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 4.5: Back to Miyakejima
Read other chapters in My Mentor, Shintaro Ishihara
Following our May 10 meeting at my law firm, the next time I received a phone call from Shintaro Ishihara was on July 25, 2002.
I happened to be out when he called at 1:15 PM, and my secretary informed him of my absence.
"I have something to talk about with Mr Shin Ushijima. So, I need about 10 minutes on the phone with him," Ishihara said. My secretary told him that I would be back past 3:00 PM. He replied, "I will call him again around 3:30 PM," and hung up the phone.
I can easily imagine how Mr Ishihara spoke to my secretary.
He called me directly on his own. When my secretary took the phone call, he spoke to her politely, asked about my availability, and adjusted his schedule accordingly.
He never forced his own schedule upon me. Such was Mr Ishihara's character. He never fluctuated with his mood.
Indeed, on that day, he called me back promptly at 3:40 PM. We talked for 17 minutes.
He jumped right into the topic of the book he was writing. "The company is going to be a first-class family outfit like Takenaka or Suntory, but it's a construction company. The company does a land swap, as we discussed last time. But it's a tax dodge with a written pledge of the off-the-books funds. And this confidential deal gets out to a certain group, which is a yakuza organization.
"The organization gets its hands on some of the holding company's stock and demands that it be invited to the general shareholders' meeting. Then, the company has no other choice but to capitulate to the demand."
'The Mask of Dimitrios'
After talking about the plot of his novel for a while, Mr Ishihara started to say, "A story focusing on a search for someone is interesting. There's a book written before the war ー a novelist named Eric Ambler wrote a book called The Mask of Dimitrios (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1939). It's a story about someone who independently tries to trace the life of a man whose body is lying in the morgue by talking to lots of people."
I made a note of the title. It was a very famous spy story, a long time ago, and I must have bought it immediately. But I do not remember whether or not I read it right away. Anyway, undoubtedly I still have it, although I'm not sure exactly where it's buried among my large collection of books.
A Call from Zushi
To the best of my recollection, the next time Ishihara called was on April 12, 2005.
He placed the call from his home in Zushi at 10:03 in the morning. As I remember, I couldn't pick up the phone right away, so I had to call him back.
Mr Ishihara said, "I answered this call in the living room, so I'm going to move to my study. I'd like to take my time to talk with you, so I'll call you back. It will take me some time to get to my study," he continued, and then hung up. That was a Tuesday, so it must have been the time he felt a bit of a cold coming on and had stayed home to rest.
From the beginning, he started the call on a familiar note: "It's all about human entanglement. A man and a woman." That was his style.
"It's a reputable company, like Takenaka or Suntory. But its shares fell into the hands of an intelligent gangster, a yakuza, who raids the company later. The gangster also demands that the company participate in an off-the-books land barter with another company. Then the written promise to pay the barter's value difference under the table, with off-the-books funds," gets into the hands of the smart gangster.
It was the plot that he'd been working on for three years.
The Plot Thickens
I listened sympathetically, thinking that he must have been irritated because his official public duties kept him so busy that he had little time to write.
"In the background is a disaster that happened on Miyakejima. The man who raids the company is a shrewd yakuza. He's also a childhood friend of the wife of the president of the big company at issue. This shrewd yakuza himself is married to the daughter of the yakuza organization's top leader.
"Then, intentionally, to intimidate the company, he sends a repulsive and heinous package (a dismembered dog). He's shrewd, and he makes all kinds of demands, like the company create a subsidiary and let him take control of it, or have the subsidiary build a factory. He says whatever he wants to and gets away with it. Meanwhile, the company is desperate to get back the damning pledge, one way or another."
I replied, "So, they think that if they can get back the written pledge, the company will survive. That's what you intend, isn't it?"
Hearing about Miyakejima, I recalled Ishihara's Sea of Men (男の海, Shuesha, 1973), where he wrote: "I feel more than happy to have encountered a lover called Miyakejima" (p 121). At that time, he was in his 30s. I wondered whether this new story had to do with an incident involving the same lover. While pondering such things, I was comparing notes with Mr Ishihara on the other end of the line.
The End Within Grasp
On the following day, April 13, Ishihara and I met at my law firm. Undoubtedly, we made arrangements to meet on that phone call. He must have felt that the telephone conversation was not enough, that he needed more time to talk. The plot of Island of Fire (火の島) was well developed by then, but he couldn't devote himself solely to writing because he was also tied up with public service. There was nothing he could do about it, which irritated him further.
Mr Ishihara always described himself as one to "do things in a single stroke from a burst of enthusiasm." Our telephone conversation on the previous day must have helped clear the fog. All at once, he felt that the end ー which he had thought was still far away ー was suddenly within his grasp. That must be why he was restless and felt the urge to see me as soon as possible.
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(To read the book in Japanese, please visit the publisher's website.)
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Author: Shin Ushijima
