#Ichiro: yep I found him so weird

[evilendures]

He’s just glad Vasil’s not asking where he got the kid from.

[artificervaldi]

I wrote some sad androids, but human?

Jiro did his best to take care of his little brothers, after all, he was the only one who could do it. Well… Maybe he wasn’t the only one, but he was the best fit for the job. Ichiro was always getting into fights with other kids and the orphanage workers were dealing with him…

So he was the one who was going to have to take care of them! That was fine, though, he knew their little quirks better than anyone else did, after all. Saburo and his whistling that always gave him away when he was hiding, and his violent tendencies that reminded Jiro too much of Ichiro. Rei always being so quiet and emotionless, often mistaken for the eldest even though he clung to Jiro most of the time…

Yep. He knew them better than anyone else and he had to take the responsibility that came with it. Even if that meant having to drag Saburo away from the older kids when he got too cocky, or apologizing to the younger kids when Rei accidentally made them cry.

It was hard, but Jiro made it work. He just had to take some time to himself to cry sometimes.

But hey, it wasn’t all that bad. Sometimes looking out for his little brothers was nice, or even fun. Usually that involved convincing Saburo to whistle along as he (tried to) play guitar and Ichiro (pretended to) play his trumpet or snuggling up with Rei at bed time… But they still counted!

Too bad he could pinpoint the exact moment him watching out for them started going, well, a little down hill. Those violent tendencies that Saburo had mixed with his cockiness started to catch up to him and he ended up stabbing an older kid in the leg with a stick when they started fighting. Even Ichiro, who was the one Jiro expected to always get in fights, didn’t go that far…

Saburo had been in big trouble after that. Jiro was pretty sure he didn’t see him for a few days, and when he did see him, he wasted no time scolding him. He couldn’t go around stabbing people just because they upset you!

His little brother didn’t want to help him, and it didn’t help that Ichiro was wishy-washy about just how bad it was and Rei was saying it wasn’t worth pointing out. It seemed like his other brothers weren’t entirely on board with this scolding thing.

That seemed bad to Jiro. If they didn’t make it clear to Saburo that it really was bad and it wasn’t just the adults being sticks in the mud, he might do it again! Or do something worse…!

Eventually, Saburo had seemed to get it and Jiro finally dropped it at Rei’s quiet insistence to do just that… And later that week, his own little brother stabbed him in the hand and made it very clear he didn’t like him.

Jiro wanted to get to the bottom of it, find out why he was so angry with him, but Saburo was getting smarter. When he hid from Jiro, he didn’t whistle anymore until he was ready to be found. And was he good at hiding.

It didn’t take long for any chances of figuring out what was going on to disappear, though. A man came along and decided he wanted to adopt Saburo. Just Saburo. Jiro had tried to argue against it, but his brothers didn’t seem as interested.

Rei asked why even try and fight it? If the adults decided it, they decided it. Ichiro said it made things easier for him. Saburo and him wouldn’t be butting heads all the time anymore… Jiro felt that second thing could be solved by Ichiro not trying to protect Jiro whenever Saburo got violent, seeing as Jiro could take care of himself, but whatever.

Saburo seemed torn the day he finally left. He said he was happy to be leaving and that he never wanted to see them again. But he looked back at them, looked back at Jiro and stared for a really long time. Jiro wondered if it was because he’d miss them or if he’d miss beating up on him.

It was hard to tell, and soon enough the other two moved on. Ichiro would even crack jokes, asking how long they thought it would be until the man asked to make an exchange on the kid he adopted…

If anything like that happened, Jiro and his remaining brothers weren’t there to see it. A nice man, a doctor, had shown up and adopted all three of them. According to Ichiro, he’d been dead set on it as soon as he heard his name! Jiro found that kind of weird, but he tried to not let it phase him.

It’d be nice for them to have a family, a life outside of the orphanage. Jiro was excited to see his new home, actually…! But in the back of his mind, he kinda thought about Saburo. Was he doing okay at his new home…?

He hoped so, it was too bad he couldn’t see him again. He’d still love to talk things out.

[mashalocked-blog]

[Translation] Dec 1, 2017 appearance on Tetsuko’s Room

(Thanks to 福山雅治甜心club for the Chinese subs)

T: Tetsuko M: Masha

[Tomoe Gakuen plays] T: Today's guest wrote this song for me. It's Fukuyama Masaharu. Please come in. [Masha walks in] T: You gained new experiences from visiting your elementary school, right? M: Yes. T: Welcome, do sit down. We'll talk about your mischievous acts in elementary school too. M: Please take care of me. T: I heard your legs are very long. M: Oh, really? T: Looking at them now, it's quite scary. How tall are you? M: I'm around 181, 180cm. It varies on different days. T: I think you're very handsome. M: Thank you very much. T: You're welcome. The drama 'Totto-chan' has started airing, I requested for you to write the theme song right? M: Yep. After I appeared on 'Tetsuko's Room' the previous time... T: Yeah, last year. M: At the corridor... T: Yes, it was at the corridor... M: You directly offered it to me. But at that time, I just accepted without thinking much. T: It must have been hard doing this. M: Yes, it was very difficult. It's just like looking at Mount Fuji from afar and looking at it close-up, the feeling is totally different. The truth is, when I went closer, I found that it wasn't easy to describe at all. But to be able to write this theme song for your life, one-half of your life, I reminded myself that I'm describing you. I'll think of you doing this and that, and what you're thinking in those moments. I wrote the song while thinking along these lines. I wanted to climb Mount Fuji, Mount Tetsuko, but I got lost in the forest at the foot of the mountain. I gradually couldn't find my way. I was really at a loss this time. T: We had a meal afterwards. M: Yeah, I thought it would be better to see Tetsuko face-to-face to have a chat. I had to interview you, otherwise I wouldn't be able to find an endpoint for the lyrics. It took around 4 hours. T: Yes, it was quite long. We talked about many things. M: Just both of us. T: Sometimes after I replied your emails, there would be new emails coming in again. M: Normally, I don't let my staff see my unfinished work. I complete them without anyone else seeing. But this time, I sent the unfinished work to you, asking, "How's this? How's that?" If I didn't get confirmation from you, I thought it would be hard to finish it. So I asked you for confirmation a few times, I think it was three times? T: Yes. M: Many times. T: Yes, I thought it was quite good already, at that time. I replied you, "That's good", but you felt that you hadn't reached a standard that you were satisfied with. M: At the start, I didn't want the song to just revolve around gratitude, I wanted it to be more than that. T: That's great. M: So in the final version, the endpoint was focused on the word 'freedom'. I think you represent the Showa-era female's characteristics of freedom, peace and love. T: Haha, that's over-praise. M: I realised females can live freely in this way too. That's what I thought. T: That's a good thought. M: So I thought that I should include this at the end of the song. T: After 36 years, you went back to your elementary school in Nagasaki. M: Yes, I really wanted to film the music video in my school. T: I see. M: At first, I really wanted to go to Tomoe Gakuen, but now...it's no longer there. T: It got destroyed in the war. M: Now, it's the black peacock... T: At Jiyugaoka. M: Yes, it's there. Because it's gone, I just went back to my elementary school. T: It was because of this. M: Yes. I thought it wouldn't be possible to film it there. When we were discussing it, the MV director, the creative director asked me, "What do you think of going back to your elementary school and becoming a special teacher, just for one day?" T: That's amazing. M: I was thinking, "Eh?! What is this about returning back to my school to become a teacher for a day?" The school told me, why not talk about dreams with the children? Talking about dreams in an elementary school, much less my own school, isn't that the kind of thing that only people like Suzuki Ichiro can do? I was in panic at that time. I anxiously wondered if the children knew who I was. T: They probably know you. M: After all, I don't often appear on dramas or TV programmes now. Will children really know who I am? They probably don't know what I'm doing. I was really worried. T: Yet the children were looking at you much interest. Let's take a look at this MV. [MV plays] T: So cute! M: Everyone's expressions were great, they were really cute. T: Everyone knows you! M: I was so relieved. [MV ends] T: These are 4th year and 2nd year students, right? They seemed to be listening to you really eagerly. M: During this class on 'dreams', everyone drew out who they wanted to be in the future. But the school thought that it would be unfair if only this class got to participate, so they asked me to visit all the classrooms. So I visited them all. T: It must've been tiring. M: Yes, but I was really happy to meet with the current students from my old elementary school. It made me very happy. T: Tamori has said this before - that when he visited Nagasaki, the taxi driver didn't say much and just brought him to your house. M: When I went to Music Station, Tamori said that when he was filming 'Bura Tamori', he went on the taxi and got asked, "Tamori-san, do you want to take a look at Fukuyama's house?" T: That's a bit weird, isn't it? M: Yeah, so Tamori rejected him. T: It's something to be happy over, to be so popular in your hometown. M: Yep, when I left Nagasaki at 18 years old, I didn't have anything I wanted to do there. I thought that if I remained there, I wouldn't become the person I wanted to be. It feels like my hometown and my dreams are opposites. To be known by everyone now makes me very happy. T: When you were young, you were very mischievous right? M: In elementary school? Yes. [Picture of Masha at 5 years old] T: How cute. M: At that time, when I saw bananas on the butsudan (Buddhist altar) at my house or my friend's house, I would take them and eat it. T: Very calmly. M: Yeah. When I was an elementary student, I practised karate. There was a dojo near my house. Karate is a kind of martial arts, which can  hone the mind. "What you learn here cannot be used outside", "You can't use it for fighting", although I was warned, but the more I heard it, the more I wanted to try it out. T: It couldn't be helped. M: Yeah, it couldn't be helped. This photo makes me look like I'm studying. During gym class, I played truant and hid under the lecture table. The police even came to school. T: Why? M: I think Japan boycotted the Olympics at that time- T: Yes, there was this one time... M: In Russia (t/n: 1980 Moscow Olympics)... At that time, my father told me, "Masaharu, do you know what's a boycott? You can't go, you've got to boycott it, boycott." This made an impression on me for some reason, so when I attended gym lesson, my classmate asked me, "Hey, should we boycott this too?" So I hid under the lectern, and then I fell asleep. T: In such a narrow place? M: I laid down and fell asleep, and missed the chance to go out. When I opened my eyes, I didn't know why there was such a big uproar in class, saying, "Fukuyama is missing!", "Where is he?". I think my mother was called to the school, into the classroom. Even the police were called. T: Even the police! Because the lectern is facing the opposite direction... M: Yes, the lectern was only this tall [gestures to around somewhere below the knee] T: You went in there? M: I went in. T: You made yourself totally flat. M: It just so happened that there were lecterns around this height, and there were two at that spot. So I laid down inside and hid myself. I wanted to boycott the class, but I felt asleep. Because there was such an uproar outside, I had to go out. After I went out, my mother gave me a good beating in front of everyone else. T: Your mother was amazing... wow, but how did your mother manage to hit you in front of everyone else? M: I think she was very agitated. T: Were you already grown up then? Or were you still a little kid? M: I wasn't really big yet, it was around 3rd or 4th grade. T: So it was just a so-so age. If you were really grown-up, your mother wouldn't have been able to hit you anyway. M: I got scolded by my mother very often. Because there was just me and my older brother, we would often fight for no good reason. At that time, we would fight from dinner onwards. My mother would take a knife and walk out of the kitchen, saying, "Stop fighting!" while waving the knife around and hitting us. T: Sounds scary. M: I thought it was really dangerous then, so I told her to stop. She said it was okay since she was using the back of the knife. I don't think she was an expert in this area...in using the back of the knife. T: Your mother sounds interesting. M: Yes, now that I think of it. She was really different in this aspect. T: She wasn't just angry, but she seemed rather strict too. M: No, not at all. T: In Tomoe Gakuen, Mr Kobayashi was my big benefactor. To you, who was your biggest benefactor? M: During the process of writing the song, it once again made me realise my biggest benefactor is probably my grandmother. Mr Kobayashi validated your personality, everything about you. T: He told me, "You're actually a good child." He used the word "actually" but I didn't realise it at the time, because I didn't think he would honestly think that I was a good child. M: But because of him, you came to realise it was okay to be the way you are. It didn't mean that you could do whatever you wanted, but his words did give you confidence. Because Mr Kobayashi gave you validation, you also felt responsibility for it, that you couldn't let him down. It was the same for me too. Both my mother's mother and my father's mother never got angry with me. Although I was so mischievous... T: And your mother was so strict. Oh, it's your grandma's hands. M: These are the hands of my maternal grandmother. She's always been growing mikan (Japanese oranges). When she was young, my grandfather passed away. She was a young woman all alone, who had never worked in the farm before. She married into a family who worked on farms and gave birth... that was an era that encouraged childbearing. She gave birth to 5-6 children, including premature deaths. T: Your mother's brothers. M: She gave birth to many children. But because my grandfather passed away so young, she had to grow mikan while taking care of her children. Just hearing about this makes me respect her a lot. I've never been scolded by her. Somewhere in my heart, I thought, "I can't let my grandmother be embarrassed of me". T: Can you sing 'Tomoe Gakuen' for us, please? M: Of course, I'll use a guitar. T: Please bring the guitar up. M: I'll start singing. [Tomoe Gakuen acoustic live] T: Thank you so much! T: You'll be performing on Music Station at 8pm tonight, yes? I want to go too, it seems like it'll be fun. M: I heard that you want to go. T: I really do. M: Is that ok? T: I don't know too. If I could see you playing it live, I would feel happy too. Really, thank you so much. When you came on the show last year, didn't you teach me this? [sweeping motion with hand] M: Ah, Instagram? T: Yes. Please take a look over there.

[footage from 2016 appearance plays]

T: It seems like it's going to be a war of photos. M: This is...? T: I took my fake eyelashes down and was wondering what to do with them. M: You look so cute. Speaking of Instagram, since I don't have an account, I can't claim to know much of it. But if you post this up... I think it'll be very popular. What about opening an Instagram account? T: Let's discuss Instagram when we meet again, then. M: Alright, I want to learn about it. [footage ends]

T: When the show was about to end, we discussed this. Afterwards, that became my first post. I started using Instagram after learning from my friends. The most recent photo is me as a panda. M: Of course, I do look at your Instagram. I've said this before. I thought about it again, and it seems that you're really a genius at making people happy. T: This photo is me with a fork on my head. M: You came up with the idea yourself? T: Yes. M: Although I introduced you to Instagram, I didn't use it myself. So, I opened an account. Honestly, it didn't go as you planned it to be. T: Really? M: Yes. T: Is this you? Wow, you look good. M: How do I say it... it feels like I'm pretending to look cool. This is when I went to Venice. I got invited to the film festival there. T: Everyone likes to post photos of food, but I don't do that. I only post photos that I find interesting from time to time. M: To you, it's important to be interesting, right? T: Yes, because I decide whether to be friends with someone based on whether he/she's interesting. There's something else I want to request you for. What is it? Why? M: Let's take a photo. T: Sure, is there anything at the back that I can wear to hide my face? Yes, this is what I saw just now, the panda masks. M: This one? T: Ok, I'll use this one. M: I'll borrow the panda to use it too. You really match well with the panda. What about me when I wear it? Is it ok? T: Looks nice. M: Really? You can't tell who I am right? [walks over] Ok, I'll come over here... the camera is here. [points] I'll take the photo then. 1, 2, panda! How's this photo? T: It seems good. M: It looks a bit flat. T: We've both turned into pandas. How about posting this on Instagram? M: Yes, of course. T: Are you posting it? M: Can I? T: Of course, of course. So what will you write in the caption? M: Maybe my followers will increase. Thanks, haha. T: These are spectacles from Tetsuko's Room's 50th anniversary. I think they look good. M: I think pandas are better? Let's take a photo again. It seems like the programme's ending. T: So odd, haha.