The influence this book had on me was that it portrayed
people who would not abandon the weak, even if they themselves became targets of attack, and who would
protect the weak, as
strong and great people, and
only those who were related to them, and
that image made a strong impression on me.
book I would like to recommend
is Endo Shusaku's Silence. Silence
is a book that has had a really big impact on my life. I probably started reading it when I was in sixth grade. [
what's interesting about it is that it
's about a town in Shimabara during the Edo period, and there were
a few
people who had remained in hiding in Japan, and those Christians
with educational backgrounds were increasingly being
forced to choose between returning to their hometowns and continuing to insist on being Christian and
becoming martyrs.
The book depicts the lives of a weak man named Yoshijiro and his priest, and the question of whether God is silent or not. A
man named Yoshiroku betrays the people who have
always been his friends and kind to him and helped him
out of fear, and the
priests decide whether to forgive him or not.As I
read, I repeatedly asked myself if I were
living in the same era, would I
return home and step on the fumie out of fear for what I believed in?I also
also
asked myself over and over again whether I could forgive a person like that, whose friend had betrayed another friend and put them in danger.First of all, I thought that I would like to have the strength to be able to hold a memorial service for a weak person who had betrayed someone out of
weakness, like the priests who forgave Yoshijiro.At
the same time, I was also creating Hajime no
Ippo, a story about a
boxer who becomes stronger and
tries to understand strength, and Endo Shusaku's
depiction of strength I think the
concept is that it is possible to accept even the weakest people, and
that acceptance
is a sign of strength.
But I work as an editor of stories, and
when I think about what a story is, I realize that in society,
people who are not successful are
easily dismissed as wives, Heidi, and so on. But
stories are the kind of things that speak to
you in a way that says, "I understand how you feel, and you
have circumstances that only you understand, and you did
your best." I
think that this is the value and
strength of literature. When I read Endo Shusaku, I defined in myself that I want to be
as close to the weak as possible, and that
this is what strength is. I think that's when I
I
decided that I
wanted to work with stories for the rest of my life.
I read Endo Shusaku when I was in sixth grade, and ever since then, I've read Endings over and
over again, and I've
continued to read all of his works, even things like "The
Woman I Abandoned" that people in the world are
n't interested in, and the
people I abandoned, and the way I abandoned those people, I've
been depicting people who can't do things, and as an
adult, I want to be strong at home and
become an adult who can accept the weaknesses of others. And as I
think about this a lot,
a lot of questions
arise, like is this the right kind of strength? At times like this, I
think about things like what Endo Shusaku would have done, and I
talk to all the books in my head, and I
have this attitude of continuing to talk to the authors. I think that this has laid the foundation for my work as a future editor.
And the books I create are
not exactly entertainment, if you ask me.
For example, I edited a book called Dragon Zakura, and
what I was thinking while editing Dragon Zakura was about
about
students studying in rural areas, and how
these people might all feel lonely. I
also made Dragon Zakura 2, and
in Dragon Zakura 2, I focused on the family environment, and the
increasing number of poor families today, and
those who can't go to cram schools, and I told them, "
This is the way you study, you
should study online like this." I
wanted to write a book that would empathize
with people who are in a weak academic environment, in a similar way. I
hope that this book will become a weapon that will make them think that they can do it, just like the people who go to Tokyo's top high schools and cram schools. I believe that as people go through life, they can
continue to live as long as they don't give up on that faint hope, and this
this
Yoshijiro thinks of himself as the worst kind of person, that he's not worth living. But Yoshijiro is able to continue living because he believes that he is connected to God, that
God is not
silent about him. I'm always thinking about how I would like to create works that tell the story of someone who has completely fallen into despair while living like that, and then read a story that helps them get back on their feet.
[Music]
I have three children now, and my
eldest son is in sixth grade. I'm
watching him and thinking that
with the way he's interested now, I don't
think there will be four silences. It's
really strange to think, "Why did I read this silent type of book when I was in sixth grade and get so caught up in it that I read it over and over again?" My parents, both my
father and mother, read a lot of books,
but they never
told me to read a book or recommended it to them. They don't recommend things that they hold
dear to their children. The reason for this is that
I enjoyed silence because, of course, there
are many different paths to those important things, and my
son is walking his own path, and he's on a different path,
so I think there
will be times when he encounters silence on a different path, and
there will be times when he doesn't.
In that way, I don't directly recommend creative works that were important to me to my
son, but I do have this one, and I'm
scattering some punk statues around that he might notice. My
son and I have the same Kindle, so I
read them, and so by
noticing that there's something that's drawing attention on my Kindle's bookshelf, I
think that might increase the possibility that he'll read it.
In this way, for me, it's
like scattering breadcrumbs,
but not pushing them further.
[Music] When I read a book, I
read all of the works of that author, then I read other authors that influenced that author, and
in that way
I listen to the music that influenced them,
eat the food, drink the drinks, and so on. That's how it
spread. I went to high school in Kobe, Nada High School,
which is also Endo Shusaku
's alma mater. I
chose to go to school because I thought it would be a good thing for me to become his junior. There is a
work in the year of the trial that is deeply different, and I was so
so
influenced by it that I even took a bath in the Ganges River in India.
I died when I was a freshman in university.
I think that Endo's career has
had such an impact on so many of my actions and policies.
Endo's career has been an inspiration to me and has
played a part in many of my important decisions, so I really think that if I hadn't
read Silence, I would be a completely different person. I do
n't think I would have tried to replicate Shusaku Endo's life. I will
reread his works and continue to see him as an important figure, but
but
as an editor myself, I create new creative works, and it is
important for me to bring to the world works and writers that many people will value, just as I did in India. I think it is
important to
create not just one, but 10 or
20 writers, and I
am working hard to create an organizational environment that can produce those 10 or 20 writers. This is my first experience of creating an organization that will
produce more and more good writers and
editors, so I am
still unsure how I should behave at this time. I have
probably failed quite a few times in this regard, so I think that
Cork is not yet at the point where it can
steadily produce more and more of that kind of work, and
