A testimony of surviving eight months of hospitalization, the devotion of doctors and nurses, the destructive power of stress, and the rediscovery of daily joy—culminating in the words of a Gifted fulfilling God’s mission in The Turntable of Civilization Volume One.

2011/12/17
Beyond Death: Mission of Life — Eight Months of Hospitalization and the Turntable of Civilization

In fact, I was hospitalized for eight months.
During that time, there were three short “refresh discharges” of about a week each.
As for how serious the illness was, I think it is best expressed by the words my truly wonderful and grateful attending doctor once said, quite matter-of-factly:

“What can be said with certainty about this illness is that if you had not received treatment, you would have been 100% dead within one month.”

Doctors do not argue about the causes or reasoning behind illness.
They simply devote themselves wholeheartedly to treatment and healing.
It was during this, my very first hospitalization since becoming aware of myself, that I came to realize just how truly thankful we should be for their existence.

And also, the nurses who support them—working with devotion, performing the noblest service in this world.

When I collapsed from this illness, what I felt vividly was this:
Stress—especially that which comes from evils beyond words…
Boiling anger… unbearable lies, unbearable malice in human beings.
Those are the things that drive a person into a serious illness.
I realized that with certainty.

After lunch, I had planned to go home once and then head to Kyoto, but the timing turned out awkward.
So I checked the cinema that had been showing George Harrison’s film.
Now it was showing Sartre and Beauvoir.
“Oh, that’s good, I’ll go see it,” I thought, but I couldn’t make it in time for the start.

Instead, I thought, why not go to Kinokuniya?
And yes, it was exactly as my acquaintance had said.
I almost bought another copy for myself, even though of course I already own one.

What I saw yesterday was just as my friend, the one from “When a Friend Comes From Afar,” had told me.

On the far left is me, on the far right is Hiromichi Shirakawa.
In the middle, Eishirō Sakakibara, Taichi Sakaiya, Seiichirō Saitō, Yoshio Suzuki, Kazuyo Katsuma, and others…
That is the place where I am.

No matter which page you open, you encounter words that are none other than my own originality—
The unmistakable expression of a Gifted individual,
Fulfilling the mission given by God.

“The Turntable of Civilization” — Volume One