ABSTRACT
After a spell in hospital immediately following the end of the Diet session, Shozo resumed the task of coordinating the defence of the Kawamata demonstrators. The doctors at the Juntendo Hospital had been puzzled at his illness, as it seemed to have no obvious cause. An enigmatic letter of Shozo’s, dated 11 May, may provide a clue, revealing as it does a depth of sensitivity that would have amazed those (and they were many) who still saw him as a pugnacious, loud-voiced demagogue. He links his ‘sickness’ with his feeling for his country’s ills:
I’ve been running around on behalf of the Kawamata defendants, night and day, and on other pollution business and in trouble night and day, too, from my ‘brain sickness’— a nameless, elusive thing, this sickness. It has nothing to do with physical wellbeing. Fortunately I am well, at the moment, in a physical sense, but my mind is worse than ever…the doctors can’t make it out. In short, it saps my memory, patience, ability to think: terrible, the worst sickness you could think of. The spirit isn’t affected, though; sincerity, frankness, short temper, anger-I’m still capable of all these, Less pleasure, more pain. Thepain isn’t for myself, though. It’s for the evil that has attacked our society. It’s so hard to fight, and people don’t realise how evil it is, either in the country or here in Tokyo. It’s this that’s eating my life away I’m a sensitive fellow, you know; no hero. I feel the world’s ills before the world feels them, that’s all. Whatever you do, please don’t think it’s worry about being poor or anything of that sort that’s made me ill… My sickness isn’t an individual thing: it’s the world’s sickness. If society recovers, I’ll live another ten years. If it can’t save the Shimotsuke people from death, this year’ll be my last… Remember this prophecy!
