I started writing Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai thirty years ago, while living in a small, ramshackle apartment near the Shimokitazawa district of Tokyo. During the six years it took me to complete the novel, I often felt as if I were living in the Edo era — and a very strange feeling it was!
One of the most memorable times I had while writing the book was my first trip to Kochi, and my chance encounter with Mr. Mamoru Matsuoka, who took me in his Jeep to some of the historical sites, including Takechi Hanpeita’s house and gravesite, and the home of the late Mr. Masao Tanaka, at Shibamaki, in the mountains northwest of the city.
Mr. Tanaka was a direct descendent of a boyhood friend of Ryoma’s. Following is an excerpt from the Preface to Ryoma:
In front of the Tanaka house with Mr. Tanaka (far left); my Japanese teacher Mrs. Tae Moriyama, a Kochi native; and Mr. Matsuoka
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 [i.e., Takechi Hanpeita]. “My family lent Ryoma money at that time,” the elderly Mr. Tanaka told me, as we stood atop a giant rock behind the house [八畳岩= Hachijo-iwa], 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, . . . where he would indulge in wild talk of one day sailing across the ocean to foreign lands. “Ryoma never repaid the money, so I guess he still owes us,” Mr. Tanaka joked.
View from Hachijo-iwa
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Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, the only biographical novel about him in English, is available on Amazon.com.
