“Biographies of Eccentrics and Great Figures in Fantasy Literature: Memoirs of a Kokusho Kankokai Editor-in-Chief”

In my 40 years as an editor, I wrote down my recollections of the people who left a particularly deep impression on me in “Biographies of Eccentrics and Great Figures in Fantasy Literature,” published this January.

The book contains portraits of 12 eccentrics and great figures, including Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, who gained fame as the defendant in the Sade trial; Osamu Hashimoto, author of “Momojiri Musume” and “Yohen Genji Monogatari”; Shuntaro Matsuyama, a one-armed Sanskrit scholar; Tomohiko Sunaga, a precocious genius and vampire poet; and Takenori Nanjo, a hermit-like scholar of English literature who spends most of the year at hot springs.

Kesao Sato, the open-hearted and heavy-drinking president of Kokusho Kankokai who appears in the final chapter, often said, “Literature is wonderful because it has the power to change a person's life.” An editor's job is fundamentally about connecting people, and because the privileged and irreplaceable creatures known as books are involved, events stranger than fiction often occur.

The name of Marcel Schwob appears throughout this book like a secret ingredient. He was a minor novelist who lived in a foreign land, France, over 100 years ago. As a high school graduate, I was attending a vocational school for beauticians without even taking university entrance exams when I read Schwob's “The Book of Monelle,” which led me to make a major career shift toward the Department of French Literature at Keio University. I specifically limited my choice to Keio University because Professor Hajime Ohama, who translated the book, was a professor at Keio. In 1980, when I was a sophomore at Mita, I visited his office to get my book signed. Professor Ohama lamented slightly, saying, “This book is a limited edition of a few hundred copies and isn't in any bookstores. I wonder who on earth is reading it.”

In 2015, more than 30 years later, I created a complete works edition of Schwob centered on the translations left by my mentor. This year, more than 40 years later, a collection of Schwob's masterpieces has finally become available as a paperback (Kawade Bunko's “The King in the Golden Mask”).

There is one more bonus. The professor's daughter, Fumiko Ohama, won the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature in 2022. The fact that I ended up handling her award-winning work, “Hidama no Hate” (The End of the Sunny Spot), was due to the connection made during the production of Schwob's complete works.

The ties between people and books truly seem to be mysterious things.

“Biographies of Eccentrics and Great Figures in Fantasy Literature: Memoirs of a Kokusho Kankokai Editor-in-Chief”
Junichi Isozaki
Chikuma Shobo, 256 pages, 2,750 yen (tax included)