Chapter 5.1: Like I Was Born Yesterday

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 5.1: Like I Was Born Yesterday

Read other chapters in My Mentor, Shintaro Ishihara

This book was largely written at the entreaty of Mr Toru Kenjo, who is now the president of the publishing house, Gentosha, Inc.

In retrospect, it was a curious trigger.

Mr Kenjo called me for the first time in a long time and apologized to me for the postponement of Mr Shintaro Ishihara's farewell service. Then he started muttering to himself. I was in my car parked in the second basement level parking lot of the building where my law firm is located, but I do not remember whether it was in the morning or the evening.

Just before he hung up, he said that he would definitely call me again soon to let me know when the farewell service was rescheduled.

Since the publication of my first novel, The Shareholders Meeting (株主総会, Gentosha, 1997), I have been deeply indebted to Mr Kenjo ー so much so that literally, as the Japanese saying goes, "I cannot sleep with my feet pointing toward him." Out of gratitude, I hesitantly invited him to dinner. Cheerfully, Mr Kenjo readily accepted my invitation.

Breathtaking Landscapes

We were seated at a table in a special private room at the back left behind the entrance to my favorite French restaurant, Nouvelle Epoque, in the Hotel Okura Tokyo. From there, one can see the American ambassador's official residence connected to the United States Embassy on the slope of Reinanzaka.

The residence has a fountain framed in an oval-shaped lawn reminiscent of a small racetrack. Beyond that is a pool. A huge ginkgo tree intricately entwined with ivy stands behind it on the side of the embassy. It is a lavish, verdant space that makes one forget it is in the center of Tokyo. This breathtaking landscape spreads out beyond the thick glass windows of the Hotel Okura. It is an exceptional location.

Above all, Mr Kenjo was the benefactor who helped me make my debut as a writer. That was in 1997.

The following year, he introduced me to Mr Ishihara. Mr Ishihara was 66 years old, while I was 49.

I wonder if young people nowadays know the novel, The Tree of Youth by Shintaro Ishihara (青年の樹, Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co, Ltd). The story has been adapted for movies and TV dramas.

*Book cover, "The Tree of Youth" by Shintaro Ishihara.*

'The Nation' in Shintaro Ishihara's Heart

Ishihara wrote the novel in 1959. It was made into a movie twice and a TV drama series, too.

I watched the first TV drama series when it aired from 1961 to 1962. At the time, I was 12 or 13 years old. I had been hitting the books, aiming to enter a secondary school that boasted high enrollment of its graduates in the University of Tokyo. After passing the entrance examination, I was attending a junior-senior high school attached to the Faculty of Education at Hiroshima University. Practically speaking, it was a six-year program, so there wasn't pressure to study for another high school entrance examination.

Mr Ishihara himself wrote the lyrics for the theme song of the TV drama series. It was particularly impressive, sung by Koichi Miura in a forceful and booming voice. It goes:

"On the hill, above where the clouds drift, in the grassy field scattered with profusely blooming flowers, together, we plant as one, a single seedling of youthful hope and dreams."

Even now, I can recite it. I remember the melody, composed by Naozumi Yamamoto.

Only recently, when I listened to the song again, I discovered that in the third verse, the song says, "Revitalize the nation, oh tree of youth."

Mr Ishihara was 29 at the time.

It was in 1961, just after Japan had entered the era of high growth. Even at that time, "the nation" already existed in Shintaro Ishihara's heart.

Thinking about it, Season of the Sun was written in 1955, when Mr Ishihara was twenty-two, and published as a book by Shinchosha in 1957. The years of rapid economic growth had yet to come to Japan.

What No One Else Knows

It was also through Toru Kenjo that I became involved in assisting Mr Ishihara as he was building up the plot for his masterpiece, Island of Fire (火の島, Gentosha, 2008). Mr Kenjo asked me, "Please advise Mr Ishihara on the legal aspects when he needs it for the novel."

As a result, I had met Mr Ishihara many times. Our first discussion was on May 10, 2002. Mr Ishihara was 69, while I was 52. The book was published on November 15, 2008. Mr Ishihara was 76, while I was 59.

Seven years had passed since our first discussion.

For the book you are reading now, Mr Kenjo encouraged me to weave together my personal memories of Mr Ishihara. Looking through my notes and other materials that I had kept, I could just reconstruct the times Mr Ishihara and I met in person to discuss the novel. How many more times had we spoken on the phone, I wondered.

It was during those discussions that Mr Ishihara, "my mentor," had also taken it upon himself to teach me, his pupil, how to write novels. Whether we met in person or spoke on the phone, it was always just us. Not a single time did anybody intervene in our conversation. It left memories of rich and fulfilling times shared by just the two of us, alone.

Thanks to those times, I hold many private memories about Mr Ishihara that no one else knows.

'Island of Fire'

This time, I read Island of Fire all over again.

Ah, here and there, too, I spotted in the novel countless parts that reflected what we had talked about in private. The word "promissory note" also brought back memories. I suggested the concept of a promissory note to formalize the payment of off-the-books funds for the land swap in the novel, thinking it would arouse Mr Ishihara's interest. Mr Ishihara liked my idea. He embodied the idea magnificently and brought it to life in Island of Fire.

We talked about the copy of the promissory note. It was Mr Ishihara's idea to have the copy notarized. Or, I may have suggested it. At the time, I had even conferred with a notary whom I knew.

Novelist Kazuya Fukuda wrote a review of Island of Fire in the weekly Shukan Shincho. "It's a splendid work full of suspense, interweaving affairs of the heart and a corporate power struggle in which their fates culminate," he wrote. (November 27, 2008 edition at p 133.) As Fukuda said, it was truly a masterwork, and I was deeply impressed once again.

Fukuda had a serialized column in Shukan Shincho, titled "Hard-hitting Commentary." For that particular edition, he added the subtitle Island of Fire by big man Shintaro Ishihara." Without a doubt, Mr Ishihara was a great writer. Some people, if not most, understood that all too well. As someone who engaged in writing within his orbit, it struck me close to home. Mr Ishihara repeatedly enlightened me that a novel is the fruit of passion and intoxication. They require intensity and irresistible emotion, mixed with whimsy and caprice.

Understanding 'Intoxication'

It was when I reread Island of Fire that time that I finally understood what Mr Ishihara had likely meant by routinely using two selected Chinese characters for intoxication, or suikyo, to reflect whimsy and caprice. According to Shogakukan's Japanese Dictionary, there are two sets of characters with similar meanings that are pronounced the same: 酔興 and 酔狂. The first, 酔興, suggests an inclination toward curiosity. Meanwhile, its phonetic pair, 酔狂, refers to drunken frenzy.

It led to a particularly ridiculous misunderstanding on my part.

This made me wonder about Mr Ishihara's comment that he needed to grasp "something substantial" which even the Governor of Tokyo could not achieve. Could he have meant the content of this novel? Or on second thought, he must have wanted something even more than that.

Mr Fukuda's words were passionate. "The ending is unparalleled; it is so beautifully written. It is a work that adults can indulge in with deep emotion…. I hope you'll read it wholistically, focusing not only on the romance but also on the threats of nature and the corporate world."

Exactly so. Mr Ishihara's Island of Fire fully deserves Mr Fukuda's praise.

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(To read the book in Japanese, please visit the publisher's website.)