"Matsumoto Seicho Revived: A Journey Through the Masterpieces of a National Writer"

2024/06/11

My mentor, literary critic Kazuya Fukuda, highly praised Seicho Matsumoto's "Saigo-satsu" and often had students at Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) read it as a "model for a writer's debut work." It can be called a masterpiece that condenses the multilayered time surrounding the Saigo-satsu into a short story. Matsumoto wrote "Saigo-satsu" to earn living expenses for his family of eight amidst post-war inflation, winning a prize of 100,000 yen (worth nearly 4 million yen today) and making his debut as a writer.

Seicho Matsumoto, with an education only up to higher elementary school, worked as a printing artist at the Asahi Shimbun Seibu Headquarters in Kokura and other locations. He became a writer at age 41 and wrote approximately 1,000 works until his death at 82. The "rebellious spirit" he possessed resonates with Yukichi Fukuzawa, who was born as the second son of a low-ranking samurai in the Nakatsu Domain, challenged the clan system, and became a leading thinker of Meiji Japan. His autobiographical novel "Hansei no Ki" (Account of Half a Life), set primarily in Kokura near Nakatsu, is filled with the same "cheerfulness" of living robustly through turbulent times as "The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa".

The first work by Seicho Matsumoto I read was "Points and Lines." It is one of Japan's leading "railway mysteries," centering on the "Asakaze" limited express, which would later lead the Blue Train boom. Among the sleeper trains bound for Kyushu, the "Asakaze" went to Hakata or Shimonoseki, while the "Sakura" went to my hometown of Nagasaki. Sleeper trains from Tokyo reach the Kanmon Straits around sunrise, and the corridors of the sleeping cars overflow with the "nostalgia" of people gazing at the scenery outside. My mentor Kazuya Fukuda's father had roots in Saga, as did his mentor Jun Eto. I am from Nagasaki, Seicho Matsumoto was from Kokura, and Yukichi Fukuzawa was from Nakatsu, so we all have ties to northern Kyushu.

Through the Heisei recession and the Reiwa COVID-19 pandemic, social disparities have widened. In the online world, emotions such as "envy" and "anger" rage, and looking at weekly magazines or TV talk shows, many "Seicho-esque incidents" still occur in modern Japan. In times like these, there is much to learn from Seicho Matsumoto, who explored the "depths of human karma" through a variety of works that condensed the full range of human emotions. I hope that through the 50 representative works featured in this book, you will feel the "vitality" of this writer who represents post-war Japan and Kyushu.

"Matsumoto Seicho Revived: A Journey Through the Masterpieces of a National Writer"

Makoto Sakai

Nishinippon Shimbun

224 pages, 1,760 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.