故宮地佐一郎先生のご紹介で、私が坂本龍馬伝記小説「Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai」を執筆中だった１９８９年４月、新人物往来社の「Who’s Who Today」誌の坂本龍馬特集に「心の大きな自由主義者」というタイトルで記事を掲載されました。その中で 私にとって特に興味深い部分が田中良助という龍馬の友人のご子孫の田中正郎さんから直接聞いた話です。（下の写真は私の隣は田中さんで、 田中さの家へ案内し紹介してくださった 松岡司先生は一番右で、もう一人は私の日本語の先生です。）
I wrote this article for a special edition of “Who’s Who Today” magazine, published by Shinjinbutsu Oraisha in April 1989, while I was writing my novel Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai. Here I include my favorite part of the article, about my meeting with Masao Tanaka, a grandson of Ryoma’s childhood friend Tanaka Ryosuke, at his ancestral home in the mountains above Ryoma’s hometown of Kochi. The details are reported in the Preface of my book, copied below:
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 never repaid the money, so I guess he still owes us,” Mr. Tanaka joked.
In front of the Tanaka house with Mr. Tanaka (far left); my Japanese teacher Mrs. Tae Moriyama, a Kochi native; and Mr. Matsuoka
