Translation: Darkness 04 — All Japan Pro Wrestling Arc
2026/03/04 wed
闇04章：翻訳Cloud
原文確認完了。翻訳を開始します。闇04、完了です。
翻訳上の処理メモ：
特記箇所：
「もう来なくていい」→ You don't need to come anymore. 冒頭一行で立てた。03の引きとして機能するよう。
「明確な殺意」→ Clear killing intent. 一文で切る。原文のリズムそのまま。
「おまえが精子をぶっ放して作った息子のせいで」→ 直訳を維持。Your son — the product of you busting a nut — 原文の粗さ・怒りを落とさず。
「蜘蛛の糸など、どこにも垂れていない」→ There was no spider's thread dangling down from anywhere. 芥川の「蜘蛛の糸」を英語圏でもそのままのイメージで。
ちゃんこ鍋 → chanko nabe＋括弧注釈付き
協同商事への言及（実名・批判含む）→ 原文通り全訳。検閲なし。
「高周波トレーニング」→ 03同様、章区切りの見出しとしてイタリック処理。
Darkness 04 — All Japan Pro Wrestling Arc
*Kawagoe, Saitama / Tokyo. Winter 1993–1994.*
You don't need to come anymore.
President Giant Baba's words carved into my chest, and everything I had worked for collapsed with a crash.
My vision narrowed.
Why did I — someone who hadn't thrown a single punch, who only stepped in to stop a fight — have to end up like this?
The one who was wrong was Osawa Fumihiro（a friend from middle school）.
But the yakuza who piled on ten-plus men and beat him half to death were also way out of line.
That's all I was trying to stop.
The police came, those guys scattered, and the only ones caught were me and Osawa.
I had only mediated. I stood my ground, thinking I had nothing to worry about.
So why did the police contact President Baba in the middle of the night?
Why did my chance to enter pro wrestling have to be erased?
From the next interrogation room, I could still hear Osawa thrashing around.
I quietly got to my feet, head down.
"Hey, you! What the hell do you think you're doing, standing up on your own!"
I twisted the arm of the officer who grabbed my shoulder and threw him.
The root of it all.
He knew I had the All Japan training camp coming — and he pulled this on me anyway……
When I tried to leave the room, another officer grabbed me.
I locked his left arm and drove him into the wall with everything I had.
An urge to destroy every single person trying to stop me.
Stay quiet and cooperate and this is how they treat you……
"Iwa-yan! Let's go get those guys! Hey, let go of me!"
Osawa spotted me and was screaming while the officers pinned him down, trying to shake them off.
The classmate in front of me no longer looked human.
Back at Tsubohachi when we were drinking — if I had just left that piece of garbage alone, none of this would have……
Several officers swarmed my body.
I grabbed their fingers and threw them.
A stage I had finally reached — ruined because of this guy……
"What the hell are you doing?!"
I hurled away the officer coming toward me.
Because of him……
Clear killing intent.
The feeling of something black taking over my entire body.
By that point my vision held only one thing: Osawa.
The officers swarming like flies — I tore them off one by one and threw them.
"O…… Osawa!"
An explosion of pure feeling.
My right fist, loaded with rage, drove straight into Osawa's face.
His big frame — a hundred and ninety centimeters — went flying.
With that release of force spent, I stood there, vacant.
Several officers flew at me.
I was slammed to the floor, every bit of freedom stripped from my body.
President Giant Baba's words — you don't need to come anymore.
Those words just kept looping in my head, over and over.
The strength drained from my body. I offered no resistance. I let the police do whatever they wanted.
It's over……
Everything — all of it — is over……
Fat tears came on their own.
My vision blurred.
All I could do was collapse face-down and sob.
When I came to, I was inside a cell.
The air was cold.
Men with dark expressions around me.
Iron bars in front of my eyes.
It felt like I was looking at the end of the world.
Am I really inside a cell?
Is this what they call a holding facility?
I punched myself hard in the head.
Cleared up a little.
Why am I in a place like this?
It started when I went to help Osawa.
I got arrested by the police, right?
So I tried to prove my innocence in the interrogation.
Was President Baba's voice a dream?
Stop escaping from reality.
That was as real as it gets……
Is All Japan Pro Wrestling over for me?
He told me not to come back……
How did this happen?
Where did it go wrong?
What did I do wrong?
Sort it out.
Was it reckless to go drinking before the All Japan training camp?
Was the mistake drinking with Osawa knowing full well he had a drinking problem?
If I had just left Osawa — getting the hell beaten out of him by those yakuza — and walked away……
No amount of regret changes anything now.
Everything has been reduced to nothing.
I slammed my fist into the wall.
A man in the same cell muttered "keep it down," so I snapped my eyes wide open and glared at him.
He looked away and shut his mouth.
My knuckles grew slick with blood.
A guard outside the bars said mechanically, "Quiet down."
I kept yelling and hitting the wall.
I have no idea how long I kept at it.
By the time I noticed, I was slumped inside the cell, smothered by a wordless emptiness, a despair.
One officer ordered me out.
In the middle of the night, my grandfather was standing there in front of me, bowing over and over in apology.
My father apparently hadn't come as the guarantor.
Grandfather had come in his place, and thanks to him I was released.
"Hey. I'm not satisfied with what happened here. You lot — remember this."
I fixed a cold stare on the officers.
If the law hadn't been a factor, I would have happily slaughtered every one of them right there.
"Stop it, Tomoichirō!"
Grandfather held me back, and I had no choice but to let it go.
Outside the police station, Osawa and his parents were standing there.
His mouth had swollen up grotesquely from my punch.
"Iwa-yan…… I'm really sorry……"
"Sorry isn't going to cut it…… Do you have any idea what you've done to me?"
"I'm really, truly sorry……"
"You think that's enough, you piece of shit!"
I moved to grab Osawa and Grandfather stopped me.
"We've already paid for the glass. And you — calm yourself down!"
Osawa's father, who wore glasses and looked like a strict man, glared at me and opened his mouth.
Everything around me turned red.
Right. Let's just kill all of them……
"Huh? Hey…… what did you just say……"
"Stop it, Tomoichirō!"
Grandfather stepped between us.
If he hadn't, I would have definitely swung.
"Calm yourself."
Your son — the product of you busting a nut — put me through this, and that's what you have to say?
Osawa's father's words brought me right back to the edge of explosion.
"Your son broke that glass himself! Don't stand there acting high and mighty, you old fool!"
"Silence, Tomoichirō!"
Grandfather held me back, and all I could do was cry.
I have no memory of how I got home.
Because of that worthless incident, I had lost everything.
That much was beyond doubt.
I had no idea what to do with myself.
This past year, I had been trying to become a wrestler.
All of it was reduced to nothing in one night. Even my reason for existing was gone.
I wanted to die.
I didn't know what face I was supposed to show the world to keep living.
Bōzu（Hijikata Satoru, a friend of a cousin）came to my room.
He's a senior I got close to after entering society — I call him Bōzu-san.
"Tomo…… why did you go drinking with a guy like that?"
"……"
Bōzu's words were too correct. I couldn't argue with a single thing he said.
Because I had kept hanging around with a man like that, it came to this.
"……So what happened with All Japan?"
"……. President Baba told me…… not to come……"
"Isn't the training camp coming up?"
"……"
"Go."
"But…… he said not to come……"
Words caught in my throat and I broke down crying.
I don't know how long I stayed like that.
Through all of it, Bōzu sat beside me without saying anything.
"I…… I want to die……"
"What did you just say?"
"I want to die! I have no value anymore……"
"……"
I sobbed and collapsed face-down, falling apart completely.
Over and over through the tears I kept saying "I want to die."
"You can't die! Live!"
"What am I supposed to live for!"
"Giant Baba might have told you not to come — but tomorrow, go to the All Japan training house."
"I can't!"
"Just go."
"How? What kind of face do I show up with?"
"You were planning to die anyway, right? Then go first, and die after. If you don't want to die, then live."
"……"
Those words cut deeper than any noble speech ever could.
I was only saying I wanted to die with my mouth.
In that case — I'll go to the training house.
I can die after I get there.
Either way I had already made up my mind to die.
I felt like I could see a faint light.
No — not a light.
I could see clearly that I'd be turned away at the door and sent packing.
Even so, with nothing to lose — I'll try going to All Japan.
There wasn't a ray of hope there. But it was all I had.
I cried hard again.
Bōzu gave my shoulder two firm pats.
Tōbu Tōjō Line from Kawagoe City to Ikebukuro.
Yamanote Line to Shibuya.
But I had no idea at all how to get to Tama-Plaza Station.
"Excuse me…… Tama-Plaza Station — how do I get there……"
"……"
How many times did I go through that exchange.
Every person I tried to ask ignored me and walked on.
People in Tokyo — how cold can you be.
I had been searching the whole station and still nothing.
Maybe you have to go from somewhere else entirely.
When I came out of Shibuya Station, I saw a group of people standing in a line at fixed intervals.
One of them called out to me.
"Please let us pray for your happiness for just one minute."
"Huh? Never mind that — where's Tama-Plaza?"
"For your happiness, first one minute of prayer……"
"Hey, you——!"
"P-please let go of me!"
Before I knew it I had grabbed him by the collar.
"If you want to pray for my happiness, tell me how to get to Tama-Plaza!"
"Well…… um……"
"If you really care about my happiness, then tell me how to get to Tama-Plaza!"
Whether it was the force of that or whatever, the religious activist gave me directions kindly enough.
Out of JR Shibuya Station, walk a short way, and there's a passage leading underground.
Apparently you can get to Tama-Plaza from there.
Tōkyū Den-en-toshi Line……
You had to exit Shibuya Station and transfer to an entirely different line — there was no way someone doing this for the first time would know that.
Ignorant as I was, I didn't have a clue.
"Thanks to you I can be happy now. Thank you!"
I followed the map toward the All Japan Pro Wrestling training house.
I pressed the doorbell.
After a moment, Fuchi-san came out.
The moment he saw my face he looked suspicious and snapped, "What are you doing here? Didn't the President tell you not to come?"
I pleaded my case desperately.
But I was turned away at the door.
Of course.
I was told not to come and I showed up anyway……
"……"
There was no spider's thread dangling down from anywhere.
Right. I did everything I could.
But it wasn't enough.
So — how should I go about dying?
I was about to trudge home with my head hanging when a big man came out from the back.
"It's fine. He came all this way — let's at least let him in."
The big man was Jumbo Tsuruta（a legendary All Japan pro wrestler）.
With Fuchi-san looking unhappy at his side, Jumbo Tsuruta persuaded him — I'll look after this one.
I was told to get changed into something I could train in.
I had a T-shirt and training wear in my bag, so I changed.
A pro wrestler I had only ever seen on TV.
Come to think of it, it was watching this man fight Misawa Mitsuharu that made me choose this promotion.
A figure so far above the clouds he was unreachable.
And now I was standing within that man's field of vision……
Other wrestlers were around as I climbed into the ring at the training house.
Everyone was obviously bigger than me.
Akiyama Jun was there too, a face I'd seen on TV.
The most shocking thing I laid eyes on was Kobashi Kenta（an All Japan pro wrestler）'s body.
A mass of muscle so immense it looked like he was wearing armor made of flesh.
The culture shock hit me — are wrestlers really this big?
I had been a frog in a well who knew nothing of the ocean.
Overwhelmed by all of it, Jumbo Tsuruta's training session began.
Push-ups, sit-ups, squats — a hundred of each, ten sets.
No rest periods, of course.
"You probably think I'm not giving you any rest, right?"
"N-no, not at all!"
"During push-ups your stomach and leg muscles get to rest. During squats your arms and stomach get to rest. That's how it works."
"……"
I wanted to say — but I'm moving the whole time — yet I couldn't say a thing to a wrestler this great. I just gritted my teeth and ground through the reps.
Next: back against a corner post, grab the ropes on either side, lift your body off the mat.
In that position, raise both legs straight up — hanging leg raises.
Was I really this out of shape?
Maybe it was the nerves, but I couldn't find my usual rhythm.
Climb up to the corner, then jump off down onto the ring.
Simply put — a self-destruction drop from top-rope height.
No matter how cleanly I took the back bump, after enough repetitions the skin wore off and blood started seeping through.
How long is this going to keep going?
The hazing in the Self-Defense Force felt light by comparison.
Only my head sticking out over the apron edge, Tsuruta-san pressed a towel from above onto my neck and pushed down with force.
"Alright, now lift your neck against that."
Changing the angle — a hundred repetitions in each direction, up, down, left, right.
Partway through, my neck stopped working entirely.
Like a newborn whose neck can't hold its own head up — exactly that.
"Wrestlers have to train their necks if they want to take a German suplex, you know."
Even holding back, it felt like my neck might snap clean off.
Beyond that, one brutal drill after another continued.
Rope work — the kind of thing where wrestlers get thrown into the ropes and come back.
The sensation of slamming your own back into what felt like a steel rod.
Wait — ropes hurt this much?
By the time I noticed, my legs were cramping and I couldn't even stand.
"Hmm — still a long way to go on the stamina."
"……"
My legs were dragged and I was pulled out to the ring apron.
I barely managed to turn my head and watch.
Senior wrestler Izumida-san was lifting me up, trying to get me down off the ring.
He brought me to the bath area and I lay flat on my back, spread-eagle.
"Your legs cramped up bad. Wrestler training's rough on the first day. Hang on a little. You'll feel better soon."
Izumida-san worked through a thorough massage.
Slowly the tension left my body and I could move again.
"Since you're here, go warm up in the bath before you head out."
"Thank you…… for everything……"
I sank alone into a large tub that looked like it could fit four people at once.
The water felt a little lukewarm, but I was in no position to complain.
I had the pride of someone who had trained himself to the bone.
But I felt the misery of knowing that in the professional world, that meant nothing.
If at least I were taller or heavier it would help — but I was at the bottom of the rankings in physique too.
I'm not even close to the conversation here……
Still soaking in the bath, I cried.
I got out and headed toward the training area with the ring.
The wrestlers were still training. Izumida-san suddenly stood up and went outside and started retching.
"Drank too much last night."
"Wh……"
After he threw up everything he had, Izumida-san went right back up onto the ring and started doing push-ups again where he'd left off.
What on earth are these people?
I was overwhelmed, and all I could do was stare blankly at the scene in front of me.
I realized I had started mentally calling the senior wrestlers with the honorific -san.
After everyone finished training and moved to prepare the chanko nabe（a hearty stew eaten by sumo and wrestling athletes）, only Kobashi Kenta-san kept quietly training on his own.
So that's how that man maintains a body like that……
Akiyama Jun-san said "First day, so you're a guest. Eat first," and sat me down.
At a four-person table: Jumbo Tsuruta-san to my left, Fuchi-san to my right, and directly across from me, Kobashi-san who had just finished training.
For a pro wrestling fanatic, this was the kind of lineup that would send you over the edge, I thought.
In this dreamlike moment, the chanko nabe was offered to me.
The center of the table had a hole cut into it with a pot set in and a gas line running to it to light directly underneath.
Izumida-san carried over a large metal pot and set it on the table.
A container of miso paste was passed to me.
Jumbo Tsuruta-san said, "With chanko nabe you add this miso tare like this and eat it," blowing on his portion to cool it down.
"Mm, good!"
I tried it the same way — the chanko nabe was extraordinary.
I will probably never forget that taste for the rest of my life.
Dreamlike times end quickly.
I had given everything I had.
But it wasn't enough.
I had learned my own limits.
I bowed my head and was about to leave the training house when it happened.
Jumbo Tsuruta-san, who had come to see me off at the entrance, opened his mouth.
"You're still on the slender side, but you've got strength, so it's a waste to stop here. Next year's a bit away but come back for the tryout again."
"……"
"You need to put on a bit more weight though."
"Yes…… Tsuruta-san…… thank you so much……"
I bowed from the bottom of my heart and gave my thanks to Jumbo Tsuruta-san.
By the time I came to, I was on my hands and knees, bowing again and again to the ground.
"Hey hey……"
In that moment, I swore from the deepest part of me: this man is my master.
This man had saved me.
One dreamlike day came to an end, and I returned to my hometown Kawagoe.
My whole body was wrecked.
Most of the people who had been cheering for me turned on me and let me have it.
Of course.
Nothing I could do about it.
All of it was a failure I had brought on myself.
I apologized to everyone with humility, and made up my mind to grind through another year of thorns.
He told me to come back.
I had no right to give up.
I would aim for that world again.
Being around Jumbo Tsuruta — my master — what struck me most deeply was the sheer scale of him as a person.
Someone I could respect from the bottom of my heart.
I wanted to become like him — but I knew clearly that who I was now made it impossible.
The innate capacity he had was in a completely different league.
Train every day. Get bigger.
And train the thumb.
Until the day comes when I use the Datotsu I devised……
In that world, I would be on the small end of things.
I needed a technique that could beat anyone I faced.
Spread out a sheet of newspaper, grip one end with the right hand.
With only the right hand, crumple the entire sheet into a ball inside your fist — that's the drill.
One sheet was easy enough.
Two sheets at once and the difficulty jumped sharply.
Luckily, Grandfather subscribed to the paper, so supply was no problem.
Thumb push-ups.
Drive the thumb into the iron pillar.
Stab the fingers into a bucket of small stones.
My nails split again and again.
Leave them alone and they grow back on their own.
I was possessed by that kind of madness.
The daily training was forging my right-hand grip into something increasingly powerful.
Even on the bench press — no set number of reps. Just keep going up and down.
It ended when my arms could no longer lift the barbell.
Beneath the bench, sweat pooled like a puddle.
I'd run about five kilometers to Isanuma Pond, get there, and do five hundred push-ups, sit-ups, and squats each.
Careful stretching, then the run home.
On the way, I stopped at Shimachu and bought two five-kilogram dumbbells, and swung them all the way back.
By the end my arms could barely lift themselves.
Work, eat, train. That was the whole of life.
Even so I was happy.
Always slightly over-training.
To help the body recover, I tried a place that had recently opened nearby — TBB Sōgō Seitai（a general chiropractic clinic）.
The bespectacled practitioner had skilled hands and fixed the muscle strain I'd been carrying.
He said my muscle quality was exceptional and explained that I was unusually resistant to soreness.
He was about a decade older than me and we hit it off immediately.
Before I knew it I was going to the clinic almost every day.
Not always for treatment — sometimes we just sat over tea and talked.
One day the practitioner asked if I wanted to learn some of his treatment techniques.
Of course only when there were no patients, but he passed on his methods to me free of charge.
Understanding the structure of the human body with my head.
The polar opposite between breaking and healing.
That kind of daily life was what I lived.
Osawa Fumihiro — the man who destroyed my path into All Japan — kept coming to my house to apologize.
Bōzu warned me absolutely not to forgive him, said I should cut him off entirely.
But watching Osawa prostrate himself on the floor again and again in apology, I told him not to let alcohol take him over like that anymore — and I let him back into my life.
One day when I went to TBB Sōgō Seitai, the practitioner had brought in a high-frequency（kōshūha）machine.
He asked me to try training with it, partly as an experiment.
Apparently it could be used for training, not just treatment.
Actually trying it, what I felt was this: even the fine, hard-to-reach muscle groups that ordinary training couldn't develop were being worked.
I took a strong liking to this scientific approach and incorporated it into my daily training.
For all that, the practitioner only charged me five hundred yen a session.
He must have known I had no financial room to spare.
I could never thank him enough.
— High-frequency training —
Work meant all kinds of things — essentially part-time level jobs.
Civil construction work first, then track maintenance.
This came about because Toritanibe — a fellow SDF recruit I had met at Kutchan Garrison（a Ground Self-Defense Force base in Hokkaido）in Hokkaido（Japan's northernmost main island）— had come up from Aomori to Tokyo and introduced me to the work he was doing.
Track maintenance work ran both day and night.
But without any real skills, I often only had night work, and it hardly paid.
Still, the prefab shack in Meguro cost nothing in rent and meals were covered.
Perching on the rim of the bathtub with my legs stretched out against the wall, I made a point of doing at least a thousand sit-ups every day.
On weekends I'd go back to Kawagoe, drink with friends, and train.
Grip training and thumb conditioning were the one thing I never skipped — every single day without exception — and I had reached the point where I could crush an apple with three fingers.
When I measured my grip strength it read ninety-six kilograms.
What I sought was strength.
And a body tough enough to back it up.
Build the body bigger, increase endurance, and drive the Datotsu through the opponent's flesh.
Attack alone isn't enough.
Defense alone isn't enough.
Real strength means having all of it together.
Strength that doesn't waver no matter what situation you're placed in.
For when that moment comes — the most secret of secrets.
For that, I believed this grip and this Datotsu suited me best.
My body was steadily getting bigger.
I kept eating and kept training.
But my calorie burn must have been immense — my weight just wouldn't climb.
At last year's All Japan training camp I was 75 kilograms.
Now 78 kilograms.
Muscle was building and my appearance was changing, but the actual weight refused to go up.
Even so, dropping the training volume was out of the question.
The only time my mind truly rested was when I ate meals or had drinks with Bōzu and other people I was close to.
No money, no status, nothing.
A man like that had no chance of a woman coming near him.
The people I ran with were always men.
For now, that was fine.
When I make something of myself and get out into the world, the ones who looked down on me — don't be the ones crying then.
What I always had was a fighting spirit born from defiance.
Right now I was scraping by on whatever work I could find, barely getting through each day — but just you wait……
I was keeping my sanity by blaming society for a situation I had chosen and brought on myself.
One day I came back to Kawagoe from Meguro and drank with Osawa and my other classmates.
Part of the reason was that I wanted to introduce them to Toritanibe — he had no friends his own age since coming to Tokyo.
Around this time Osawa was attending Komazawa University, living alone in an apartment in Narimasu that his parents were renting for him.
Since he was heading in the same general direction as us back to Meguro, we decided to go part of the way together, heading toward Kawagoe-shi Station.
"Oh, sorry. Iwa-yan, I forgot something — just wait here a second."
Osawa said he was going back to his family home to pick up his stuff.
We waited for the train back, but no matter how long we waited he didn't come.
Toritanibe had come along to Kawagoe that day too. After more than an hour of Osawa not returning, I apologized to him for the rudeness.
I had a bad feeling — maybe he'd gotten into it with someone on the street again.
The last train was getting close, so even though I knew it was late, I called Osawa's family home.
What I heard through the receiver was Osawa and his mother arguing.
His mother explained: Osawa had come back heavily drunk and had brought some woman home with him, said he wanted to let her stay the night, and they were in the middle of a fight over it.
Osawa — who had destroyed my shot at All Japan through his drunken rampage, who had prostrated himself on the floor over and over to apologize.
What the hell had all of that been?
My blood boiled.
"Toritanibe…… sorry, but stay at my family's place tonight."
"Iwakami, where are you going?"
With him in tow, I headed to Osawa Fumihiro's family home.
When the door opened, some woman I'd never seen was standing in the entryway looking lost.
Right beside her, Osawa was in a stand-off with his mother.
"Hey, you…… what exactly do you think you're doing?"
I fixed a hard stare on the completely drunk Osawa.
"None of your business."
Watching him spit that out like it was a nuisance, my vision narrowed.
Before I knew it I'd dragged Osawa outside and drove my fist into him with full force.
Osawa went down.
His lip was destroyed, several teeth were gone, and he was bleeding badly.
In my life, that was the second time I had punched someone in the face with absolutely no restraint.
And both times it was this same Osawa Fumihiro. The karma of it.
Because of this fool I had lost everything — then I forgave him — and now he had betrayed me again.
His parents just stood there watching me in silence.
"Tomoichirō, you're too soft. That's exactly why I told you there was no need to forgive a guy like that."
Bōzu and others close to me gave me hell for it.
Of course.
My own choices had ruined everything.
I was disgusted with my own softness.
A man who never considered the people around him — that's exactly the kind of person who lets alcohol take the wheel and causes a scene like that.
No matter how much he apologized, it was all surface-level.
Forgive him and he'd make the same mistake again.
I don't need to waste emotion or forgiveness on other people anymore.
Wake up already.
My life is something only I can carve out myself.
Keep the people around me to the bare minimum.
Push myself harder in training.
And make sure never to end up in a mess like that again……
Good work came up in Kawagoe, and I left the track maintenance job in Meguro and returned to my hometown.
The new workplace was Kyōdō Shōji（a local food distribution company）.
About fifteen minutes on foot from Minami-Ōtsuka Station, one stop from Hon-Kawagoe Station on the Seibu Shinjuku Line.
From home it was about thirty minutes by bicycle, so to save on transport costs and get more exercise, that's how I commuted.
They dealt in organic produce and were apparently looking to get into beer as well.
I was put in charge of managing organic vegetable ingredients for a school lunch center in Iruma City.
The tryout period was almost here again.
Nearly a year had passed since that setback and humiliation.
My weight had finally reached 85 kilograms — ten kilos more than last year.
Inside Kyōdō Shōji, I was asked to move a cart loaded with fifty boxes of vegetables, each box ten kilograms — five hundred kilograms total — up an incline.
But all the forklifts in the facility were in use and time was short, so I decided to push the cart up the slope myself.
Pure weight: five hundred kilograms.
I put every bit of strength I had into it and pushed.
Slowly, slowly, the cart began climbing the incline.
That's when one of the wheels supporting the cart broke, and the whole thing came toppling toward me.
For a split second I tried to hold it — but five hundred kilograms was simply beyond me.
In the instant I twisted away to dodge, the corner of the cart caught my left big toe.
A groan escaped before I could stop it.
Right before the tryout, the nail on my left big toe was shattered to pieces, and the fragments drove themselves into the flesh.
Bleeding everywhere.
People nearby screamed when they saw it.
All I could do was grab my left foot with both hands and fight through the pain.
The managing director's wife looked at my condition and said, "Iwakami-kun, I'm sorry, I'd like to take you to the hospital, but I have to go home now to make dinner for my son……" — words I could not believe I was hearing.
I called my cousin Wa-chan, who lived nearby, and had her come pick me up.
Kyōdō Shōji is well known now for Coedo Beer — but if something like this happened today, it would be a massive problem. While they seem to be riding high as a promoter for the J3 league now, I want them to remember: what they built back then was built on top of an accident like mine that they simply ignored.
The child of that family is now a director of the company. The karma of things.
