Kasai Zenzo
If you just try and keep drinking without a care in the world
Author | 16 January 1887 – 23 July 1928

Every organization has that one person who is funny to observe from afar, but a complete nuisance in close proximity. They get violent when drunk, knocking down beer bottles, covering themselves in vomit, and habitually exhibiting bizarre, eccentric behavior.

Author of numerous I-novels in the Taisho era (1912–1926), Kasai Zenzo—sometimes called the “Drunkard Author”—could surely be counted among these people.

But even if you’ve heard of him, not many among you will actually know any of his work by name. Some of his representative works include With the Children in Tow and Mourning Father. His work was always grounded in the negative aspects about himself: poverty, drunken frenzy, and illness. While some contemporaries such as Kikuchi Kan criticized his work, saying it was “not literature,” his self-deprecating writing style earned him many fans as well, especially among male students.

But in discussing Zenzo’s writing and his life, it is impossible to do so without also talking about his hardships. Even his breakthrough piece, With the Children in Tow, tells a story about poverty in which a father and his children wander the streets.

What, then, was the source of Zenzo’s hardship? Why was he so very poverty-stricken? Well, in his case, it’s not that he had no work. It’s that he wouldn’t work.

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Umezaki Haruo
If you start drinking methanol
Author | 15 February 1915 – 19 July 1965

There was a time when my body would not accept sake. Whenever I drank it, I would always feel unwell the next morning. I was a big beer drinker at the time, so I figured that perhaps sake just wasn’t for me.

But as I became a working adult and got more opportunities to drink the stuff at fancier places, I realized something: what I had been drinking back then had not been the real deal. See, what with me being so broke, I would have to go out drinking in more dubious places, and I’m guessing what I had been drinking there had actually been cheap, synthetic sake.

Synthetic sake is, in a narrow sense of the word, different from actual sake. It’s an alcoholic beverage which includes amino acids and other food additives, but of course I had no clue about any of this back then. Some of you might now be scolding me. “Who cares what it is as long as it gets you drunk. Don’t be such a damn snob.”

It’s true that there are people out there who do not care what it is they’re drinking so long as it contains alcohol. Some people can drink anything and everything and still be completely fine. Be that as it may, there are plenty of examples in history of people who—because of their single-minded desire to get drunk—chose the wrong kind of alcohol to drink, and it nearly cost them their lives.

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Fujisawa Shuko
If you have important work to do but you become an alcoholic
Go player | 14 June 1925 – 8 May 2009

“What’s more important, me or alcohol?!”

If there was a woman asking you that in tears, what would you say? “No one’s ever asked me that and no one ever will. It’d be pointless for me to even contemplate.” Now, now. You mustn’t be so uncouth. After all, it’s good to have a shelter for every storm.

I read this in some magazine over a decade ago, but apparently if one was to answer the question above with “alcohol,” that would mean they were on the verge of becoming someone with an alcohol dependency problem (hereafter referred to as “alcoholic”).

In my younger days I would have said, “I mean, okay, but be that as it may… Still it’s gotta be alcohol for me.” For better or worse, alcohol will never betray you. Although, of course, if you enter into a close relationship with alcohol, it suddenly becomes more dangerous than any woman out there.

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Izumiyama Sanroku
If your boss suddenly throws his arms around some woman
Politician | 30 March 1896 – 7 July 1981

In all my time of drinking, while I am ashamed to admit I have been known to regularly drink myself into states of unconsciousness, I am also proud to say that I have done so without ever dabbling in harassment—neither the “power” nor the “sexual” variety. Although, come to think of it, I’m not even part of any organization where I had power to abuse or subordinates to harass.

At any rate, while I enjoy getting swacked with the help of booze, I have never been known to swack others with my fists. Furthermore, I do not drunkenly whisper dirty jokes into the ears of random women.

“Of course you don’t,” I hear the salarymen scolding me. “Why are you stating the obvious?” But in the world of politics, there has never been any shortage of shameless speech or behavior. Members of parliament regularly make headlines with their statements about women’s issues, and important cabinet ministers often face allegations of sexual harassment. This is something we have all become accustomed to.

However, surely the only politician to have been drunk at the National Diet—where he was then responsible for sexual harassment on a level that would go down in history books—was former Minister of Finance Izumiyama Sanroku.

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Furuta Akira
If your boss won’t ever let you go home
Business owner | 13 January 1906 – 30 October 1973

We all have our reasons for drinking.

There are some who are faint of heart, so they drink like whales just to hide their embarrassment or shyness. You’ll often hear people describing these individuals using words like, “He’s a great guy so as long as he doesn’t drink.” But for the person in question, it could be that it feels like they’re incapable of doing anything unless they drink. Or they might find it troublesome that anyone should ever think of them as a “great guy” to begin with. They just can’t take it without a drink.

But although one might feel that they “can’t take it” without liquor, it’s quite the challenge to drink during the daytime if you happen to be an office worker. Or even if you’re not an office worker, but a popular actor perhaps. If you don’t even have enough time to sleep, you might not have time to drink either.

That is what I used to think until just a while ago. But now when even a Johnny’s Entertainment pop idol—someone who was constantly busy with everything from doing renowned TV music shows to planting rice—could be forced to retire due to getting drunk off his face, it proves that no matter how busy you are, anyone who wants to drink will always find a way to do so.

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