"Friends of the Chusan Class"
"Subculture's evils are in full bloom"
In the 1970s, Kozaburo Arashiyama ran a serial in the magazine Takarajima called "Friends of the Chusan Class." I was an avid reader, and that's where I first learned about Arashiyama, Mizumaru, and Shigesato Itoi.
Arashiyama, Mizumaru, and many others were still employees of Heibonsha at the time, and while they worked as respectable editors, they also used pen names to do whatever they wanted. This "do whatever they wanted" was the distinctive feature of this series. I still treasure my entire set of "Takarajima" from that time.
This book was later published in 1984, and contains some of the serialized material from Takarajima, allowing everyone to reminisce about the "free-for-all" atmosphere of that time. I also contributed a small essay to it. It is a rare and unusual book, perhaps best described as a "subculture bloom" born in the void after the end of the season of politics and rebellion in the 1960s, when people wondered, "Now, what should we do next?"
It seems to be a hard book to find these days, but if you can find it, I highly recommend buying it and reading it.
