Letters from Young Shinzo Koizumi and Takitaro Minakami to Kakichi Kajiwara

2025/03/14

Collection: Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies (Donated by Mr. Kenji Sato)

A single photograph showing spirited young men with teachers lined up in the foreground. It is a group photo of the 17 graduates of the college department of political science in 1910. The location is a small hill on the southwest side of the Mita Campus, commonly known as Inariyama, where the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) is currently relocated, with wooden school buildings standing in the background. In the front row, from the right, are the distinguished teachers Kazusada Tanaka, Tokuzo Fukuda, Kiichi Horie, Kiroku Hayashi, and Suiichiro Tanaka. The young man standing directly behind Kiroku Hayashi, who is wearing a suit with a stand-up collar, is the future President Shinzo Koizumi. He was 22 years old that year. The person with his arms crossed, second from the right in the back row, is Koizumi's close friend Kakichi Kajiwara. Among these two great friends was Shozo Abe, later the novelist Takitaro Minakami. He was one year senior to Koizumi and was a young man skilled in all things, but he neglected studying for grades and graduated from the department of political economy two years later. Koizumi's house was located just down the stone steps of Inariyama, and starting with that house, the close friends visited each other's homes, talking vigorously while sipping tea or holding sake. The circle also included Shihokichi Sawaki, who would become an art historian, and Mantaro Kubota, a writer. The Koizumi and Minakami letters addressed to Kakichi Kajiwara, which were donated this time, are a group of letters in which those conversations can almost be heard, totaling nearly 100 letters.

The center of their early topics was literary discussions focused on "Mita Bungaku," which had just been launched after inviting Kafu Nagai. At one point, Takitaro wrote that Nagai's play was a "failed work," and noted that Kaoru Osanai, a playwright and teacher in the literature department, asked, "Is Mr. Nagai serious?" He was completely unreserved, even writing about a story of unrequited love from high school that he heard from Osanai. Koizumi, at one point, wrote that Seibei Kashima—who abandoned his wife and family business to take the popular Shinbashi geisha Ponta as his second wife—was "far greater than Shimpei Goto or Inazo Nitobe."

The exchange of vividly writing about their current situations to Kajiwara, who had returned to Kobe, continued throughout their lives. In the Koizumi letter shown in the photo, dated 1919, Kajiwara had written an argument against the introduction of universal suffrage in Japan. In response, Koizumi wrote passionately, "I am appalled," and "Shinzo Koizumi, who received a proper education at Keio University, does not hold such cowardly views."

From the handwriting of these two, which can by no means be called masterful, the fresh spirit of freedom of Keio University still bursts forth even after 100 years.

These were exhibited at the New Acquisitions Exhibition 2025. Major newly discovered letters by Takitaro will be published in "Mita Bungaku" issues 160 and 161 (Winter 2025 and Spring 2025 issues).

(Takeyuki Tokura, Associate Professor, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies)