, and had the proprietress open the bottle and pour it into a new glass. Lifting the glass to eye level and glancing at it, he slowly took a sip, keeping it in his mouth for a while, and then letting it slowly go down his throat. I watched this series of movements, all in front of me, as he cast me a glance with his mouth curving at the corners into a smile. It was terribly stylish.
Mr Ishihara loosened his tie after I arrived, and then quickly took it off. To begin with, he did not like wearing neckties because they felt constrictive around his neck.
When he picked up the bottle of wine, of course, he was not wearing a necktie.
Meanwhile, I wore a tie throughout the whole dinner.
The person in front of me was the Governor of Tokyo. But he exuded no sign of self-importance. He might have thought that what he was doing with us was instead more significant.
The Pressure of 'Expectations'
"Hey, how's everything? Are you writing?" he asked.
Because my response was rather non-committal, Mr Ishihara went around behind me and grabbed my shoulders with his hands. "Shin Ushijima, I expect much of you," he said, shaking me with some added muscle.
I do not remember what we ate.
During the dinner, Mr Ishihara suggested that I incorporate some small gestures or habits into my characters when writing novels so that the scenes would become more real. Glancing at Mr Sakamoto next to him, he repeatedly said, "Ushijima-san, we have high expectations, so do your best." It was emphatic encouragement.
Island of Fire (火の島, Gentosha, 2008), which Mr Ishihara was working on at the time, was not brought up as a topic on that occasion.
Before we had dinner together at Kikukawa, at a little after 7 PM on July 4, 2006, Ishihara and I talked over the phone about the novel he was working on.
In the story, a man who has bought up several golf courses decides to sell one of them as he needs some cash. It's his own money. He puts it into his account at a foreign bank and withdraws it in Japan, according to Mr Ishihara.
"As it turns out, many golf courses that he has bought are being targeted," he continued. He wanted to know how this could be handled without violating the law.
Then, in the middle of the discussion, he suddenly shifted to my business and asked how my own novel was coming along.
Prosecutorial Style
"Why don't you use the style of confessional statements written by prosecutors?" he suggested. That might be interesting, I acknowledged, because prosecutorial statements were written in a unique style. Such a novel might be the only one of its kind, so it was a good idea.
For example, the expression: "I was so upset that I took a knife sitting nearby and stabbed the person in the left flank. It was a sashimi knife, so it went surprisingly far, and I felt the knife penetrating deeply into his flesh."
Although the first person "I" is used as the subject of the sentence, the writer is the prosecutor. The prosecutorial style makes it clear that when the defendant stabbed the knife into the victim, the defendant wanted the person dead. The defendant's awareness of committing a crime is described in concrete terms.
Eventually, we returned to the topic of Mr Ishihara's novel. I explained about possible issues between a parent company and its subsidiary, as well as tax implications on the amount of gain when lands are exchanged. Mr Ishihara listened intently, nodding solemnly, point by point.
He was never one to force his ideas and opinions on others. On the contrary, when he asked someone about a topic he knew little about, he listened with humility. Therefore, when I read that Mr Ishihara, as the Governor of Tokyo, had consulted with Mr Hiroshi Nakachi, Chairman and President of the Japanese Institute of Certified Public Accountants at the time, about a drastic change in the accounting system to implement the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's financial reforms, I was able to easily and vividly imagine Mr Ishihara's behavior. Tokyo Revolution: Memoir of My Tokyo Government, (東京革命:わが都政の回顧録, Gentosha, 2015, p 134.)
All The Golf Courses
What options might the protagonist have to get his hands on the golf courses, Mr Ishihara queried. And I gave him the idea that it should be done indirectly. That is, do it through a company that's involved in the business. In Mr Ishihara's story, there is a woman with whom the protagonist has been deeply in love for ages. His withdrawal of money has something to do with this woman.
Eventually, when I read Island of Fire, it dawned on me that Mr Ishihara wasn't interested in the workings of a corporation. Instead, his story was solely centered on the interactions between a man and a woman on such a stage. Many of his questions related to the development of the relationship between the male protagonist and the woman.
As I recall, at the beginning of our conversation about the novel, I confirmed with Mr Ishihara that he would include no suggestion anywhere, although I was willing to give him advice and assistance as a lawyer.
Initially, Mr Ishihara mistook what I said. He thought that I wanted him to insert somewhere in the book that I had helped him, and he replied helplessly that it was not possible. To set the record straight, I explained that, chances were that his storyline might be analogous to a case that I had actually handled, since I had been involved in many different cases.
Explaining, I told him that, as a lawyer, I would like to avoid any indication of my involvement in his work. Of course, I did not breathe a word of any cases I had actually been engaged in. In response, Mr Ishihara said, "Oh, that's what you're concerned about. I'll not mention your name anywhere, so please don't worry." I was relieved.
Business Law vs Storyline
As he came close to finishing his novel, I suggested that it might be faster simply to share the galley proof with me.
That must have sounded very disrespectful to a great novelist. Indeed, when I said that that might be faster than exchanging questions and answers back and forth, I sensed a little hesitation on the other end of the line.
Still, I couldn't help but suggest it because my explanation about the company system, and a parent company and its subsidiary, somehow were difficult to get across to Mr Ishihara. I figured that was because technical points like tax law were involved.
Although I don't know what he did with my suggestions in the end, Mr Ishihara did send me the galley proof, and I still have it. If I compared the galley proof with the published book, Island of Fire, I might learn whether I contributed, even in a small way, to Mr Ishihara's masterpiece. But I haven't done so.
When Island of Fire was serialized in The Literary World (文學界), I bought the journal every month and enjoyed reading each installment. Later, when it was published as a novel, he kindly gave me a copy, which still sits on my bookcase.
So, of course, I have read Island of Fire. And, as it turned out, some of my suggestions on the galley proof were not adopted. However, I vaguely remember that we talked on the phone about them and came up with some other mutually agreeable approaches.
Most likely, that's how it happened.
What I remember most clearly during this set of exchanges is that I became firmly convinced that Mr Ishihara was essentially a poet.
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(To read the book in Japanese, please visit the publisher's website.)
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Author: Shin Ushijima
