If there hadn’t been any books, or if I hadn’t read so many, I think my life would have been far drearier. For me, then, the act of reading was its own kind of essential school. A customized school built and run just for me, one in which I learned so many important lessons. A place where there were no tiresome rules or regulations, no numerical evaluations, no angling for the top spot. And, of course, no bullying. While I was part of a larger system, I was able to secure another, more personal system of my own.
The mental image I have of a space of individual recovery is exactly like that. It’s not limited just to reading. Even for kids who can’t adjust to the actual school system, the ones who aren’t especially interested in studying, if they are able to find their own customized space of individual recovery, and can discover something there that fits them in order to develop possibilities at their own pace, they’ll be able to naturally overcome the wall of the system. In order for this to happen, though, there has to be support from the community and family, and an understanding and appreciation of this way of thinking
Both my parents taught Japanese （my mother quit teaching after she got married）， and they never complained about me reading books. They were a little displeased with my academic record, but never told me to stop reading all the time and study for exams. Or maybe they did sometimes, but I have no memory of it. That’s about the extent of what they would have said. I’m grateful to them for that.
* * *
—
I’ll say it again, but I never had much affection for the “system” called school. I did have a few great teachers, and I did learn some important things, but this was nearly all canceled out by the fact that almost all the classes and lectures were boring. So mind-numbingly boring that when I finished school I thought I’d had a lifetime’s worth of boredom. But no matter how much I might think this, in our lives one boring thing after another flutters down at us from the sky, and wells up from the ground.
People who absolutely love school, and feel sad when they can’t go, probably won’t become novelists. I say this because a novelist is a person who steadily fills his head with a world of his own. When I was in class, I didn’t pay much attention to the lesson, and instead was lost in all sorts of daydreams. If I were a child today, I might have trouble fitting in and might end up one of the many kids who refuse to attend. But as I said, when I was young, truancy was not a trend yet, and I don’t think we even had the idea that not attending school was a choice.
In every age, in every society, imagination plays a crucial role.
One opposite of imagination is “efficiency.” And one of the factors that drove tens of thousands of people from their homes in Fukushima was this very “efficiency.” The notion that nuclear-power generation is efficient energy and is good for the community, and the lie cooked up out of the notion—namely, the so-called safety myth—brought this tragic situation, this unrecoverable disaster, upon our nation. It’s fair to say that this was a defeat for our imagination. But even now it’s not too late. We have to establish an axis of free thought and individual ideas that can counter this short-circuited, dangerous set of values. And then extend this ideological axis to the broader community.
This isn’t to say that I hope school education simply “enriches children’s imagination.” I’m not hoping for that much. When all is said and done, the ones who will enrich children’s imaginations are children themselves. Not teachers, not educational facilities. And certainly not educational policies of the country or local government. Not all children have a rich imagination. Just like some children are fast runners and others are not. Some children have a rich imagination, and others—though no doubt they display amazing talents in other areas—aren’t what you’d called very imaginative. It’s only to be expected. That’s society. If “Let’s enrich children’s imagination” becomes a set goal, though, then things will go bad all over again.
What I hope for from schools is simply that they do not suppress the imagination of children who are naturally imaginative. That’s enough. I want them to provide an environment in which each person’s individuality can thrive. Do that, and schools will become fuller, freer places. Simultaneously, society itself will also become a fuller, freer place.
As one novelist, those are my thoughts. Not that my thinking about this will change anything.
What Kind of Characters Should I Include?
I’m often asked if any characters in my novels are based on real people. On the whole, the answer is no, though sometimes it’s yes. I’ve written a lot of novels, but only two or three times have I intentionally, from the start, had a real person in mind when I created a character. When I did, I was a bit nervous that somebody might detect that the character was modeled on somebody—especially if the person who did was the one the character was based on （in all cases they were secondary characters in the novels）—but fortunately no one’s ever pointed that out, not even once. I might model the character after a real person, but I always carefully and diligently rework the character so people won’t recognize him. Probably the person himself doesn’t, either.