“Matsumoto Seicho is Reborn: A Journey Through the Masterpieces of a National Writer”

My mentor, the literary critic Kazuya Fukuda, highly praised Matsumoto Seicho'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 (Saigo banknotes) into a short story. Seicho wrote "Saigo-satsu" to earn living expenses for his family of eight amidst post-war inflation, won a prize of 100,000 yen (worth nearly 4 million yen today), and emerged into the world as a writer.

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

The first work by Matsumoto Seicho I read was "Points and Lines." It is one of Japan's leading "railway mysteries," centering on the limited express "Asakaze," which later led the blue train boom. Among the sleeper expresses bound for Kyushu, the "Asakaze" went to Hakata and Shimonoseki, while the "Sakura" went to my hometown, Nagasaki. Sleeper expresses departing from Tokyo reach the Kanmon Straits around sunrise, and the corridors of the sleeper cars overflow with the "nostalgia" of people gazing at the scenery outside the windows. My mentor Kazuya Fukuda's father had roots in Saga, and his mentor Jun Eto also had roots in Saga; I am from Nagasaki, Matsumoto Seicho was from Kokura, and Yukichi Fukuzawa was from Nakatsu, so we all have connections 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 wide shows, many "Seicho-esque incidents" are occurring in modern Japan. In such an era, there is much to learn from Matsumoto Seicho, who approached the "depth of human karma" through a variety of works that condensed human joys and sorrows. 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 is Reborn: A Journey Through the Masterpieces of a National Writer”

Makoto Sakai

Nishinippon Shimbunsha

224 pages, 1,760 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and job titles are as of the time this magazine was published.