I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had the honor of speaking at the 11^th annual national gathering of “Ryoma fans”  (全国龍馬ファンの集い高知大会) in Kochi in October 1999, the year Ryoma was published. That was when I first met my very good friend Mr. Kunitake Hashimoto, chairman of the national organization that oversees all of the nearly 200 (I’ve lost count) “Ryoma Societies” around Japan. (This photo of Mr. Hashimoto and me, at the Sakamoto Ryoma Memorial Museum, was taken at that time.) I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Hashimoto for his friendship and support throughout these many years.

On the night of the event in Kochi, I attended the banquet on the beach at Katsurahama, near the famous statue of Sakamoto Ryoma. I talked to a reporter from the national newspaper Asahi Shinbun. The article was published on November 10, 1999.

The book was published in February 1999. In the following October I had the pleasure of speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Yurakucho, Tokyo. I rather enjoyed the event, introducing Sakamoto Ryoma to a bunch of foreign journalists stationed in Tokyo. I had just come from Kochi, where I had the honor of speaking at the 11^th annual national gathering of “Ryoma fans”  (全国龍馬ファンの集い高知大会).

Recently (while writing my next book, and as a kind of intellectual break from Bakumatsu Japan), I’ve been rereading Nietzsche, including Beyond Good and Evil, published in 1886. Along with several other works of Nietzsche, it has been a great influence on my thinking and intellectual development over these past many years. In 1886 Nietzsche was not yet a popular writer. “I am making the experiment of having something published at my own expense,” he wrote to a friend at the time, adding that if only 300 copies could be sold, he could recoup the cost. As of a year later, only 114 copies had been sold of “one of the great books of the nineteenth century, indeed of any century,” remarks Nietzsche’s translator, Walter Kaufmann, in the “Translator’s Preface.”

My two Rhodesian ridgebacks (above) were at my side throughout the process of publishing my first book, Ryoma, while I wrote Samurai Sketches (later published as Samurai Tales), during the early stages of Samurai Revolution, and as I wrote Shinsengumi in its entirety.

Max (below) was at my side throughout much of my writing of Samurai Revolution and all of my writing of Samurai Assassins. He has been right here with me for the past two years while I’ve been writing my next Shinsengumi book.

My writing would not be the same without them.

Ryoma fled Tosa Han in the Third Month of Bunkyu 2 (1862). He accomplished all of his important work during the remainder of his life, which was about five year and eight months. He was motivated, in part, by a desire to travel the world – which certainly included the United States. (Ryoma’s mentor, Katsu Kaishu, must have told him about his own experience as captain of the first Japanese ship to reach the United States in early 1862.)

In the introduction to Ryoma, I wrote: “I will never forget my visit to the home of Masao Tanaka, a direct descendent of a boyhood friend of Ryoma’s, located in the mountains northwest of Kochi Castletown. The house was the same one that Ryoma often visited in his youth, and where he apparently stopped, in need of cash, on the outset of a subversive journey he made in 1861 as the envoy of a revolutionary party leader. “My family lent Ryoma money at that time,” the elderly Mr. Tanaka told me, as we stood atop a giant rock behind the house, looking out at the Pacific Ocean far in the distance. Mr. Tanaka informed me that Ryoma liked to sit atop this same rock when he visited the Tanaka family, and where he would indulge in wild talk of one day sailing across the ocean to foreign lands.”

Ryoma of course did not survive the Meiji Restoration to fulfill his dream. But, as explained in part 3 of this series, it took me about five years and eight months to create Ryoma, my purpose of which was to tell his fascinating story to the rest of the world. I like to think that in that sense his dream was partially fulfilled.