kinds of painful experiences, things I had to rack my brains about, and plenty of disappointments. But
I worked like crazy, and I finally began to make enough profit to hire other people to help out. And as
I neared the end of my twenties, I was finally able to take a breather. To start the bar I’d borrowed as
much as I could from every place that would lend me money, and I’d almost repaid it all. Things were
settling down. Up till then, it had been a question of sheer survival, of keeping my head above water,
and I didn’t have room to think of anything else. I felt like I’d reached the top of some steep staircase
and come out to a fairly open place and was confident that because I’d reached it safely, I could
handle any future problems that might crop up and I’d survive. I took a deep breath, slowly gazed
around me, glanced back at the steps I’d taken here, and began to contemplate the next stage. Turning
thirty was just around the corner. I was reaching the age when I couldn’t be considered young
anymore. And pretty much out of the blue I got the idea to write a novel.
I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first thought I could write a novel. It was around one thirty
in the afternoon of April 1, 1978. I was at Jingu Stadium that day, alone in the outfield drinking beer
and watching the game. Jingu Stadium was within walking distance of my apartment at the time, and I
was a fairly big Yakult Swallows fan. It was a perfectly beautiful spring day, not a cloud in the sky,
with a warm breeze blowing. There weren’t any benches in the outfield seating back then, just a grassy
slope. I was lying on the grass, sipping cold beer, gazing up occasionally at the sky, and leisurely
enjoying the game. As usual for the Swallows, the stadium wasn’t very crowded. It was the season
opener, and they were taking on the Hiroshima Carp at home. I remember that Yasuda was pitching
for the Swallows. He was a short, stocky sort of pitcher with a wicked curve. He easily retired the side
in the top of the first inning, and in the bottom of the inning the leadoff batter for the Swallows was
Dave Hilton, a young American player new to the team. Hilton got a hit down the left field line. The
crack of bat meeting ball right on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium. Hilton easily rounded
first and pulled up to second. And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know
what? I could try writing a novel. I still can remember the wide open sky, the feel of the new grass, the
satisfying crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I
accepted it.
I never had any ambitions to be a novelist. I just had this strong desire to write a novel. No concrete
image of what I wanted to write about, just the conviction that if I wrote it now I could come up with
something that I’d find convincing. When I thought about sitting down at my desk at home and setting
out to write I realized I didn’t even own a decent fountain pen. So I went to the Kinokuniya store in
Shinjuku and bought a sheaf of manuscript paper and a five-dollar Sailor fountain pen. A small capital
investment on my part.
This was in the spring of 1978, and by fall I’d finished a two-hundred-page work handwritten on
Japanese manuscript paper. After I finished it I felt great. I had no idea what to do with the novel once
I finished it, but I just sort of let the momentum carry me and sent it in to be considered for a literary
magazine’s new-writers prize. I shipped it off without making a copy, so it seems I didn’t much care if
it wasn’t selected and vanished forever. This is the work that’s published under the title Hear the Wind
Sing. I was more interested in having finished it than in whether or not it would ever see the light of
day.
That fall the perennial underdog Yakult Swallows won the pennant and went on to defeat the
Hankyu Braves in the Japan Series. I was really excited and attended several games at Korakuen