Author Archives: Henkka

Learning by Drinking: Kojima Takeo

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Kojima Takeo
If you’re broke but still you drink anyway
Mahjong player | 11 February 1936 – 28 May 2018

How to drink when you have no money?

This is a major dilemma for the destitute salaryman. “Just sit still and don’t go drinking.” “Why not just drink at home?” If these were viable options, it’d be a non-issue to begin with.

Listen, we’re not asking to be drinking bottles of Rémy Martin in Ginza, or that it has to be literally Igawa Haruka fixing us highballs at the counter.

But hell, it’d be nice to at least get to drink some draft beer in some back alley that reeks of piss. We simply want some cloudy sake to make our minds cloudy, too. Sometimes it gets old just drinking chu-hi’s and watching YouTube videos, you know?

You work and you work, but you just never seem to have any money. You save and you save until finally you have enough that you just might be able to go out drinking. But even if you did, it would only feel suffocating. No wonder you feel miserable—under those circumstances, even great men would be staring into the palms of their hands in despair. Just what is one to do?

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Learning by Drinking: Mifune Toshiro

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Mifune Toshiro
If you start throwing punches at the yakuza
Actor | 1 April 1920 – 24 December 1997

Mifune Toshiro is a movie star surely known by everyone.

Joining the Toho film company in 1946 and debuting the following year in the film Snow Trail, he won the San Marco Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 for his role in Rashomon, making him famous worldwide. Similarly at the Venice Film Festival he also won the Best Actor Award twice, for Yojimbo and Red Beard.

In 1962, he established Mifune Productions, achieving success with large-scale works including The Sands of Kurobe and Samurai Banners. He also starred in foreign films, such as Red Sun and Shogun. Furthermore, he made his name by appearing in several films that now remain etched in Japanese film history, such as Seven Samurai, The Rickshaw Man, and High and Low.

He was also highly influential in the overseas film industry, as evidenced by the fact that he was offered the roles of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader in Star Wars (which he ultimately turned down). In 2016, his name was inscribed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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Learning by Drinking: Dazai Osamu

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Dazai Osamu
If you’re broke but you drink anyway
Author | 19 June 1909 – 13 June 1948

“Wait here. I’m gonna go take out some money.”

One night around twenty years ago, I was out for drinks with a college senior of mine. He’d told me he was buying. And yet, he had just moments before left the establishment, leaving me behind like some sort of a sacrificial offering.

Were the same thing to happen today, I would just tell him to pay with his credit card and be done with it. But seeing as the two of us were students back then, both of us the sort of people who blew whatever money we had left and right, we didn’t carry such dangerous items with us.

I knew he wasn’t the sort of person to just abandon one of his juniors. But unfortunately, this guy was drunk. And not just drunk—he was plastered.

Would a man who was this drunk be able to successfully withdraw money from the ATM? And if so, would he be able to find his way back in his unconscious state? What if he passed out on the way? Did this man even have a clear understanding as to his present location?

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Learning by Drinking: Introduction

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(See here for a synopsis of this book.)

You feel so incredibly sick and hungover that you can’t even get up.

I would venture to guess that quite a few of the people reading this book have experienced the aforementioned feeling before. If only you hadn’t gone to that second or third bar last night; no, if only you’d just passed on that last drink.

But lying in bed regretting such matters isn’t going to solve anything.

Just as it is apparently important for a company employee to remain at work even when they’re doing absolutely nothing, I have similarly been told by many people older and wiser than me how, come hell or high water, company employees must always strive to make their way to the office, no matter what.

I must say, though, that it has always been a mystery to me how a human being who literally has to crawl their way to the toilet could possibly make it to the office of all places.

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Takahashi Yuichi – Tooi Machi (English Lyrics)

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遠い街
Distant Town

In a distant town, surrounded by mountains, stands an old gas station
Day after day, waiting for customers, the man there works away

Unconcerned with the oil and sweat sullying his hands
He simply smokes his cigarette

In the scorching afternoon heat, he opens the half-broken faucet
Cool water spraying against his tanned, brawny arms

In a nursery school, near the gas station, is where his lover works
She yearns for the big city; says it’s her dream to live there

She would always tell him
“Let’s leave this place together!”

Not saying a word, he would light his cigarette
Always a hint of sadness on his face, removing his glasses

Staying here would ruin them, she would insist
Him, always just quietly listening, wiping his glasses

Dust blowing in the dry wind across the road
Today, just as every other day, he heads to work

Even if everyone else was to go, leaving him in his lonesome
He alone would remain in this town, no matter what

Her feelings grow distant — she gives up on the halfhearted man
And one morning, she quits her job and gets on a long-distance bus

As they parted the man spoke
“Think of me when you get lonely”

Dust blowing in the dry wind across the road
The bus, with her inside, vanishes into the distance

While everyone else abandons this place, leaving it behind
He alone would remain in this town, living there forever

Today, just as every other day, he lights his cigarette
Only a hint of sadness on his face, removing his glasses

Even if everyone else was to go, leaving him in his lonesome
He alone would remain in this town, no matter what

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