Light-up studio 031 You were the captain of your ship "Setting Sail" Yukio Tsuji

"Setting sail!"

It's Luffy. It's "ONE PIECE." It's an adventure story of men of the sea.

Looking into it, the manga started in 1996, and serialization began the following year. The TV anime started in 1999. Thirty years have passed. Children have become adults, and some even have children of their own. My, my. Luffy must be an adult too. ...No, surely not.

That was before I even entered elementary school. The tatami mats in the room were the sea, and cushions and cardboard boxes were the ship. I would sway my body from side to side, gradually approaching land. The land might be a low table or another cushion. When I stepped onto land, I surely must have raised my fist. Sometimes I might have even shouted.

"I see land! Now, for an adventure!"

I set foot on a new continent, and a new adventure begins. I have had that feeling many times. Decisions and actions like jumping off the stage of Kiyomizu-dera. Every one of them was heart-pounding and exciting—no, "exciting" is a lie. I was just purely, intensely nervous, so scared that I closed my eyes, yet I had no courage to turn back, and half-regretting the decision, I would jump off with a "Here goes!"

My first date, my first kiss, my first time running away from home, my first sex, my first time abroad, my first move, my first alcohol, my first job, my first...

Even though at first I was so nervous that I had no choice but to close my eyes tightly and jump, these things eventually became commonplace. The word "setting sail" also eventually became worn out and turned into an everyday term. "Setting sail" as a metaphor for starting something.

"Even though there were so many respectable people, / why did we admire those scoundrels, / the pirates?"

"We, my cousin and I, admired them, / who would be hung high at the execution grounds if caught, / and swore we would become pirates," you know.

Those days of boyhood. A world full of adventure that surely exists in everyone's memory unfolds before our eyes every day. Looking back now, they are days that are both heartwarming and nostalgic. The word "setting sail" had not yet been tarnished.

A sudden turn.

"How many years has it been now? / I whispered to my cousin, / who lay in a hospital bed with his eyes wide open." ... !!

...Let's calm down. Let's calm down and try reading the poem from the beginning once more.

Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney, Captain Smollett, rum-soaked Billy, blind Pew, John Silver. No mistake. They are all characters from that nostalgic "Treasure Island." The tattered cover, the old-fashioned illustrations. I can still vividly recall the feel of that red-black cloth-bound boy's library book. It definitely happened. That book might be deep in the stacks of some library, dreaming that someone will pick it up again.

Like the characters in Treasure Island, or perhaps even more certainly, we existed. Days of boyhood. And of course, days of girlhood. We were definitely there. Such small bodies, a soul so tiny it was hard to tell if it existed at all. And yet, I was definitely there. Now that I am much larger and have been given a social role, why do I feel like I have become much smaller than I was back then?

Anyway.

"We didn't become pirates / We took wives, built families, and worked, didn't we? / We weren't hung up high / But before we knew it, we became tattered"

We had many adventures. We encountered many crises. But in the end, we didn't become pirates, robbers, or revolutionaries. There were many precipices lurking in the mundane daily life that I couldn't see as a child. Just avoiding them was all I could do.

Hey. But weren't we pirates after all? Sometimes Dr. Livesey, sometimes Billy, occasionally John Silver. Didn't pirates live within us? Didn't we possess the courage of pirates and manage to get through our ordinary days?

Oh, "cousin who keeps your eyes wide open in the hospital bed"!

We have nothing to be ashamed of regarding our voyage.
Shouldn't we hold our heads higher?

bon voyage!

You were the captain of your ship.
You crossed many seas, overcame rough waves, and made it this far.
Captain, this is your final voyage!

The moon is bright,
and the sea is calm.

bon voyage!

The previous Light-up studio is here.