October 8, 2011
Writing from a hospital room during the third phase of a severe medical struggle, the author reflects on blood transfusions, gratitude to his readers, and the truth that every human life is sustained by others.
He addresses his mother, who died in the tsunami of March 11, 2011, promises to live to at least the age of ninety-five and continue fulfilling his mission, and tells her that by the end of October he will present her with the completed The Turntable of Civilization, which he calls the finest book of postwar Japan, before its official publication date.
In the midst of my battle to “Destroy Every Last Villain,” yesterday was the hardest day of the third phase.
I spent almost the entire day lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep.
Even returning the “Peta” visits of readers on Ameba who had left a sign saying, “I read your article,” was almost more than I could manage.
Even so, I asked my acquaintance U to return those visits for me.
Why?
Because those small signs from readers ordinarily encourage me in ways I scarcely even notice.
For me, returning a Peta is the writer’s way of saying “Thank you” to the reader.
To speak honestly, my mother’s life was not a happy one.
Nevertheless, she continued to say, “I am grateful.”
That was how you lived, Mother, like Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
You were remarkable.
As those who were around me know, I was the very model of a man with an inexhaustible supply of energy.
Before I was old enough to understand the world, and before I was old enough to retain memories of my childhood, I nearly died from the epidemic dysentery that was prevalent at the time.
My mother told me that my life was saved because my father was on close terms with the director of Sendai Municipal Hospital.
Apart from that, I had never been hospitalized.
Naturally, I had never received a blood transfusion.
This present struggle, however, is no ordinary struggle.
At each stage, blood transfusions have become necessary.
Whenever that happens, I think the same thing.
Human beings are kept alive by others.
We are enabled to go on living by other people.
I am not speaking merely of family.
Those who were close to me will immediately remember that I often said the same thing while we enjoyed good food and drink together.
I have now realized that my mother said those words in exactly the same profound sense in which I did.
That realization is also a source of sorrow to me.
Mother, I am fighting.
I will certainly win.
I will live to at least ninety-five—the lifespan that God granted to our family, as you yourself knew very well—and I will continue fulfilling my mission.
You died without knowing that my mission was to write, and to continue writing.
You were swallowed by the tsunami.
Because circumstances had arisen that amounted to something like a declaration that I had severed ties with my siblings, I had still not gone to see you.
No one could ever have imagined that such a thing would happen.
Yet, as though warned by some premonition, I repeatedly felt that I had to visit you at the nursing home, take you a personal computer as a present, and tell you that I had begun writing and that I was writing every day.
While I continued thinking that I had to do so, March 11 suddenly arrived.
That is why my regret is multiplied many times over.
Yet at Nijo Castle, I heard from Lord Ieyasu that you were watching over me.
And in the garden of the abbot’s residence at Chion-in Temple, I felt that, for a single instant of light, you appeared before me in the form of a certain pine tree.
At the end of this October, I will present you with the completed The Turntable of Civilization—the finest book of postwar Japan, the finest book in Japan—before its official publication date.
MIKIO KISARA