The 100th Anniversary of Shiba Ryotaro's Birth

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the author Shiba Ryotaro (1923–1996). So today, I hope we can discuss Shiba-san from various perspectives. Perhaps the most important keyword for this project will be "national author." Besides Shiba, Yoshikawa Eiji and Natsume Soseki are also called national authors, but in recent years, I feel that Shiba Ryotaro stands out and is held in particularly high regard.

First, let's hear from Fukuma-san, who published"Shiba Ryotaro no Jidai"last year. Could you start by telling us about your first encounter with Shiba's works?

I think I started reading Shiba in upper elementary or middle school. His writing is a bit difficult for elementary and middle school students, so I tended to skip the "digressions" and just follow the parts where the characters were acting heroically. There was also a time when I would go to my prep school thinking, "Sakamoto Ryoma has it good," as a kind of stress relief during exam season.

However, while I read him intermittently until my mid-20s, I stopped abruptly after starting graduate school after a period of working. I'm one of those who started reading him again in my mid-40s.

Why did you start reading him again in your mid-40s?

I started getting assigned tedious tasks in my department (laughs). I had a lot of meetings, which broke up my time into small chunks, and I couldn't sit down and focus on reading research books or materials. In that situation, I thought reading Shiba would be a good way to relax.

I had also started to develop a faint interest in why Shiba's books were so widely read. At the time, I was doing research on narratives of war experiences, so I was interested in how Shiba's experience as a tank soldier was projected onto his works, and also in his time at the Osaka Keio Gaigo.

Also, while there are various internal studies of his thought history, including by Katayama-san, I started to wonder what would happen if I looked at it from a more external perspective, linking it to the business conditions and the transformation of postwar society at the time.

I remember my first encounter with Shiba quite specifically. It was in 1973, when the NHK Taiga drama "Kunitori Monogatari" was broadcast. It started during the third term of my third year of elementary school. I was captivated by "Kunitori Monogatari," and once I started watching it, I wanted to read the original novel.

Until then, I had never read a full-length novel in paperback like the ones adults read, but I had my parents buy me the four-volume set of "Kunitori Monogatari" and read it with great enthusiasm.

From there, I moved on to "Sekigahara" and "Josai" and started reading Shiba avidly. My uncle, hearing that his elementary school nephew had started reading Shiba, gave me the six-volume hardcover set of "Saka no Ue no Kumo" (laughs). I also read "Kukai no Fukei" and "Tobu ga Gotoku" when they were serialized or published as books.

There was also a Shinsengumi boom, wasn't there? "Moeyo Ken" was made into a TV drama with Kurizuka Asahi as Hijikata Toshizo. I wasn't around for that, though.

I'm not sure how much I understood, but I always kept Shiba's works by my side. Eventually, I started reading Yamaoka Sohachi, Kaionji Chogoro, and Yoshikawa Eiji, and while comparing them, I was always conscious of Shiba Ryotaro. I very much feel like I was raised on Shiba's books.

Did you read his works on the Sengoku period and the Bakumatsu/Meiji periods concurrently?

It was the Sengoku period first. I read "Kunitori Monogatari," "Sekigahara," and "Josai," and I think "Hao no Ie" was still a new book back then. I don't think "Hao no Ie" is very well-regarded even now, but I didn't find it very interesting. The fact that his writing becomes dull when he writes about Ieyasu is probably related to the essence of Shiba Ryotaro, I think.

After all, people like Nobunaga or Mitsuhide, who do something and die soon after, shine brighter. I think Shiba Ryotaro's interest lies in people who do what they have to do in a flash and die midway through, like Sakamoto Ryoma, Takasugi Shinsaku, Oda Nobunaga, and Omura Masujiro.

In my case, too, I was influenced by the Taiga dramas and had read several works like "Ryoma ga Yuku." However, what really sparked my strong interest was actually a book by Matsumoto Ken'ichi. When I was in middle school, Mishima Yukio committed suicide by seppuku. I didn't realize it at the time, but Shiba-san had strongly criticized Mishima on the front page of the Mainichi Shimbun. Matsumoto-san discussed the reasons for this in a very interesting way in his book "Mishima Yukio to Shiba Ryotaro." Why did Shiba criticize Mishima so strongly? That was one starting point.

Another point was the contrast between Yoshimura Akira and Shiba Ryotaro. When an event is left as a record, Shiba-san, for example, would say that since there are lies even in records, he would grasp history, including those lies. On the other hand, Yoshimura-san would say that he thoroughly investigates records and makes inferences about the remaining parts, but that these are valid inferences.

I became interested in how Shiba-san and Yoshimura-san thought about the problem of mixing fiction and reality, in connection with news theory and other topics.

Being a national author, Shiba seems to be at the core of Japan, as a national or collective memory. He may have intended to stay on the periphery, but after receiving the Order of Culture, he somehow ended up right in the center. I've always found it interesting how he himself is increasingly being incorporated into the historical story.

Fukuma-san, which work did you focus on the most when writing your book?

It wasn't any one specific work, but I tended to focus more on his historical novels, especially the long ones, rather than works like "Kaido wo Yuku." I ended up focusing on Shiba's top-selling works, such as "Kunitori Monogatari," "Shinshi Taikoki," "Saka no Ue no Kumo," and "Ryoma ga Yuku."

However, I myself didn't start reading "Saka no Ue no Kumo" until I was in my 20s, after I had started working. And at that time, I didn't find it particularly interesting. But when I reread it in my mid-40s, I felt that his war experience and the passions surrounding the war were quite projected onto that work. From that perspective, I reread the Sengoku period works that I had often read when I was younger.

In Shiba's case, I think his Bakumatsu-Meiji works, especially "Saka no Ue no Kumo," attract the most attention. Of course, there are quite a few parts that differ from historical fact. But more than that, what interested me was why Shiba chose to depict those events from that particular angle.

This may be a cynical view, but I began to feel that he was writing about Nogi, Saigo in "Tobu ga Gotoku," Akechi Mitsuhide in "Kunitori Monogatari," and Hideyoshi in "Shinshi Taikoki" as a way of projecting his own war experiences and his sense of discomfort with the elite.

I see. Katayama-san, how do you evaluate "Saka no Ue no Kumo"?

That was a novel that began as a serialized feature in the Sankei Shimbun for the Meiji centenary (1968). Shiba Ryotaro, who had already made "Ryoma ga Yuku" a bestseller, wrote about the Meiji period as a continuation of his Bakumatsu stories. In that Meiji centenary year, the Taiga drama "Ryoma ga Yuku," starring Kitaoji Kinya as Ryoma, was broadcast for a full year. I think the serialization of "Saka no Ue no Kumo" starting in that very year was like the dawn of the Shiba Ryotaro era.

Within that context, I believe "Saka no Ue no Kumo" had a part in creating what is called the Shiba view of history up to the Russo-Japanese War, a certain form of postwar Japanese nationalism. In other words, I think it overlaps the "glorious Meiji" with the postwar Japan of the high-growth period, which was recovering from defeat.

If that were the case, one would expect him to depict the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars with Ito Hirobumi or Yamagata Aritomo, who were at the center of things, as the protagonists. But instead, he took a Bakumatsu-style, youth-story approach. He chose the Akiyama brothers from the army and navy, who were in the organization but not at the very top, and paired them with Masaoka Shiki in an exquisite way to write a kind of total novel of the Meiji era. He depicted the Meiji period as a grand romance with young protagonists.

In the end, this work became a novel about the Russo-Japanese War. If he had written about the Pacific War, it would have been a tragic story for a national literature. Yamaoka Sohachi has "Shosetsu Taiheiyo Senso," but you don't really want to read it because it's painful, do you? Since the Russo-Japanese War was a victorious war, everyone wants to read about it.

He tells a story of young protagonists with the high aspirations of the Meiji era, rising up as they look at the cloud above the slope. For the navy, he doesn't choose Togo Heihachiro, but Akiyama Saneyuki, a staff officer who could think relatively freely. His brother is also in the army, but in the cavalry. Shiba Ryotaro has a fondness for people on horseback, so he makes his favorite kind of brothers the protagonists and turns it into a youth romance novel. He skillfully picks up all the good parts and crafts it well.

When we talk about a national author, I think "Saka no Ue no Kumo" is the key work, followed by the preceding "Ryoma ga Yuku."

However, "Saka no Ue no Kumo" is heavily criticized, especially from academia, isn't it? From the perspective of the Iwanami Shinsho-style historical view of that time, people questioned whether it was acceptable to narrate the Meiji era as such a success story. The Meiji centenary was a time when such critical perspectives were very strong within academia.

But, and I remember this because I'm a little older than both of you, the strange thing is that at that time, they were casually making movies and dramas that praised the Japanese military. On the other hand, they were also broadcasting TV dramas like "Combat!" that glorified America defeating the Nazi army. Unlike intellectuals, ordinary people were casually enjoying both pro-Japan war movies and things that glorified America at the same time; anything went.

So, at a time when ordinary people were still in a state of confusion, Shiba-san seemed to have offered a ladder, and I think the representative work of that was precisely "Saka no Ue no Kumo."

I have the impression that this is the reason why the historical view he showed, from "Saka no Ue no Kumo" to "Kono Kuni no Katachi," which suggests that Japan is wonderful but we should just discard the early Showa period, was so well-received.

While "Saka no Ue no Kumo" is indeed a success story about winning the Russo-Japanese War, it also depicts quite a bit of the organizational pathology of the Meiji army and government. Nogi is one example, as are the Choshu and Satsuma cliques. At the same time, he also discusses it in connection with things like the Battle of Guadalcanal, so I also get the feeling that the Meiji he depicts might not be so bright after all.

So, what's more interesting is why "Saka no Ue no Kumo," which has both dark and bright sides, had only its brightness focused on. This was true for general readers, and academia also had a tendency to critically view its brightness.

There's also the fact that Shiba-san himself later highlighted and talked about the "bright Meiji and dark Showa" in "Kono Kuni no Katachi."

To put it from a different angle, "writing up to the Russo-Japanese War as an extension of the Bakumatsu period" is probably the line where Shiba-san's person-centric novel-crafting just barely works. When it comes to the Taisho and Showa periods, it becomes difficult to write with a specific person from the Kwantung Army or elsewhere as the protagonist in Shiba-san's style.

Fundamentally, the limit of his historical perspective, learned from Sima Qian's "Shiki," which narrates history by featuring heroes or individuals, is reached. Shiba-san's style of heroic, romantic history ceases to be viable.

He couldn't write "Nomonhan no Natsu," could he?

In the Showa period, you have the army, the navy, political parties, the House of Peers, the people, the mass media... for Shiba's world, it becomes incomprehensible, and he ends up thinking Mongolia is better. There are yurts, and you can see everything as far as the eye can see (laughs).

What's interesting is that the Nomonhan Incident was written by Hando Kazutoshi, who was Shiba's editor, based on records and memoirs. Shiba said he couldn't write about Nomonhan, but his works are about incidents that happened in an era where he couldn't get direct testimony. So even with war, drama and historical materials are mixed in his depictions.

Shiba-san's style is, through and through, in the vein of "Taiheiki," "Heike Monogatari," or "Sangokushi." It works for the period from the Bakumatsu to the Russo-Japanese War, but after that, there are too many living people, and he can't write in that style.

Shiba's works extract the convenient parts and create an enjoyable world for the reader by making it an interesting story. As you pointed out, Yoshimura Akira is the opposite, isn't he?

He's ascetic.

Moreover, he puts great effort into writing about terrible things. "Senkan Musashi" is about how it sank immediately despite all the effort put into it. Or about the prisoners in Hokkaido. Even in "Umi no Shigeki," which overlaps chronologically with "Saka no Ue no Kumo," Yoshimura-san focuses on the futility of the Baltic Fleet, doesn't he? He painstakingly writes about unrewarded efforts.

In Shiba's case, he depicts heroes who play a decisive role when history moves. Yoshimura-san is the complete opposite, dedicating an enormous number of pages to how nameless people suffered so much for nothing. You could say they are complementary, but Shiba Ryotaro and Yoshimura Akira are like a set, representing opposite sides of the world.

I think there might also be a difference in their war experiences. Yoshimura was conscripted near the end of the war and was only in the army for a very short time. In Shiba's case, he was the son of a pharmacist in Osaka, a person born into a merchant family who was suddenly sent off to war as a student draftee and spent several years as a tank soldier. So, I wonder if he had an interest in the army itself and how an army-like society was created.

It's often said that Shiba himself had a feeling that there must have been a different kind of society in the past, different from the pre-war Showa period he experienced. I think he tried to think about what organizational pathologies existed in the past and how, in his own way, they could have been overcome, by contrasting not only the Meiji period but also the Sengoku period and works like "Kou to Ryuho."

Shiba Ryotaro was the kind of person who "wanted to be a bandit," wasn't he? Even if he failed his exams, he ended up majoring in Mongolian, showing an outlaw, escapist, and secessionist tendency, like a desire to be a bandit.

In Yoshimura Akira's case, his wartime experience was probably important, but there was a period after the war when he couldn't make a living as a writer, and he and his wife, Tsumura Setsuko, traveled around Japan as peddlers, literally carrying goods. It was true wandering. I think his tendency to painstakingly write about things that seem futile is more a projection of his postwar peddling and poverty experience than his war experience.

Regarding Shiba's war experience, Matsumoto Ken'ichi, in "Mishima Yukio to Shiba Ryotaro," suggests that Shiba may have created the story about an Imperial General Headquarters staff officer saying, "If you see fleeing soldiers, run them over with your tanks," as a postwar myth.

Mishima Yukio strongly rejected postwar Japanese society and died shouting "Long live the Emperor!" to martyr himself for his own beautiful image of the emperor. On the other hand, Shiba Ryotaro created the "run them over" statement to defend postwar Japanese society in contrast to the pre-war era.

Shiba-san used this statement as a kind of alibi, repeatedly chanting the foolishness of the Japanese military, centered on the army, and in contrast, he narrated the romance of the Meiji era through "Saka no Ue no Kumo" and generalized it in "Kono Kuni no Katachi."

In the 1970s, this created a kind of centripetal force for Japanese society, saying, "It's okay to be at ease, let's keep going this way." I think this had an impact great enough to reverse the relative weight of the memories of intellectuals and those of ordinary people.

I think the "run them over" story was probably not factual, but with that reservation, Shiba did try to present that kind of image of Showa and Meiji. However, I get the feeling that within general society, Shiba's "dark Showa image" didn't resonate that much.

The dark stories about how the lack of rationality and organizational pathology were two sides of the same coin as the tragic war in Guadalcanal can also be seen in Shiba's Sengoku period works, but I don't think those aspects received much attention.

In that sense, besides what Shiba wrote, there is also the question of what aspects of Shiba people chose to focus on. I think the period from the late 1970s onward is a key. From the late 70s, Japan's high economic growth ended, and it experienced two oil shocks, but it managed to get through them and gain an advantage over the US and the UK.

The era of "Japan as Number One."

That's right. It can be said that "Saka no Ue no Kumo" was discovered as a story that was easy to project onto that. Due to this historical context, it became easier to focus on the straightforward brightness of the Meiji era and the victory in the Russo-Japanese War, which I think is also a reason why it was widely read, especially by the business community.

As you say, readers may not have paid much attention to the darkness of the Showa period.

I mentioned Yoshimura Akira, but come to think of it, there was Gomikawa Junpei, wasn't there? He relentlessly continued to say that the army was hopeless, that Japanese imperialism was hopeless. I think "Ningen no Joken" and "Senso to Ningen" were read for a long time, and I feel that from the 60s to the 70s, Gomikawa Junpei wrote about all the things Shiba Ryotaro couldn't.

At that time, it was twenty-something years after the war, so many people who had been soldiers were still in their 50s and part of the active generation. They must have had a passionate feeling that their era was being negated by things like Gomikawa Junpei and the Iwanami Shinsho books. It was painful to be told stories about Guadalcanal, but the Russo-Japanese War was fine. This was a kind of appeasement unique to that era.

Mass culture was a chaotic mix where various values coexisted. The ones who gathered and organized it were, on one hand, Shiba Ryotaro, and on the other, Matsumoto Seicho. If you were to name national authors, I think Matsumoto Seicho and Shiba Ryotaro would stand side by side, but at some point, Shiba Ryotaro seemed to float up and a gap was created. I think Shiba's charm and charismatic element lie there.

He says some pretty harsh things about Japan, though. But people can read the parts they want to read, and it's not the postwar class-based view of history, nor the imperialist view of history, nor that Japan was bad. He sets aside the Pacific War and gives the impression that Japan was doing its best up until the Russo-Japanese War. As you say, Shiba Ryotaro becomes the ultimate winner.

With Matsumoto Seicho, even the Meiji period, in works like "Shocho no Sekkei," has the feel that there were many bad guys of Japanese imperialism, like Yamagata Aritomo.

Conversely, I think the fact that Shiba talked about both the brightness of Meiji and the darkness of Showa is one of the reasons he is considered a national author. If he had only written about the dark Showa, he would not have been called that. If it had been only the brightness of Meiji, the postwar historiography of the time would have fiercely criticized him. The fact that he touched on both sides is why he was relatively accepted across partisan lines until a certain period after the war.

I find parts of "Hao no Ie" interesting; he goes on and on writing about Ieyasu's tedious political drama. While depicting the unpleasant aspects of political maneuvering, I think Shiba has a preoccupation with the nature of organizations and their distortions. I think he also had a sense of irritation with army-like organizations.

Matsumoto Seicho is quite straightforward in his support for a certain kind of underdog, but on the other hand, I don't think he depicts the distortions of the organizations that create such situations or their internal dynamics.

That's an interesting perspective. Since you both specialize in history, I'd like to ask: there's a "Saka no Ue no Kumo Museum" in Matsuyama. I think this is something that can only exist because it's based on a novel. After a famous creative story is published, history can be corrected or expanded by historical facts discovered there. When we think of history as arranging and editing discovered facts, how should we approach the concept of history?

If you conduct specialized research based on documents, it becomes fragmented, and it's difficult to create a grand narrative, one that is truly national, that drives a certain community. For creating such a grand narrative, there is a way of looking at things broadly, or macroscopically, or deliberately aligning with the story one wants to tell.

Works like "Taiheiki" and "Heike Monogatari" are stories of that nature; it's important to pull everyone into believing something, even if it slightly distorts historical facts. I think there's an aspect where the person who can fulfill that function can become a "national author."

With "Ryoma ga Yuku," Shiba-san wrote it, it became a Taiga drama, Ryoma's reputation soared, and an airport was named Ryoma Airport. In that case, I wonder if there's also an aspect where fiction influences non-fictional facts.

It's a kind of history as an expedient for mobilization, I suppose. It would be bad if it became only that, so there needs to be a battle of sorts with counter-narratives from the academic side like Yoshimura, or from the opposite side like Gomikawa Junpei or Matsumoto Seicho. Furthermore, academia pokes at it, saying it's wrong. I think if all of this doesn't function, a balance can't be maintained.

If you were to say that everything academia says is correct and novels are fraudulent, you wouldn't be able to provide any answers to questions like "What is Japan?" or "How do Japanese people live?" But if it becomes only that, then things like the oppressed masses would be completely forgotten.

Therefore, if you don't have an environment where a pluralistic conflict is maintained, it could quickly become a case of book burning and burying of scholars, where you're told to read only this, and everything else is unnecessary, which would be a terrible thing.

So, I think it's good to have an environment where there are several national authors with different standpoints, like Seicho and Shiba, or Yoshikawa Eiji, and where people who read Shiba also read Yoshimura Akira, and there are scholars who empirically interfere with such things. It's also better to have many publishing houses. I think it would be scary if things became uniform somewhere. I feel a bit of that fear now.

You can only say that "Saka no Ue no Kumo" is strange because you've read "Saka no Ue no Kumo" in the first place. People should read Hando Kazutoshi, Yoshimura Akira, Shiba, and even younger authors. In the end, does it come down to a matter of cultural literacy? Like a national author as a force for forming cultural literacy. I think Shiba Ryotaro is an author who will continue to be sought after in different contexts and eras.

Why is only Shiba discussed and criticized so much? Of course, there are many things that should be criticized, but I think it's because even if you bash Yoshikawa Eiji or Yoshimura Akira, it doesn't stand out much as a debate. In that respect, Shiba is in a class of his own, and I think that means his impact was that much greater.

Also, I think this is true for sociology and history, but there's a tendency to be confined within a narrow field. I think a bit more multifaceted thought experimentation could be done.

Shiba spoke freely about various things like ancient history and equestrian peoples, and while some of it may have been incorrect in light of scholarship, I think it can serve as an opportunity to reconsider the state of scholarship, which tends to become fragmented.

Of course, a grand narrative is not always a good thing, but I think there could be a bit more of an awareness today, even within academia which tends to be confined to details, to incorporate a kind of thought experiment.

Shiba-san himself rejects thought and ideology, doesn't he? He says clearly that such things are unnecessary, as he did with Mishima. When I heard that statement, I was reminded of Daniel Bell's "The End of Ideology" (1960). An age without ideology means that the status quo is fine. It says to look at the raw form of capitalism, the reality, not the ideology of Marxism. It tells you not to look at things with preconceived values, through colored glasses.

However, critics like Nakamura Masanori vigorously argue that even just by following heroes or tracing incidents in his works, Shiba-san's values and ideology are actually present.

There is the question of what the intellectual-historical position of Shiba-san's values and ideology would be when placed in a historical context. What differences do you think there are between how Shiba-san was read in the 1970s and how he is read now in 2023?

Shiba-san's ideology, or rather his preference, is for a world fulfilled by a line of Korea, Goguryeo, Manchus, Mongols, horses, and freedom, and it's good if things are connected to that. The antithesis that emerges is anything that is sectarian, clinging to agricultural land, whether in the Central Plains of China or in Japan. And the ideology that justifies it. The emperor is there, and he must have seen people like Mishima as clinging to that.

He diligently affirms a non-agrarian ideology and despises anything with an island-nation mentality. Shiba-san says this in a de-ideologized way, but I absolutely think there is a Shiba Ryotaro ideology. It's so obvious that no one discusses it seriously, but I think it's better to put that in parentheses for a moment and consider how it can be useful for Japan in the future.

Shiba was widely read during the high-growth period, as the secondary and tertiary industries became mainstream over the primary industry, and there was a flow of people from rural areas to cities. Everyone read his works with the feeling that it's good to go here and there freely, do business, fight battles, and make Japan bigger. Even the Shinsengumi, in the end, were just farmers from Tama who wanted to stop being farmers.

Considering that, I think it's meaningful to properly analyze the Shiba Ryotaro ideology and think about why agriculture declined and why everyone happily read his works during Japan's high-growth era. Perhaps now that Japan is exhausted, if people with a venture spirit read his works with the attitude of "I like Mongolian bandits," it might become a national literature based on new values, thinking "Takadaya Kahei is great."

As you say, there is of course something like a Shiba ideology. However, while I am certainly interested in Shiba's thought, I am more interested in why he says the things he does, rather than what he is saying itself.

I think his wartime experience plays a large part in that. What Shiba says may not be without errors when compared to historical facts, but I think he was speaking, through his criticism of Mishima and other things, about the sense of unease he felt towards fanaticism during his experience as a tank soldier.

Tanks, in particular, are a very mechanical part of the army, and coming from a merchant family, I think he had an interest in economic rationality. From that standpoint, Shiba rejected any ideology that would hinder rationality in his own way. I believe that, as a result, it was compatible with Japanese society from the postwar high economic growth period onward.

I feel that Shiba-san underwent a transformation at some point when he distanced his writing activities from creation and entered into commentary. With "Kaido wo Yuku," he achieved a kind of mastery, and the charismatic, deified Shiba entered a completely different stage where he could go anywhere, see anything, and instantly write down his thoughts, which everyone would praise.

In that context, despite being the head of the Japan-China Cultural Association, he went to Taiwan and met with Lee Teng-hui, which was ultimately evaluated as a political move. It's ironic.

As you say, even if it seems like he's making various proposals for the real Japan, they are probably proposals within the Shiba romance.

I think he had a unique form of existence that was permissible only because he was Shiba Ryotaro, but in the end, it's an image within Shiba's preferred world. In reality, even bandits have organizations. Moreover, Mongolia is ruled by the command of a cavalry corps, so you have to listen to everything the great people say. It's an incredibly disciplined organization, a top-down society quite different from Shiba Ryotaro's bandits.

In that case, I think Shiba must have felt at some point that he had to include the sea. From the beginning, he had a fondness for Tosa, there was "Ryoma ga Yuku," there was Chosokabe, and then he suddenly writes strange things like "Mokuyoto no Yakai." His fondness for Taiwan is probably because the sea means freedom through the individual play of ships. I think there's a sympathy for Taiwan, an image of disillusionment with tanks, where what is unfulfilled on land goes to the sea, freely rowing a boat on an island.

I think that within the world of the Shiba romance, Taiwan was justified as if the island were saving the bad parts of mainland China.

That's a very interesting connection.

To be honest, I'm not particularly drawn to "Kaido wo Yuku." But I understand that many people love it. I also feel that "Kaido wo Yuku" was read because Shiba wrote it. I don't think anyone would read it if I wrote the same text.

Shiba probably wouldn't have become a national author if he had started with "Kaido wo Yuku."

It's the same as how Mizuki Shigeru's "Komikku Showa-shi" probably wouldn't have been read if he had written it early in his debut. I think it came to be read because of the name of Shiba, the "first-class author."

Unlike the period when he was facing his materials and writing historical novels in his own way, with "Kaido wo Yuku," it feels like he's writing freely, pulling from his own knowledge without worrying about the overall consistency of the story. The fact that he started to comment on Taiwan and land issues was probably because he became able to speak and act freely. And at the same time, I think there's an aspect where Shiba himself was created by society.

Shiba Ryotaro touches upon Fukuzawa Yukichi, for example, when writing about Ogata Koan, but he never discussed him head-on. Why is that?

He probably wasn't Shiba's type of person. I think he would have written about Fukuzawa Yukichi if he had died earlier. He founded Keio University, established himself as a grand figure, and lived a relatively long life for that time.

For the same reason he didn't write about Ito Hirobumi or Yamagata Aritomo, from Shiba's perspective, he was one of the people who helped create something that moved toward the modern West, grew enormous while also taking on a dark side, and became systematized. He didn't die full of romance like Takasugi Shinsaku; he became like a don. He wasn't interested in people like that.

After all, he became part of the establishment. Shiba stops his pen before that point, doesn't he? In "Shinshi Taikoki," the story after he unifies the country is rushed through in just a few pages. Perhaps if it were just up to the point where Fukuzawa founded Keio University, it could have been a Shiba-like story.

Was it also because his own works, like "Fuku-o Jiden," were too widely circulated? Or was it his way of keeping a distance from universities? He also had a "hmph" attitude toward the scholars who supported the start of the Russo-Japanese War.

Also, it's often said that the emperor doesn't appear in his works, including "Saka no Ue no Kumo." He turns it into a story of the nation, a story of heroes, or a story of the common people.

That's a kind of revolution, I suppose. He likes it when people from lower strata work hard and rise up, but works like "Saigo no Shogun" are very thin. If you think you know the Bakumatsu period from Shiba Ryotaro, you'll never get a grasp of the history of the Meiji Restoration because the court nobles, Emperor Komei, and Emperor Meiji don't appear, no matter how much you read.

You might fail your university entrance exams (laughs).

As is often said, many of Shiba's readers were in the salaried worker class, and I think his works had an affinity with the salaried worker society of that time. That was fundamentally a society where you didn't change jobs once you joined a company, and you moved up within the company—a system based on Japanese-style management. That's why they aimed for character development as members of an organization through historical figures. I think there was an aspect of reading his works in that way.

But now we live in a society where you can't assume you'll be at one company until retirement, so I think reading his works for "the cultivation of a salaried worker" will become more difficult.

Also, in the past, I think there was a high level of interest in history and cultural matters, not limited to Shiba. In the 70s, magazines like "President" would run special features on history, where scholars often discussed history in an accessible way. I think that's how businessmen maintained a gentle interest in humanistic knowledge.

Nowadays, every university is concerned with world rankings, but even if it doesn't contribute to that, I think it's important to write intellectual things for media that the general public reads. And I think the interaction of getting feedback from the general public's reading and reorganizing humanistic knowledge is also important.

I think it's worth re-examining the era when Shiba was read as an opportunity to rethink the state of academia and popular intellectualism today.

Shiba-san is interested in times of turmoil, in things that are about to be born or destroyed, and he loses interest in things that are completed. So, he depicts people who sow seeds or destroy existing systems, and he's not interested in what happens after.

For example, the seeds sown by Omura Masujiro in "Kashin" become the Japanese Army, which Shiba-san hated the most, so I think Omura is the bad guy, but in the Shiba view of history, the people who raised the seeds afterward are bad, and Omura is not.

He loves people who sow seeds and then leave without seeing what becomes of them. And yet, I think the tragedy was that many readers believed that Shiba's works contained ideas that would show the direction for today's Japan and the future of Japan. But I also think Shiba-san knew that.

Originally, he started from a disillusionment with Japan and was writing things like continental romances. But because Japanese readers enjoyed it, he started writing about Japanese history, even though he didn't particularly want to, and that became a hit.

However, when he wrote about people like Saigo, his ideology didn't deepen, so I think he eventually reached the limit of writing novels.

That's when he switched to essays like "Kaido wo Yuku," which he could write endlessly. So, the long historical novels that are quintessentially Shiba Ryotaro, the ones everyone wants, end rather quickly, don't they?

After that, he was turned into a charismatic figure, and that was reflected back, enhancing the evaluation of his works or coloring them. Because he is a person who can be read from various standpoints, I think different evaluations will continue to emerge in the future.

Shiba-san's myth will likely be read in ways that correspond to the thinking and distribution of values in society at any given time. It's not pure literature, nor is it mere thought. It's a work that transcends genres. I think that multifaceted nature will continue to be dynamic for a long time to come.

On this 100th anniversary of his birth, I look forward to seeing how he will be read in the future.