Translation: Darkness 01 (Childhood / Self-Defense Force Arc)

2026/03/04 wed
闇01章：翻訳Cloud

Translation: Darkness 01 (Childhood / Self-Defense Force Arc)

Iwakami Tomoichirō, Age 2

2024/07/08 Mon — 2026/01/28 Wed

July 8, 2024, Monday. Tomobiki.

What is a dream? Many people say that dreams are called dreams precisely because they so rarely come true. So what have my dreams been, up until now?

To become strong. To fight in the ring. To perform piano on a grand stage. To publish the novels I've written.

Every single one of them came true.

Does that mean they weren't really dreams? No — they were absolutely dreams. But they came true too quickly, and I was satisfied with that. That's why everything ended up half-finished.

With the very first novel I wrote, I won an award and got it published. That too came true, of course.

But looking back now, it was nothing more than good luck — premature success. I didn't yet have the decisive strength to back it up, yet I saw the results and got arrogant.

No wonder everyone drifted away. I wasn't the real thing.

And yet, look back further. Because I was a fool, I was truly used, deceived, robbed of money, struck down by a heart attack, and still I live on — ugly as ever.

Thirteen years have passed since I stopped writing fiction. Almost no one in today's world has any interest in me.

Will I simply grow old like this, and rot away? What can I do — what am I even capable of?

Anyone can write one book just by writing their own life. People always say that, but…

Looking back, it really was a terrible life.

Wave after wave of malice, as if orchestrated — divine mischief, perhaps, to have made such a wreck of things.

Let me try writing, without holding anything back. First, recall the recent terrible run of events. Bullet points will do.

Squandering money by associating with a bad friend from middle school. Nearly dying of a heart attack the day after receiving the COVID vaccine. Unjust utility fee charges tacked on after moving into my apartment. Being exploited by a self-proclaimed actor. Falling victim to a 1.4-million-yen fraud.

Even setting aside the minor incidents, it's truly awful. From around 2021 to 2024 — roughly three years — hell descended upon me one disaster after another.

Wait, this isn't bullet points anymore. And here I am — someone who hadn't written a single sentence in ages…

Why?

Simple. Because I wanted to write.

Not a dream. Not an ambition. Right now, in reality, I am writing.

Once again, I break thirteen years of silence and return, sincerely, to literature. Yes — that feels right.

What will come of it, I don't know. Even so, let me struggle once more, in the world of literature…

Just write. Like I used to.

I'll probably receive no recognition in this lifetime. Stop expecting it.

That's fine. I'll simply write what I feel, freely. I just need to look further ahead.

So that people a hundred, two hundred years from now might one day read this…

September 13, 1971, Monday. Shakku.

I was born the eldest son of the Iwakami family in Kawagoe City, Saitama Prefecture. Right in front of our house stood a movie theater called Homerun Gekijō, and music from whatever film was playing always drifted in from outside.

Every two years another brother was born, until we became the three Iwakami brothers. As the eldest, I was pampered and overprotected, raised with great care.

The Path of the Demon

~ A Child with Angel's Wings ~

This was back when Parlor Izumi still stood in front of Hon-Kawagoe Station. After the elementary school entrance ceremony, I was suddenly, without any say of my own, locked into a rigid schedule of lessons. Without wanting a single one, I was made to attend eight cram schools and extracurricular activities.

Piano, painting, calligraphy, gymnastics, cram school, aikido, swimming, and hayashi percussion.

The hayashi was likely because my father wanted me to join Ko-Suzume — the children's ensemble of the Suzume-kai, the group he belonged to. If you struck the drum even slightly wrong, a wooden stick known as a bachi would come down on your wrist. I'd clutch my wrist and cry. The other children's parents, watching my father show absolutely no mercy toward his own son, quit one by one. In those moments, the ones who often comforted me as I wept were Mr. Kurihara, the chairman of the Suzume-kai, and Mr. Kobayashi Sumio from the same neighborhood.

I had not a single day off in the whole week, and among my school friends I was branded as someone with poor social skills. Even Ken-chan from the bakery, who was in the same school-commute group as me, started looking at me coldly before long. Adachi Sumire would taunt me: "You study so much — are you okay?"

The son of the set-meal restaurant Hiromu next door — Ichi-chan — would scold those who teased me. His sister Yoshie-chan was always puffing up her cheeks in indignation on my behalf.

My father had always spent the family's money on his own pleasures. Left behind, my mother and we three brothers lived quietly at home.

In the middle of the night I'd suddenly wake. I could see my parents in the middle of an argument. Overcome with guilt for having witnessed something I shouldn't have, I'd pretend to be asleep.

From kindergarten, my friend Saito Yogo — Sai-yan, as I called him — and I had been together, and I was sad that I couldn't play with him. His father ran a record shop called Otowaya on Ginza-dori. He was an unusual man; his study was filled with oil paints, and he painted all kinds of pictures on canvas.

My one solace was the movie theater Homerun Gekijō right in front of the house. The men there would squint their eyes in affection whenever they saw me, lead me up to the second-floor seats, and give me Coke and anpan. I didn't like anpan, but I silently nibbled at it anyway, staring blankly at the enormous screen in front of me — a memory of watching films whose meaning I didn't yet understand.

When I was in first grade of elementary school, they filmed an adaptation of Matsumoto Seichō's Demon right outside our house — a one-minute walk away. Ogata Ken, Iwashita Shima, Ogawa Mayumi — the leading stars of the day were right nearby, yet I, knowing nothing, toddled straight toward them.

[Scene from the film Demon, featuring Ogata Ken]

A cut was called on the filming. An adult shouted at me, and I ran home in tears.

Around that time, the animated Space Battleship Yamato was being screened at the movie theater. My brother Tetsuya and I used to imitate Desler's laugh together, cracking up constantly.

When was it that my mother's irrational abuse began…?

I still remember with perfect clarity the first time she hit me.

I was the only one in elementary school; my two younger brothers were still in kindergarten. After my father, my mother too began to disappear frequently at night.

My brother Tetsuya and Takahiko would wail that they were hungry. No matter how I tried to soothe them, they wouldn't stop crying. I brought the two of them from the upstairs room down to the living room on the first floor.

I thought that if we reached the living room where our grandparents were, they would do something for us. My grandmother and our live-in housekeeper had prepared food. Eating it, I sank into a feeling of happiness.

A short while later, through the narrow gap of the slightly-open door, I saw a pair of white eyes. By the angle of my chair, only I could notice.

I realized those were my mother's eyes. For some reason they were seething with anger.

The door opened just a crack wider, imperceptibly to the others, and my mother slowly beckoned me with her hand while staring at me.

Tetsuya, blissfully unaware, was romping on top of our grandfather, watching TV. Takahiko was sound asleep in our grandmother's arms.

I must not shatter this family warmth. Even as a small child, with a strange, misplaced consideration, I simply said "Thank you for the meal" and walked toward the door.

"Oh, Tomo-chan, are you done already?" "Y-yeah… I'm already full…"

I turned my back to my grandmother's gentle voice and approached the door. The instant I stepped out of the living room, a powerful hand yanked my arm and pulled me toward the staircase.

I had absolutely no idea why my mother was so angry at that moment.

With each step up the staircase, I was struck hard on the backside. If I made a sound, my grandparents would hear. I pressed both hands over my mouth, trying desperately to hold in my tears. The moment we reached the room I was hurled across it and struck again and again.

I hadn't thought it was such a terrible thing, going to my grandparents' side. All I could do was guard myself with both arms and wait for the storm to pass.

"Stand up!"

"Y-yes…"

I could do nothing but obey that terrifying woman.

"Hold this."

She placed the handset of a toy telephone in my right hand. Gripping the body of the telephone, she stepped back — slowly, one step at a time.

Even as a small child, I could understand what was about to happen. Yet I was too frightened to let go. To let go of the handset…

If I released it, I could only imagine what she would do next. For my young mind, that imagination was more frightening than anything else…

The cord stretched further and further. Still I held the handset, trembling.

I was simply terrified. I didn't want to resist and be beaten any more than I already was.

At the moment I thought the rubber cord connecting the body of the toy phone to the handset in my right hand had reached its full length — it left my mother's grip.

"—!"

Everything went dark before my eyes in an instant, and sparks scattered. I crumpled to the floor where I stood. A burning pain blazed above my eye.

"Ha ha ha… You idiot. What do you think you're doing?"

I stood up to run, and backed away. In doing so, I stepped on a toy block, and pain shot through the sole of my foot. Several of the blocks I'd treasured were broken.

A shove to the chest, and I collapsed to the floor. The image of my aikido lessons flashed through my mind.

Before practice began, we'd sit formally in seiza and bow. Then, while sitting in seiza with eyes closed, the instructor would suddenly push against your chest. You were not allowed to fall. The true purpose, apparently, was to cultivate mental focus.

But I couldn't have understood that at the time.

"What are you doing, falling on your own? Stand up!"

I did as I was told and got up. Toy blocks were scattered at my feet.

My mother was picking up several blocks.

"Don't move. Stand at attention and close your eyes!"

"Yes…"

What was she going to do? My body trembling, I opened my eyes just the faintest sliver. My mother was mid-throw with a block.

A blue block struck me in the head. I, still a small child, fell again.

"What's with the theatrics?!"

I knew that if I got up, the same thing would happen again. Knowing this, I stood up anyway.

What if she did that telephone thing again? That pain was what frightened me most. So I had no choice.

My mother hurled blocks at me again and again.

Am I going to be killed like this? I felt it instinctively.

At that moment, the door to the room flew open with a bang.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

It was my grandfather. He was looking at my mother with eyes I had never seen him use before — fierce and unyielding.

He had heard the commotion from upstairs and come to rescue me. In the pitch-black darkness, it felt as though a single ray of light had appeared. I struggled desperately toward that light.

"Grandpa…"

I moved naturally toward him — and at that instant felt a violent pain in my back.

As I fell to the floor, the moment unfolded in slow motion before me. And there, in front of my eyes, lay the shards of a broken white block.

"Ah…!"

I covered my eyes with my hands and rolled across the floor. Blood was flowing freely.

I have to become strong, or someday I'll be killed…

After that, I have no memory.

Following these events, I began sleeping in my grandparents' room for a while. My grandmother often sang lullabies to the three of us brothers.

Before I knew it, I — the eldest son alone — was sent back to my parents' room. In the middle of the night I'd wake to the sound of my parents quarreling. The only thing I could think to do was lie there pretending to sleep.

My mother's hysteria grew worse with each passing day.

One evening, returning from cram school and sitting in my room, I heard shouting from the first floor. Hearing that voice, my body froze instinctively. The scar above my left eye began to throb.

"Damn it! Damn it all!"

I crept slowly down the stairs, as quietly as I could.

Peering from the hallway into the living room, I saw my mother at the entrance, holding the door open with a face like a demon. It felt like catching sight of something I should never have seen.

My grandfather and the surrounding employees tried to calm her down, urging "Settle down," but her rage only escalated. She kept crying "Damn it!" while slamming the glass door of the living room against its frame.

With each repeated slam, a crack spread through the glass. All I could do was stand there trembling, staring blankly at that dreadful scene.

The live-in housekeeper, Setsu-chan, grabbed my shoulders and tried to pull me away from the chaos.

My father's younger brother, Uncle Osamu, gripped my mother by both shoulders, crying "Calm down!" She thrashed in a frenzy. Too frightened to move, I simply stood and stared.

When my mother's gaze locked with mine, she came flying toward me with tremendous force. After shoving Setsu-chan roughly aside, she grabbed me by both shoulders and screamed, "This is what was done to me! This is what was done to me!" — digging her fingernails into my skin. All I could do was cry weakly as blood seeped from both shoulders.

The adults around her desperately peeled her away. Helpless, I could only weep, and before I knew it, I was being held in my grandfather's arms. Needless to say, my father was nowhere to be seen.

That night, my grandmother on my mother's side — from the Nakamachi neighborhood — came to the house. She lived only a five-minute walk away, and while I sometimes visited her, it was unusual for her to come to us.

She seemed to be cautioning my mother about something in the hallway, but again came the sound of raised voices. My body tightened with dread, yet worry pushed me out of my room and into the corridor.

My mother was gripping my grandmother's wrist. Looking closely, I could see her nails were digging in — blood was dripping from grandmother's wrist. I stood there in silence, unable to do anything but watch.

And yet, facing me in that moment, grandmother wore a gentle smile and said softly: "Tomo-chan… it's nothing. Go back to your room."

Overcome with the guilt of having seen something I shouldn't, all I could do was burrow into my futon and squeeze my eyes shut. In my mind, I could not shake the image of the blood dripping from grandmother's wrist.

The family was always at odds. Despite all living under the same roof, simply going to my grandparents' side was enough to bring down fierce beatings. Yet my two younger brothers, still small, would cry with hunger when they sat at the table without our parents there. Taking them downstairs was the only thing I knew to do.

On Sundays, I — as the eldest — was dragged around outside with my mother. At Nichii, a department-store-like building, we ran into Aunt Kyoko, a relative, and Pī-chan — my father's younger sister who lived in the same house.

"Oh, isn't that Tomo-chan?"

They waved cheerfully, and I naturally smiled and waved back. That alone was enough: when we got home, I was beaten for "currying favor." After that incident, I naturally stopped showing my emotions openly throughout my early childhood.

Two scars near my left temple, close to my eye, that still haven't faded. I resented the daily routine of this hell-like existence, wondering whether it would go on forever. But such fears turned out to be for nothing.

The winter of second grade. The mother who had inflicted such repeated abuse on us quietly vanished from the house, abandoning her three sons.

I quit everything — cram school, all the activities — except piano. Why did I keep up piano alone? Because the teacher was kind.

Though in truth, I didn't practice at all. I'd go to the teacher's house, watch TV, receive snacks, and on the way home she'd always take me to the arcade and let me play games. I think my love of video games to this day owes much to those times.

In third grade of elementary school, Jackie Chan's film Drunken Master was screened at Homerun Gekijō. I thought: If I train like that, I too could become strong. My first violent impulse. Misunderstanding the definition of strength, I began bullying girls in my class and making them cry. The homeroom teacher — Mr. Fukuda Fumihiko, who was apparently also a Shinto shrine priest — summoned the entire class to the gymnasium and thoroughly thrashed me. That incident taught me, in its own way, something about what true strength means.

For the first time, we three brothers could smile from the heart — raised by our grandparents and our aunt, Pī-chan. But our pampered father continued to spend the family's money freely and roam as he pleased. With my mother gone and freedom restored, I was doted upon and grew up watching movies for free every day.

Jackie Chan's films left a deep impression on me, and I began imitating whatever training moves I could manage. Galaxy Express 999 stirred something like hope for the future and filled me with excitement.

Occasionally I was taken along on delivery runs for the family dry-cleaning business. Aside from that, I had almost no contact with my father — the hayashi lessons were gone, after all.

One day, our usual delivery route was broken, and my father stopped the car in front of a house in a residential neighborhood. When we were invited inside, a woman with heavy makeup had prepared a large spread of food and was waiting for us.

The woman with the heavy makeup was oddly familiar, in an unsettling way. Instinctively, I couldn't bring myself to like her. Even as a small child, I sensed that she and my father were in some kind of intimate relationship.

This was my first encounter with Kato Satsuki — a woman who would become entangled with my fate throughout my life as a relentless gold-digger.

When I reached the upper grades of elementary school, my grandfather brought a lawyer and asked me: "How would you feel about being adopted as my heir?" He apparently wanted to leave me as large a share of the estate as possible, but I knew it would eliminate my father's standing, and I politely declined. Grandfather smiled, stroked my head, and said only: "I see. You're a fine young man, Tomoichirō."

In sixth grade I was struck by severe abdominal pain and taken to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with appendicitis. My grandmother, not wanting her grandchild's body to bear a scar, recommended a procedure using infrared rays to disperse the inflammation.

The pain subsided for a single day, but from the next day I was seized by agonizing pain once more. Grandfather called the hospital repeatedly, but was met only with "He'll be fine if he rests" — and day by day I grew weaker.

Acting on his own judgment, grandfather took me to a different hospital, where it was found that I had nearly developed peritonitis. I was admitted for emergency surgery — reportedly another step away from death. I was saved by my grandfather's decision.

During my hospital stay, the woman with heavy makeup — my father's acquaintance — came to visit late one night. I didn't yet know her name was Kato Satsuki. I pretended to be asleep to avoid the encounter. The cloying scent of perfume she left behind stung my nose, filling me with unease.

My father the playboy became a tyrant the moment he came home.

"What's that pathetic look on your face?" — struck in passing. Sudden, unreasonable violence. "When I was your age, I had far more women after me" — struck again. I'd try to stand at the kitchen stove to cook, and be struck for "acting like a woman."

The mother who had abandoned us started a restaurant barely five hundred meters from our house, living with another man.

Irori-bata Ryōri "Oni" — Hearth-side Cuisine, "Demon." I felt she'd named it Demon because that was what she was.

Because our family home was nearby, my mother seemed to be feeding my cousin Utsuki Hiroko — her niece — her own convenient version of events. Hiroko, nursing a misplaced grudge against me on my mother's behalf, was an exemplary honor student, well-regarded by teachers and influential among classmates. She began spreading a rumor that our household had conspired to drive my mother out. Once again, darkness descended at school.

Even my female homeroom teacher, Ms. Ichikura Toshiko, approached me with: "Hiroko-chan told me — you must want to see your mother, right, Iwakami-kun?" and offered her services as some inexplicable go-between.

Intense past trauma. I refused furiously — and my standing with the teacher grew worse.

I wished many times that Mr. Fukuda from third grade were still my homeroom teacher, but that was impossible.

Pī-chan once asked me: "Do you know why your parents won't divorce?" No child in elementary school could possibly know the answer.

"Your mother won't divorce because she's after the family fortune," she told me.

Something I had felt since early childhood:

I have to become strong, or I'll be killed. Being clever isn't enough — no one will protect me.

The Path of the Demon — Middle School Arc

Even in middle school, I never fell in with delinquents. By then the arcades had become gathering places for troublemakers. But my body already knew — putting on a tough act, all attitude and appearance, wouldn't make you truly strong.

By a bitter irony, my paternal cousin Shimizu Maiko and my maternal cousin Utsuki Hiroko ended up at the same middle school as me. The homeroom teacher in first year, Mr. Suzuki Masami, was extraordinarily violent — I was beaten simply for being known to have visited an arcade.

I became close friends with Iino Makoto in the same class, and we often spent time together at the library.

Classmate Yajima somehow discovered that both Maiko and Hiroko were my cousins and began pestering me to help him get closer to them. I warned him it was a terrible idea, but he was relentless. Eventually he spat: "Kids from broken homes are useless." I hit him many times.

Yajima stopped coming to school. Homeroom teacher Suzuki Masami summoned me, beat me thoroughly, then marched me in front of every classroom to be made an example of.

By third year of middle school I was in the same class as Iwasaki Tomonori — Chaboo — and Iwasaki Tsutomu — Gori.

My grandmother, who had always been frail, passed away in autumn. Right until the end she had worried about my high school entrance exams. She had loved watching professional wrestling and sumo.

The night before my entrance exams, I went alone, in the dead of night, to Kōzaiji temple where grandmother was buried, and paid my respects at her grave.

During my high school years, a caring and attentive woman named Midori joined the family business as a part-timer. My brother Tetsuya and I often talked about what a good person she was.

My first-year high school homeroom teacher was Mr. Tani. He was fixated on my height and kept trying to push me into club activities — first rugby, then volleyball, then handball, one after another. Eventually I joined the soccer club, and quit as soon as I learned the homeroom teacher was changing at the end of first year.

Second and third year, the homeroom teacher was Mr. Sakaki. Around this time, I began spending my days fighting constantly. Mr. Sakaki stepped in for me again and again, and in the end I graduated without ever once receiving a suspension. Even as an adult, I maintained a regular relationship with him.

My mother, without ever agreeing to a divorce, was living with another man.

My father, a complete playboy who had fully abandoned any parenting, constantly bragged to neighbors: "This boy has a good head — I'm sending him to one of the top six universities."

My tuition at Seibudai High School was paid entirely by my grandfather — my father didn't contribute a yen. I had never given university a thought, naturally. An art teacher offered to write a recommendation for me to an art college, but knowing that would only mean grandfather footing the bill yet again, I declined.

The ones who had truly raised me were my grandfather and Pī-chan.

One day, three married women my father had been playing with all showed up at the house at the same time, demanding to be heard. My father slipped away, and I — the eldest son — was inexplicably cornered inside the house and made to sit through an incoherent confrontation.

One of the three was Midori, who worked part-time at the family business. Watching her sob in front of me — a high school student at the time — and cry out that she loved my father broke something inside me.

The second was a woman I had been seeing since childhood: the one with heavy makeup. Kato Satsuki. She was the most forceful of the three. Watching her, I thought: People without shame can carry themselves with this much audacity. The instinctive dislike I'd felt since the first time I met her had not been wrong. I was certain of it now.

Pī-chan came out again with her familiar question: "Do you understand why your mother won't divorce your father?" And her familiar answer: "Because she's after the family fortune."

I wanted to become strong. And despite how much I'd hated the idea, I began thinking I needed to go and meet my mother once — talk it through — and somehow bring about the divorce myself. Strangely, even though she'd abandoned us, I couldn't quite bring myself to believe she was rotten to the core.

If she would agree to the divorce, Pī-chan's claim that she was only after the money would be overturned. To make that happen as quickly as possible, I wanted to enter society fast — and the Self-Defense Force, where employment decisions came earliest, seemed the obvious choice.

My father raged like fire. Always needing to keep up appearances, he couldn't bear that his eldest son would go into the SDF instead of one of the top universities. He beat me many times — but half of my reason for choosing the SDF was, I'll admit, to shame him. That is why I chose the Self-Defense Force.

Right after graduating high school, I went to pay my respects to my old piano teacher — the one who had taken such care of me in elementary school. Six years had passed; my heart stirred with anticipation at the reunion.

But the teacher refused to see me. Her mother greeted me instead — with eyes full of hatred — and told me never to come back again. I couldn't understand at all why the family of someone who had been so kind to me had changed so completely. With no recourse, I quietly withdrew.

The first thing I did after becoming a working adult was to meet my mother again.

Having long since resolved to treat her as less than a stranger, I spoke to her formally. My mother burst into tears and misread this as me having been raised with good manners. But she agreed to the divorce at once.

Grateful that she had fulfilled my request, I decided I would at least hear her side of things — and during my time in the SDF, I visited her several times.

When my father found out, he raged at me: "So you miss your mother that much? Then abandon the Iwakami name." I was only cleaning up your mess — what nerve. The rift between me and my father deepened further.

My mother proceeded to give her own account of why she had left. Gradually, the excuses shifted into speaking ill of my late grandmother.

My grandmother, who had been both gentle and strict with me. Hearing my mother slander her, I lost patience and pushed back.

"I wonder how you ended up so foolish. If I had raised you properly…"

Forgetting that she had abandoned us of her own will and walked out the door, my mother hurled abuse at me.

This is hopeless.

There was simply no reaching her. I resolved completely to sever ties with my mother.

In the end, a person's essential nature rarely changes. And I came to recognize that at my core, a fierce hatred had taken root.

Snow in Hokkaido

The brutal hazing during my initial training at the GSDF Asaka Garrison. My platoon, whose sergeant and assistant sergeant were both Ranger-qualified, received particularly harsh treatment every single day.

On one occasion they set off tear gas inside a tent, handed us slips of paper with the lyrics to Sazae-san written out to the fifth verse, and made us sing inside. The point was that reading the lyrics would damage your eyes, and singing would damage your throat. That was the hazing.

We were also made to run a five-kilometer perimeter wearing gas masks. Held in a sit-up position with legs raised for a full hour. Held in a push-up position for a full hour.

If anyone collapsed partway through, merciless violence followed.

The twisted sergeant told us something: the farther he could send us for advanced training, the better his own performance evaluations.

"Don't think you're staying here in Asaka."

He then ordered the ten of us to withdraw ten thousand yen each from our savings, and spent the full hundred thousand at the camp PX — the base shop — on things he demanded.

Tomita, who was in the same platoon with me, went to Takada Garrison. Thinking: If I can't stay near home regardless, I might as well go as far as possible — four of us who'd given up and gone reckless, myself included, chose Hokkaido — the most distant posting — and off we went.

The people of Kutchan, Hokkaido, were wonderfully warm. But our superiors were rotten.

Being used for basic errands was standard. The worst of them would tell us, for sport, to go buy a Coke from the vending machine on the fourth floor of the most distant barracks — the most roundabout errand possible.

Called out for insolence, unprovoked group beatings by multiple men were a daily affair. In the manga Tomorrow's Joe, there's a scene in the juvenile detention center involving a gang attack called the "Parachute Squad."

[Excerpt from Tomorrow's Joe]

Several men pin down your arms and legs, then dive-bomb onto your stomach from the top of a bunk bed.

[Excerpt from Tomorrow's Joe]

During the company trip to Hakodate — with roughly a hundred men in the heavy mortar company — I pretended to be drunk and spent time getting cozy with one of the five hostesses in the corner of the banquet hall. What awaited me upon our return was a savage beating.

I thought I might die. But one person against more than a dozen trained SDF soldiers — there was simply nothing to be done.

Orders from superiors are absolute. But if you quit, they are no longer your superiors.

I decided to leave before completing my first term of service, and remained in Hokkaido for exactly one week afterward. I was staying hidden purely to take revenge against the superiors who had treated me so brutally.

In a small town, the haunts of SDF men on leave were easily pinpointed.

Once I had exacted a degree of revenge, I decided to return home to Kawagoe.

[Photo: Iwakami Tomoichirō, age 0, at Yasukuni Shrine with his parents]