A Dedicated Life (全身小説家)

A Shisso Production

December 16, 1989

Good morning.

How's it going?

A DEDICATED LIFE

Can the tragedy of Okinawa...

be considered greaterthan those of Kyushu or Tokyo?

Honestly...

one tragedy is enough in itself.

It's true if you go to Okinawa,

you see the US Army base and barbed wire.

A rare sight in Japan. Okinawa is small, too.

But for us novelists,

is the tragedy in Okinawa more tragic than any others?

What you wrote about Okinawa is a collective experience.

Why not write about you and your family?

If you want to write a real tragedy,

you only need to focus on one small helpless tragedy.

It doesn't matter how well you write.

Just focus on one thing.

Why can't you write about one thing?

I always wanted to have my own theatrical troupe.

My grandfather was Dainoshin.

Grandfather Ichikawa Dainoshin.

Sometimes, some of us joined him on the stage.

They had their faces buried between his legs.

They were really into it, too.

Only he could have done it, just like his novels.

He knows what to do on stage.

Exactly what we expect to see from a striptease.

He moves just like a woman does.

He knows how to get people excited.

He does it with a touch of pathos.

He shows us what he can't teach by literally stripping himself bare.

I find it grotesque.

But that's why it's so wonderful.

New Year's Day, 1990

Mr. Haniya, here's to your health and your works to come.

Cheers.

Yutaka Haniya, Novelist

I want a theatrical troupe.

I don't care what kind.

I'm looking for actors.

I need about ten.

Of course, I'm the lead.

We will start off in retirement homes, and then...

travel to my hometown.

I will be a star.

It's better if we have less of an audience.

I just want to form my theatrical troupe.

The Traveling Player's Hinterland Theater.

We only go to hospitals and nursing homes.

One person I really want is Tokue.

Especially you. That's right.

You will be wonderful.

I mean as a supporting cast. A very good part.

You know I'm the lead.

You can play a stepchild who gets bullied.

I play the mother who bullies you.

I wear a wig and bully you like hell.

You try to resist, but in the end, you die.

He definitely has a feminine side.

He is a man, but...

sometimes I think he is a woman.

I suppose he's joking,

but he tells me he wants to be my stepmother and bully me.

Everything we do will be a tragedy.

Everyone dies in the end. I mean everyone.

Let me introduce...

Mitsuharu Inoue of the Hinterland Theater house.

That's a hit.

All shows will be sold out.

And I will quit literature.

He's the first person who ever understood me.

I think so. I do.

His love... I mean...

I really feel his compassion.

Maybe I'm fooling myself.

I feel really lucky to have met someone like him.

You're wondering if you want to get married or not.

Whatever you choose, you will be disappointed.

What is disappointment?

Don't play dumb.

You're always disappointed.

He knows.

You're no good.

He doesn't work hard enough.

I do.

I work hard.

No, you don't. You write trash.

You're not willing to learn.

You must learn about the human soul.

- I understand what you're saying. - Prove it.

You don't know how hard I'm really struggling.

- You have to prove it. - I will.

- Express it. - I will.

I'll show you what a fool I really am.

All writers are fools.

Mr. Haniya always speaks the truth.

I mean without ego.

That's why he allows you to be here.

You shut up and listen.

You are no good. What's with you?

Talking nonsense.

Just get out of here.

- You are no good. - Just don't say anything.

You're really something.

Just not today.

You want me to say more?

You just get the hell out. I will expel you from the club.

I have no more patience.

I said get out!

No need to leave.

I said out!

Out!

His eyes are so penetrating.

His gaze is pure. He has a look that makes you feel...

he's gone through so much in search of something noble.

That's the kind of face he has.

I really believe in him.

Sometimes it hurts and sometimes I don't feel anything.

And today?

It hurts a little.

Inoue underwent surgery for cancer in August 1989.

We have to look out for the spread of cancer.

It looks the same as before. We'll see if it grows bigger.

If not, we'll just leave it.

Are there symptoms of the spread?

Not really.

I see.

May be jaundice, depending on where it's spreading.

So regular tests are the only way to detect the spread?

I see.

No fever or anything?

No.

Mitsuharu Inoue Autobiography

Born May 15th, 1926 Manchuria, China

I'm sixty-three years old.

My father was a craftsman, an Imari pot maker.

He was very skilled.

He traveled to China.

He got a job at a hotel...

to work on a mural.

He became very friendly with a Japanese girl and she had me.

But my father was a vagabond and didn't stick around.

My mother got sick of him and married someone else.

Father: Yukio Mother: Takako

Yukio was a fine craftsman.

He wandered all over Manchuria, and contact was lost.

At the age of four, Inoue was separated from his mother.

My father disappeared and my mother married another man.

So my sister and I came back to Japan.

In 1933, at age 7, Inoue returned to Japan.

He lived with his grandmother and his sister in Sasebo.

He didn't send any money.

Back then, there were a lot of tiny shops...

all the way along the Sasebo River.

My grandmother set up a tiny booth and sold pots.

I helped her at the shop.

We three survived selling pots at the Riverside Market.

That wasn't enough, so we had to move to Sakito.

There was a coal mine there.

My grandmother and I gotjobs.

In 1938, at age 12, Inoue and his family moved to Sakito.

Chikuho Fuji - Coal Slag Hill

Thank you so much.

I'll ask again later.

Thank you.

Let's say this is an entrance.

We dig this deep today, and tomorrow, this much.

Aweek later, we dig this far.

If it catches fire here,

all the paths get destroyed.

So they usually set up a door every thirty meters.

Just like a submarine. They need to stop the water if it gets hit.

So if it catches fire here, the doors are closed.

Everyone here is dead. These guys could be, too.

But the worst ones are these guys.

They can survive. They can run away.

Sometimes they get locked up here alive.

So they suffer terrible deaths.

They close the doors regardless.

It can't be helped.

They all die.

I've seen fingernails stuck to the door.

They tried to crawl their way out.

It sounds very dramatic, but it's true.

And accidents happen often and miners die.

The job I invented was...

to contact the souls of the dead.

What all the widows really want to hear...

is that their husbands died instantly without pain.

That they didn't suffer at all.

I tell them, "Oh, the gas got to me,

and I died right away."

If I tell them they suffered, they wouldn't believe me.

My grandmothertook care of appointments, like a dentist.

"He's very busy this week. Can you come in on Friday?"

Reservations were required.

If my client's name is Fusako, I say...