IX
At any age, the job of those people who are in the position to run national government management, I mean the power holding class is to facilitate their nation’s social environments where the people are able to live under the prosperous and resourceful economy. I myself had to write stories to publish and make money for my own living and further continue the life as a novelist. The books I wrote naturally tended to inlay the contents being read by people who belonged to such wide ranges of the social class. The books which were sold well and read well were those, reportage tone, fact deploring character. I thought those fact deploring stories would give effects to those state running politicians in the way they should reconsider their concept from what they had done for a century in South Africa under their colonial policy. I could express such acid criticism tone only in the Summing Up just in the faint way of expression that the British had done so much apathetic control of colonialism. However, I did not know exactly what was done in my childhood time. Now I grew up as the novelist, a little known in the literary societies, even in the world wide scale, that if I wrote those fact deploring stories taken from the newspapers issued in those times it gave such sensational impact to the people in the British society. In the libraries of the newspaper publishers such as I mentioned, The Straits Times or Malay Mail in those southern island countries where the British Empire occupied as their colonial lands, there remained, a large piles of filed news articles. I was able to pick out the articles or records concerned with so many scandalous incidents left without being effaced but for long slept in the publishers’ library in the flow of time. These news reportage articles appeared in the newspapers were issued and bought by the English reading people stationed there, but, they, would not take those printed matters back when they made a trip to their homeland, for a short period on leave or traders on their business trips. The lives the dispatched people had gone through were with versatile patterns and the specimen of human lives which are to be appearing in anywhere and in any time. For example, just consider about the Japanese in the early Showa era , the war time government encouraged and recommended many people to immigrate to Manchuria under their colonial policy.
I was the first excavator of those sleeping stories to have them revived and let the people know the fact how their colonialism under the height of the industrial revolution had proceeded. The result of their deed remain in the history of the human beings with all the other existing organic or inorganic matters. It had to go through unconsciously on the earth since it was bone 4,500,000,000 yars ago.
After my death, there appeared many biographers who wrote about my life and works. And many people wrote their commentaries on me and my works following after these biographers’ stories. However, it was the first time I ever met with such new insights as Willie XXIII had conceived in himself and started to talk about it before many Maughamians. Part of them is the speech presentation he made before the attendants of the Society forum on October 29, 2017. There he spoke of the Preface contents that I wrote on the Complete Short Stories Volume III. This book was reprinted as the remainder of my South Sea stories once published in the years around 1922/3. When the World War II ended, in 1953, part of them were published by Wm. Heinneman as the Complete Short Stories of Wm. Somerset Maugham in three volumes. These stories were already translated into Japanese language by Masaei Masuno and published first in 1960 from Shinchou-Sha and reprinted three years later. This handy paper-back book carried three stories, ‘Footprints in the Jungle,’ ‘The Door of Opportunity,’ and ‘Vase of Wrath.’ It seems just about the time ‘Of Human Bondage’ was introduced to Japanese publishing market by translations which resulted as a best seller book and widely read. It was translated by Yoshio Nakano or Natsuo Shumuda, etc. Willie XXIII told me the situation about his presentation at the Japan Maugham Society forum. He read the Preface of the Complete Short Stories, Volume III when he was still the student of Tsuda School of Business. He memorized for his English study purposes all the contents of that Preface. He said to me that he had some special impression through the contents that I, the author of the Preface, tried to inlay my hidden thoughts in the style of talking to the readers of this book worldwide. It was after he read the fist story of this volume, ‘Footprints in the Jungle.’ that he was amazed by the tone I mentioned about Mrs. Cartwright’s with her profile. He might have felt with his keen insight my power of observation that I had shown in the tone of my writing manner. He might have been much influenced by the sympathetic lecture of Mr. Eiichi Makita, the assistant lecturer at the business school, about Wm. Somerset Maugham. Mr. Eiich Makita was the President of Takada Foreign Language Institute in Takadanobaba and he had been invited as the English teacher by the business school and had been giving very enthusiastic lectures. Willie XXIII afterwards came to know the situation that this person, Mr. Eiich Makita was one of the main persons, together with Mr. Mutsuo Tanaka, also an English literature genre, who first presented the idea of establishing the Japan Maugham Society to Mr. Yoshio Nakano, then the leading translator of my novels. It was about the time I was invited by the Maruzen Book Store in Nihombashi when they held the “Maugham Festival.” I had time to stay in Tokyo with my secretary Alan Seale, and attended the events the book shop presented. There I saw him, the Willie XXIII standing before me at the shop floor together with many fans surrounded me within a few yards’ distance. He told me that he still kept in his ears sense my husky tone utterance that I made before them as a deep memory. He said that I had said there, “Oh, so many people here!” and looked around each face of those fan people gathered before me.
Many years elapsed thereafter and in 2012, he applied for the entry of membership and was accepted to be a member of the Japan Maugham Society. On October 29, 2017 he was able to make the presentation speech at the Society Forum held in Toyo University. The theme of the speech was about the story ‘Footprints in the Jungle’ as his observation after he read the story.
Before the presentation planned, he was requested by the management office of the Society that he should prepare some materials before his presentation, and he made a quest visit to Maruzen Bookstore. There he bought a copy of my novel “Christmas Holiday.” After that, he approached one of the shop clerks there working at the shop floor and started to talk. He gave the envelope in which the copy of the presentation planning was written, to this clerk and explained that he wanted to know if any data could be left in the company records about the Maugham Festival held in the year 1959 with a polite letter attached to the management section of the company. The clerk was so kind to take it and he promised to have these documents delivered to the management office of the company. About a week later, he had an e-mail message to his mail address from Ms. Misao Kawasumi. She was the staff of the management department of Maruzen Yushodou, and she was kind enough to have picked up from the company records some of the articles concerned with the Festival printed in the Gakutou (学燈), the company magazine issued in the Maruzen Bookstore and a few days later he received an envelope that contained a bundle of papers copied from the magazine pages about the news articles concerned with the Maugham Festival held in 1959 when I visited Japan and, thereafter, in January 25th, 1960, The Japan Maugham Society was organized by the literary people who used to gather there in the Maruzen shop, most of them deeply concerned with me and my works. There mentioned a list of names that contains the brilliant figures of the Japanese literary famous people, such as Tomoji Abe(阿部知二), Naotarou Tatsunokuchi, (龍口直太朗), Natsuo Shumuda（朱牟田夏雄）etc. etc., and the Cap Ferrat was first published as their Society Annual Book. It continued till No. 3, however, it was once stopped issuing because the chairman of the society, Mr. Yoshio Nakano had to go to America.
Willie XXIII wanted to tell me that he was happy to have excavated these facts which told the roots of the Japan Maugham Society in printed matter and now was able to let the Society members know their own activity thus originated. At the room of the forum, he handed out the copies that he received from Ms. Kawasumi of Maruzen Yushou-dou. He, however, could not feel much percussion among the attendants. Weren’t they much interested in knowing their origin of activities? When the Society activity seemed to be ceased after the Cap Ferrat No. 3 issue, in 1962, Professor Fumio Fujino and Professor Akio Namekata, now the chairman of the society worked hard to keep continuation of the Society and Cap Ferrat No. 4 shows its splendid revival in the year 2008, 46 years after the previous one issued.