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On Wednesday, December 4, the Mita Public Speaking Event was held at the Mita Public Speaking Hall (Mita Enzetsu-kan). The Mita Public Speaking Event was initiated by Yukichi Fukuzawa together with his pupils in 1874. He had translated the English word, "speech," as enzetsu in Japanese, and introduced public speaking as part of the education offered at Keio University. Since its inception, the event has been open not only to Keio students, but also to the general public. As the event reaches its 150th anniversary, author and scholar of Japanese classics, Nozomu Hayashi, delivered a lecture titled "My Journey Tracing the Footsteps of the Satsuma Youth in the Twilight of the Edo Period."

In 2010, Hayashi published the full-length historical novel Satsuma Students, Go West! which describes the experiences of Japanese students from the Satsuma Clan sent to the UK under the cover of absolute secrecy at the end of the Edo period, also referred to as the Bakumatsu (end of the shogunate). In his lecture, Hayashi spoke about the process of writing the novel, his days of conducting thorough fieldwork and historical research in both Japan and the UK, as well as the real-life circumstances of the young people of the Satsuma Clan that came to light in the course of his work.

Hayashi first lauded the keen foresight of the Satsuma Clan in dispatching Japanese students—which included young people from the expulsionist faction (a movement back then championing the expulsion of "foreign barbarians")—with generous treatment and accompanying interpreters so that they could maximize their learning at each port they visited. He also went into great detail on how he researched maps of the ports the Satsuma students stopped at, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Bombay, and Malta, as well as how he sourced for newspaper articles, such as those with photographs of the Suez Canal under construction, at universities and antiquarian bookshops in the UK. He traced the footsteps of the Satsuma students by sometimes riding trains along the same railroads as they did back in those days, and described in the novel the scenery that these students would probably have witnessed back in the 1860s. To conclude his lecture, Hayashi mentioned a newspaper article that showed that the British were deeply impressed by the intellect and scientific minds of the Satsuma students. This was further exemplified by the fact that these students would go on to play pivotal roles behind the scenes as technocrats in the Meiji government formed after the Bakumatsu.

In the packed Mita Public Speaking Hall, the enraptured audience lost track of time as they listened to Hayashi's passionate recounting of the real-life circumstances of the Satsuma students, making the lecture a fitting tribute to the Mita Public Speaking Event's 150th anniversary.

The transcript of this lecture will be published in the February issue of the Mita-hyoron.