"Jun Eto is Reborn"
Writer Profile
Shukichi Hirayama
Other : EssayistKeio University alumni
Shukichi Hirayama
Other : EssayistKeio University alumni
2019/07/11
Twenty years have passed since the death of Jun Eto, who served as the president of the Mita Bungakkai and a professor at SFC. His suicide, occurring while his book "The Wife and I"—a memoir of his late wife—was a bestseller, shocked various circles. "Since suffering a stroke, Jun Eto has been nothing more than a shell. This is why I have decided to end this shell myself." These intense words were carved in beautiful handwriting in his suicide note.
On that day, a few hours before Mr. Eto's death, I visited his home in Kamakura and received the manuscript that would become his final work. To me, the editor in charge who was satisfied with the perfectly composed manuscript, Mr. Eto asked, "I wonder if I haven't become the husk of Jun Eto?"
The biography "Jun Eto is Reborn," which took four years to write, is a modest answer to the unsolvable question of why Mr. Eto took his own life that day. While I say "modest," the book swelled to nearly 800 pages. No matter how much I researched or wrote, the question remained unsolved, and the mystery of the strange life of Jun Eto only expanded. As a result, it also became a task of confirming the massive footprint he left as a critic in post-war literature and journalism. Since publishing "Natsume Soseki" during his fourth year in the Faculty of Letters, he continued writing on the front lines for over 40 years, and there is no doubt that the "fatigue" and "emptiness" of those years had accumulated in Jun Eto's later life. Jun Eto had eventually become post-war Japan's greatest critic, rivaling Yukio Mishima.
During the writing process, I was able to reconfirm that "Keio" was a significant presence in Jun Eto's life. Yukichi Fukuzawa, whom he read during his university entrance exams (in his guest speech to graduates, Eto offered the phrase "shiritsu no kakkei" [private livelihood] from "Gakumon no susume (An Encouragement of Learning)"); his wife Keiko, whom he met in the same class during his first year in the Faculty of Letters; and Masao Yamakawa, a senior writer from "Mita Bungaku" and the discoverer of Jun Eto the critic. I can say with certainty that without any of these three, "Jun Eto" would not have been born.
Furthermore, the influence of two mentors from the Faculty of Letters cannot be overlooked: Professor Junzaburo Nishiwaki and the world-renowned linguist Toshihiko Izutsu. It can be said that these two giants, whose names remain in the Nishiwaki Prize and the Izutsu Prize, raised "Jun Eto" in a sense. One was an object of overwhelming respect, while the other was a troublesome presence where respect and hostility were intertwined.
*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.