Great figures who went through “Regret toward a loved one”
You wish you had done more for someone dear. Read the life stories of 6 Japanese historical figures who went through something similar.
Figures who went through this
- Date Masamune — The Man Who Played Tough to the End
"If you make a statue of me after I die, make both eyes right." Ashamed of his one blind eye, this man sent a robe to the mother who is said to have poisoned him. When his head was on the line, he brought up that eye himself. The last thing he left his daughter was a reply that stopped after one line.
- Dazai Osamu — The Man Who Pretended to Talk in His Sleep
A boy who wanted his father's fountain pen could only ask for it by pretending to talk in his sleep. He lied, borrowed money, and even begged a prize committee, "Please give it to me." The embarrassing, hard-to-look-away life of a writer.
- Koizumi Setsu — The Storyteller Who Never Gave Her Name
"Looking at a book, no good. It must be only your story, your words, your thoughts." That is what a husband said to his wife when she told him old tales with a book in her hand. Most of the stories in Kwaidan, his book of Japanese ghost stories, were told to him by her. Her name is not on the cover.
- Makino Tomitaro — The Man Who Spared Nothing
"One who begrudges money cannot be a plant scientist." So wrote the only son of a sake shop when he was about twenty. He poured the family fortune into plants, and wrote about plants at a desk while court officers seized the furniture beside him. What held that life together was his wife, who joked that she was raising a spoiled son who wasted money on his hobby.
- Nakahara Chuya — The Man He Could Not Hate
On the day his girlfriend left, he carried her breakable things to the house of the man she was moving in with. He wrote of that man as "my enemy." Twelve years later, he trusted him with his last book of poems. The bitter, hard-to-hate life of a poet who died at thirty.
- Noguchi Hideyo — The Man Who Could Never Pay It Back
His classmates each gave a small coin after his essay about his burned hand was shared with the class. From that day on, he kept borrowing, spending it all, and asking again. The messy, lovable life of the man who was once on Japan's 1,000-yen bill.