Letters from the Young Shinzo Koizumi and Takitaro Minakami to Kakichi Kajiwara

Collection: Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies (Donated by Mr. Kenji Sato)

A single photograph showing fearless young men with teachers lined up in the foreground. It is a group photo of the 17 graduates of the college Department of Politics in 1910. The location is a small hill on the southwest side of Mita Campus known as Inariyama, where the Mita Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) is currently relocated, with wooden school buildings standing in the background. In the front row, from the right, are the distinguished teachers Kazusada Tanaka, Tokuzo Fukuda, Kiichi Horie, Kiroku Hayashi, and Suiichiro Tanaka. The young man standing directly behind Hayashi, who is wearing a high-collared suit, is the future President Shinzo Koizumi. He was 22 years old that year. Second from the right in the back row, with his arms crossed, is Koizumi's close friend Kakichi Kajiwara. Among these two great friends was Shozo Abe, later the novelist Takitaro Minakami. He was one year senior to Koizumi and was a young man skilled in all things, but he neglected studying just for grades and graduated from the department of political economy two years later. Koizumi's house was located just down the stone steps of Inariyama; he and his close friends visited each other's homes, talking vibrantly over tea or sake. This circle also included the art historian Yomokichi Sawaki and the writer Mantaro Kubota. The Koizumi and Minakami letters to Kakichi Kajiwara donated this time are a group of letters through which one can almost hear their conversations, totaling nearly 100 letters.

The central topic of their early conversations was literary discussions focused on "Mita Bungaku," which had recently been launched with the recruitment of Kafu Nagai. At times, Takitaro wrote of Nagai's plays as "failed works," and noted that Kaoru Osanai, a playwright and literature teacher, asked, "Is Mr. Nagai serious?" He showed no restraint, even writing about a story of unrequited love from high school days that he heard from Osanai. Koizumi, at one point, wrote that Seibei Kashima—who abandoned his wife and family business to take the popular Shinbashi geisha Ponta as his second wife—was "far greater than Shimpei Goto or Inazo Nitobe."

The exchange of letters vividly describing their current lives to Kajiwara, who had returned to Kobe, continued throughout their lives. In the Koizumi letter shown in the photo, dated 1919, Kajiwara had written expressing his opposition to the introduction of universal suffrage in Japan. In response, Koizumi wrote passionately, "I am appalled," and "Shinzo Koizumi, who received a proper education at Keio University, does not hold such cowardly views."

Though the handwriting of the two cannot be called elegant, even after 100 years, the spirit of freedom at Keio University still gushes forth vividly from their characters.

These items were displayed at the 2025 Exhibition of Newly Acquired Materials. Major newly discovered letters by Takitaro will be published in issues 160 and 161 of "Mita Bungaku" (Winter 2025 and Spring 2025 issues).

(Takeyuki Tokura, Associate Professor, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies)