午夜剧场

My mentor, the literary critic Kazuya Fukuda, highly praised Seicho Matsumoto's "Saigo-satsu" and often had students at 午夜剧场 Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) read it as a "model for a writer's debut work." It can be called a masterpiece that condenses multilayered time surrounding the Saigo banknotes into a short story. Matsumoto 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.

Seicho Matsumoto graduated from higher elementary school and worked as a printing artist at the Asahi Shimbun Seibu Head Office in Kokura. 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 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 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 a representative Japanese "railway mystery" centered 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 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 Seicho Matsumoto, who approached the "depth of human karma" through diverse 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.

Makoto Sakai

Nishinippon Shimbunsha

224 pages, 1,760 yen (tax included)

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