Tonoyama Taiji

a Japanese actor and essayist

1915-1989

Why do you go out?

Because there is nothing to do in the house.

Because staying in the house is miserable like a jobless actor.

How do you keep your way of life?

Walking on the street, listening to jazz, reading mysteries and drinking coffee.

I'll Remember May

In May 1989, I was sitting in the high school classroom. It had been just one month since the new school year began, so students’ seats were in order by their family name. In front of me was Okada-kun, behind me was Oyobe-kun. I was in my third year of high school. I had already broken up with members of the track and field club. I had almost no friends. Most students were going to universities, but I myself could not find out the true meaning of going to a university.

I remember it was one Saturday morning at the end of May. It was a class of Japanese. Mr. Tamaki, the Japanese teacher, called one student to read the text aloud and then another student was called to read it aloud.

“Something black, unknown and unfortunate has always depressed my mind.” I don’t remember who read this first sentence, but it struck my mind. I felt it sounded different from my image of the school textbook. I started reading the novel by myself. It was no longer the Japanese textbook. It was the first experience of feeling the power of language. Words were not for the test. They were taking me somewhere different from the world I was actually living in. I felt as if I were escaping away from reality. I came to know the strange power of literature.

On the same day, I went to a place called Jazz-kissa in Jimbo-cho. The name of it was “Hibiki.” I remember a man reading a horse racing paper in the sea of Jazz sound. The next day was the Japan Derby. I couldn’t bet any money, but I wanted to create something. It was the beginning of my life.

Quiz: What’s the title of the novel?

Tsuta Fumiya

a high school baseball head coach

1923-2001

“I hate the bunt. Baseball goes without theory. Don’t think too much. Just swing your bat.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

an American thinker

1803-1882

“I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all.”

How can I get to “the woods” in Tokyo, 2016?

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942. He was an American boxer. His real name was Cassius Clay Jr.

His famous phrase was “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

After he lost a match, he got dispraise: “The butterfly has lost its wing, the bee has lost its sting.”

He put it on the wall and saw it every day. He tried to get his wing and sting back.

To contact with local people

I usually have my hair cut by my wife, but in a foreign country I look for a barber shop.

In America in 2013

In Myanmar in 2014

And during this winter holidays, I had my hair cut in India.

I hear America singing

One book in my life is Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

What image do you have about America? It was jazz that originally attracted me to America. The sound of American music amazed me when I heard it on the radio. I was a high school student.

I was born and raised in Tokyo. I was studying English at a local university. I’ve been interested in American literature and wanted to go to America. I couldn’t realize my dream during my university days, but two years ago when I was 41, I went to New York City for the first time. One of my destinations was the Brooklyn Bridge. Looking at cables up and the Statue of Liberty far away, I walked from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

The first edition of Leaves was published in Brooklyn. “I celebrate myself,” starts Whitman’s long poem called “Song of myself.” When I met this poem in the classroom in my 20s, I felt freedom voiced through more than 1,300 lines. And walking on the streets of New York City, I remembered the saying, “jazz and freedom go hand in hand.”

Whitman expressed himself without considering the limited form. It seems to me Whitman’s free style is like the adlib or improvisation of jazz musicians. I am 44 now and still have a desire to read his lines again and again.