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 4.6: Childhood Friends and Unlisted Companies
Read other chapters in My Mentor, Shintaro Ishihara
I moved my firm from the Aoyama Twin to the Sanno Park Tower on November 29, 2004. Shintaro Ishihara must have visited me again soon after the relocation.
That was 18 years ago.
It had been six years since I had first met Mr Ishihara at the City Club of Tokyo in Aoyama. By then, he had resigned as a member of the Lower House of the Diet before becoming Governor of Tokyo. It was around the end of that unexpected oasis of his life, which he called his "four years of mental purification."
After that four years' time, Mr Ishihara declared, "I was compelled to become embroiled in politics once again." (The Life of a Man Called ”I” by Shintaro Ishihara, Gentosha, 2022, p 283.)
However, I had my doubts.
Even though he had resigned as a member of the Lower House, I doubt that he ever imagined disassociating himself from politics. If so, since Japan as a country has no position for president, the Tokyo governorship was a natural and convenient choice for Mr Ishihara. Still, although it was attainable, it was likely nothing more than a small toy for him to play with.
A small toy. As I wrote the words, I recalled a passage in Season of the Sun (1955). It was from the funeral for his girlfriend Eiko:
"Bowing and picking up incense, he stared at the photo of Eiko. Looking at her defiant gaze under the smiling façade, he realized for the first time that death was Eiko's cruelest revenge against him. By killing herself, she had deprived Tatsuya of his favorite toy for good… the toy that never fell apart, no matter how many times it was punched." (P 80.)
Somerset Maugham's Advice
Earlier, I mentioned that while we shared the same birthday, there was a 17-year age gap separating Mr Ishihara and me. So, Mr Ishihara was my age when I was talking with him about Island of Fire (火の島, Gentosha, 2018). Recalling those days and the fine details of our exchange, I felt a certain sense of emotion welling inside me. As Somerset Maugham wrote, people live, suffer and die. In summary, such is the way of life.
The same Somerset Maugham also wrote about politics and writers: "From time to time, however, writers have engaged in politics. Its effect on them as writers has been injurious." (The Summing Up, published by William Heinemen, Ltd, 1938, at p 155.)
Mr Ishihara must have taken this to heart.
Chasing Oe and Murakami
He regretted that when he was young, he had neglected an American publishing company's application for translation rights. Unfortunately, that mistake later caused him to lag behind Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami in terms of international recognition.
"It seems that the intolerance of Japanese society doesn't allow a prominent politician to write great novels." (The Life of a Man Called ”I” at p 214.) I quoted this passage earlier. After making that statement, Ishihara mentions his book of collected short stories, A Shipwrecked Man (Bungeishunju Ltd, 2017), which he thought was one of his best works, and sneers: "[My book] has received no reviews from any media, probably because it was released during the scandals of those most despicable politicians, Shin Kanemaru and Ichiro Ozawa. They have dominated the Liberal Democratic Party to which I belong, and their money-first politics have been the subject of muckraking and public criticism." (Ibid)
"That's why I wanted you, who is experienced in the ways of the world and sees the bitter and the sweet, to show the world what a novel really is by winning the Akutagawa Prize." I feel as though I can hear Mr Ishihara whispering this into my ear.
Writers of a Certain Generation
"There are no more writers of my generation who are writing decent novels."
These were Mr Ishihara's words when he was interviewed about Island of Fire by a magazine called Hon no Hanashi. (Bungeishunju Ltd, 2008.) He was 76 years old then.
The interview was titled "A story of sensual delight that melts everything."
In the introduction, the editor refers to "Mr Shintaro Ishihara, a novelist, who has been extraordinarily busy as Governor of Tokyo." Reading it again, I felt that it captured the true nature of Mr Ishihara. He existed as one person, composed of both Shintaro Ishihara, the Tokyo Governor, and Shintaro Ishihara, the novelist. So perhaps that same person would include Shintaro Ishihara in the moment he surrendered to sensual delight and allowed himself to melt.
Filling Out the Plot
Shintaro Ishihara was loquacious when he came to see me at my firm on April 13.
"It's a privately-held construction company, and it wants a piece of land owned by a transport company. So they do a swap, an exchange. But the prices of the two tracts are different, so there's a gap. The company agrees to pay the difference in installments of off-the-books funds over some years, and signs a promissory note for that."
Ishihara's stories were getting more and more concrete.
"The parent company is a holding company with a chairman and a president. And the president has a younger brother. Their father is the chairman. Meanwhile, the wife of the president and the shrewd yakuza happen to be childhood friends."
Childhood Friends.
Mr Ishihara had an odd obsession with relationships between childhood friends. For example, there was the elementary school classmate whom Kaya Okinori loved in the short story, A Public Figure. Then there was a woman by the name of Reiko Kono, also an elementary school classmate, with whom the protagonist only walked hand in hand. She is depicted in Ishihara's short story, Far-off Dream, contained in his The Last Writings, The Path to Death (Bungeishunju Co Ltd, 2022).
The woman, Reiko Kono, was married to another man. Ishihara heard about her current status from her younger brother, who says in the book, "I hoped my sister would marry someone like you." The protagonist, seemingly Mr Ishihara, responds, "First love is fleeting and fragile. You live a lifetime harboring those feelings silently, in your mind. That's how life is, isn't it?" (The Last Writings, p 12.)
He wrote that book when he was 89 years old. Thinking back to my first love, was it fleeting and fragile? Have I lived my life harboring such feelings?
White Roses
Ishihara's protagonist, who attended the funeral for Reiko Kono, says, "I wasn't invited to her funeral, so I invited myself. Ignoring the person who was about to guide me, I stood in front of the altar and scattered an armful of white roses over its surface." (P 15.)
Tatsuya Tsugawa, behind whom is seen the shadow of Okinori Kaya, is also there.
A woman in the short story called Lover in the Sky, from the same collection, is the first love of a man aboard a kamikaze plane. On the night before he sets off on his duty, the two give themselves to each other.
He describes "her aroused body, that he holds in his arms for the first time." (P 20.)
After their single sexual encounter, the man sets off on a suicide run, suffers severe burns to his face, and doesn't return for more than two decades. Meanwhile, the woman, who became pregnant by him, gives birth to a baby boy. The young mother believes that the man has died. She remarries, and the infant grows into a healthy young man. Eventually, he becomes a pilot in the Japan Self-Defense Force and finds the chance to meet his natural father for the first time.
This was also Ishihara's work at the age of 89. Without a doubt, the model of the man who goes on a suicide run must have been Ishihara himself.
Mr Ishihara only manifested sensuality by expressing it in words. But deep down, he longed for the relationship between a man and a woman that precedes their physical intimacy. Even if the union between the two as they become one flesh is nothing more than a fleeting illusion, a man cannot help but yearn for it.
Love and Lust
A scene in The Life of a Man Called ”I” particularly symbolizes Mr Ishihara:
"There was a fair-skinned, pretty girl in my class, as cute as a doll… I even imagined dressing her up as a princess of some lord, approaching her as a samurai vassal, and waiting on her hand and foot." (P 24.) But she wet her pants during class. And only because of that, "My affection toward her instantly turned into contempt."
He offered his own interpretation, saying: "The memory of that incident must have hinted at 'lust,' which is one trait of my personal nature that has haunted me throughout my life." (P 25.)
I didn't see it that way.
Instead, I was reminded of something Ryunosuke Akutagawa wrote in Memoirs Sent to an Old Friend: "I had loved some woman, but I clearly remember that my love for her instantly cooled off when I saw her poor handwriting." (The Complete Works of Ryunosuke Akutagawa Volume 16 p 4.) I wonder whether Mr Ishihara looked back on himself as a man of lust who could not help falling in love with different women one after another, even though he had a partner he loved at the same time.
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(To read the book in Japanese, please visit the publisher's website.)
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Author: Shin Ushijima
