9.

He was very nervous on his first appearance on TV: he suddenly got involved in the world he had seen from outside as an observer. When he took a seat, his hands began to quiver uncontrollably. Looking around himself with his eyes lowered, he saw a prominent sociologist and a renowned celebrity who he thought was out of his league sitting on both sides of himself. When a man who stood by behind the camera exclaimed “On air!”, the host of the program (who was also a celebrity, needless to say) began to talk to the camera.

“Next, we will discuss Nishida Clinic arson attack, which this show is featuring day after day. What judgement will be passed on Moriyama? As a matter of course, we will never know how the situation will evolve until the trial begins, but today, we have invited a special guest to pick his brain for his opinion about this issue. Please welcome today’s guest, a psychiatrist, Dr. Dai Honda!”

The camera quickly turned from the host to Honda. Honda, paying close attention so that he won’t stutter, said “Nice to meet you,” and bowed to the camera. The host casted an eye on Honda, and asked amiably,

“I hear you work for a clinic named ‘Saito Mental Clinic.’ I also hear you wrote a blog post about Nishida Clinic arson attack this time, but what drove you to do so?”

Hearing this question, Honda said,

“This incident is really tragic. First of all, I express my sincerest condolences on the bereaved family.”

And after bowing to the camera again, he spoke so articulately as to surprise even himself,

“I’m myself more surprised than anyone else that my blog post has attracted so much attention which I never expected. As for your question, I wrote the blog post out of my sense of righteous indignation that I couldn’t hold my tongue on this incident as a psychiatrist. To be specific, I’m concerned that Moriyama’s deed can undermine the public image of all psychiatric patients.”

At this point, the host, who had been listening to Honda sometimes nodding his head, cut in,

“As you say, there must be a concern that Moriyama’s deed can undermine the public image of psychiatric patients, and all of them can be equated with him. Then, doctor, you think what drove Moriyama to such a deed wasn’t necessarily his mental illnesses, don’t you?”

In response to this question, Honda shook his head vigorously and said,

“Exactly. At least, I can confidently say that the patients I have met in my clinical sites are different from Moriyama. In the first place, in Moriyama’s case…”

After that, he gave his view on the incident though it was much the same as what he had written on the blog post. What impressed on Honda was that when he tried to conclude his story, saying, “it was not Moriyama’s illnesses but the weakness he personally had that drove him to commit such a crime,” a journalist named Sagawa, who was in the same studio, gave his assent to Honda, saying,

“I agree with Dr. Honda. Surely, Moriyama lived an unhappy life. There is no doubt about that. However, many people live honest lives despite their unhappy background. If it hadn’t been for his internal weakness, he wouldn’t have resorted to such a deviant deed.”

It seemed to Honda that Sagawa winked at him when they made eye contact by chance.

10.

The program filming ended, and when Honda was drinking bottled tea in his waiting room, he heard a rap on the door. Honda opened the door, and then he found Sagawa, who had been in the same studio until a moment before, standing there. Seeming indifferent to Honda’s surprised look, and fiddling with his grizzled slicked back hair, he said with a smile,

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m Sagawa. I was in the same studio as you just now. I’m not sure whether it is a proper way of saying, but anyway, people call me a journalist. Have you heard of me?”

Saying so, he gave Honda a firm handshake. His grip was such a strong one as his thin physique would have suggested. Sagawa was a renowned journalist whose full name was Shinichi Sagawa, and who had published several books mainly about social issues related to teenagers such as teen prostitution. He had often been making media appearances since Honda was a child, so there was no way Honda didn’t know him. Honda felt his heart beat fast, but desperately pretending to be nonchalant so that his tension wouldn’t be noticed, he said,

“Of course, I have. I’m honored to meet you.”

And then, he made a respectful bow. To this, Sagawa answered in a gentle tone,

“Ah, please don’t be so tense.”

And after a pause, he asked,

“Was it your first appearance on TV?”

As soon as Honda answered “Yes,” Sagawa praised Honda opening his narrow eyes with subtle double lids a little wider,

“That’s surprising! Most people can’t speak so confidently as you did on their first TV appearances. To tell you the truth, I’ve read your blog post, and it seems that not only are you a good writer but also a good speaker.”

Honda felt a bit shy to be praised like this, but he had no bad feeling about that. After a pause, Sagawa suddenly asked,

“Do you have a YouTube channel?”

Soon after Honda answered,

“No. Despite your compliment, I don’t like appearing in public so much actually.”

Sagawa said excitedly,

“Such a waste! Considering the attention you are currently attracting and that you are a good speaker, your channel will grow rapidly. In this day and age, getting name recognition is an advantageous thing to you. You know, the proverb goes ‘Notoriety is better than obscurity.’”

Since Honda never thought about starting his YouTube channel, he became at a loss for word. Seeing this, Sagawa stared at Honda and said,

“Judging from your blog post, you seem to have the same thought process as me. That is, you have the ability to see things objectively. To a person like you, it must seem that in today’s world, there live too many fools who lack this ability, mustn’t it? I suppose you have the ability to change society from the psychiatric arena. However, public attention this incident has been attracting will cool off soon. It’s a pity that a person like you will be forgotten by the public. Please don’t waste this chance and start your YouTube channel while the public still has interest in this incident and you so that you can offer information effectively. If there is anything I can help with, I will do all I can for you.”

After saying so, Sagawa handed his business card to Honda.

11.

It wasn’t that Honda had no trouble making up his mind, but after all, what Sagawa had said (“In this day and age, getting name recognition is an advantageous thing to you”) had left so strong an impression on his mind that he decided to start his YouTube channel taking advantage of public attention. Also, he gave his YouTube channel a versatile name, “A channel in which a psychiatrist talks on mental illnesses.” This channel name didn’t sound odd even if he dealt with various subjects from the analysis of incidents caused by mental patients to explanation of individual mental illnesses.

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Incidentally, Honda’s TV appearance drew enthusiastic response from the public. Humans have a psychological mechanism called “cognitive dissonance,” because of which they feel uncomfortable when they face a phenomenon which is inconsistent with their own cognitive system. That’s why movies in which “Justice prevails in the end” are so popular. Seeing it from another point of view, we can say Nishida Clinic arson attack attracted public attention as a result of people’s cognitive dissonance. That is, nobody could tolerate a brutal criminal who send fifteen people to their death going unpunished.

Honda appeared on TV as a polemicist whose stance was a person of most mental patients but at the same time, who was absolutely set against unreasonableness. Considering that his hatred toward his patients had driven him to write the extreme blog post which had created an opportunity for his TV appearance, you may wonder how he dared to pretend to be “mental patients person.” However, he had calculated it would be the best option for him to continue to behave this way. Moriyama was, as it were, Honda’s punching bag on which he can vent his utmost hatred because Moriyama was the subject of criticism from almost everyone in Japanese society.

Like this, the popularity of Honda, who was recognized as “a spokesman for the masses” had been rapidly increasing, so his channel grew smoothly, gaining more than 100,000 subscribers in one year. Since public interest in Nishida Clinic arson attack had already receded by the time, his channel often dealt with such subjects as explanation as to mental illnesses and drugs for them, and tips on how mental patients could improve the quality of their daily lives.

Honda, on his YouTube channel too, continued to pretend to be “mental patients person.” Even though the management of his channel was going well roughly speaking, some of the viewers persistently made negative comments saying “this remark of Honda’s has hurt me” because of the characteristic of his channel which dealt with mental illnesses. Besides, since Honda’s true self was still somewhat indifferent to the patients’ feelings, it was often that his chat received so many negative comments or his viewers left negative online reviews about his clinic.

Also, some of his viewers visited Saito Mental Clinic to see Honda face-to-face, but in most cases, after they talked with Honda for a while, they realized he was a mere staff psychiatrist after all and left him.

Saito, the director of Honda’s clinic, actually had a bitter feeling about his activity. However, there was no denying that it was thanks to Honda that the clinic was prospering, and Saito absolutely trusted the nature of Honda, who was a doctor, the same occupation as himself. That is, he believed someone so excellent as to be a doctor would never behave outrageously, and what Honda had been doing would be a new method that suit the current time, and that a middle-aged man like himself couldn’t understand well. Thinking this way, he was giving tacit approval to Honda’s deeds.

12.

While continuing his activity on YouTube, he came to have more opportunities to collaborate with celebrities. With Sagawa in particular, who encouraged Honda to start his YouTube channel, he collaborated several times. Conversing with celebrities on YouTube gave some sort of pleasure to him: it enabled him to indulge in a feeling that he was also a successful person.

One day, while having a conversation with Sagawa on YouTube, they talked about Samurai’s view of life depicted in “Hagakure” by Tsunetomo Yamamoto. Honda had been a big fan of Yukio Mishima’s novels and Haruki Murakami’s novels since he was a student, and since Honda had read “The samurai ethic and modern Japan” by Yukio Mishima too (In this book, Mishima explained about “Hagakure.”), they had a lively conversation. During the conversation, Sagawa referred to the fact that a mentor of Tsunetomo Yamamoto was a Zen priest and told Honda that the influence of Zen is observed in the spirit of “Hagakure.” And then, Sagawa said,

“By the way, have you ever practiced Zazen? If not, I highly recommend you go to a temple and give it a try.”

Encouraged by this remark of Sagawa’s, Honda began to go to a temple and practice Zazen in his free time. He also became interested in Buddhism. However, it was certain that he didn’t have what could be called as faith at all as the following incident indicated: when he was asked by an intellectual “What do you think Budda was like?” during a talk on YouTube around that time, he even answered bluntly,

“He was just an ordinary middle-aged man.”

As this incident indicated, he just learned Buddhism to enhance his cultural appreciation rather than as a religion, and as for Zazen too, he somewhat recognized it more as physical training than as spiritual pursuit, thinking “What is the condition of the brain during Zen meditation like?” However, even he could feel that his various stray thoughts disappeared while steadying his breath and practicing Zazen, and gradually he became addicted to such a feeling. The story of Bodhidharma, who kept practicing Zazen until his limbs rotted, is famous, and this story indicates that Zen meditation can be addictive for some people.

Now, while keeping busy with his duty at the clinic and YouTube activity, several years had passed. Honda had already entered his 30s, and it looked like his life as an influencer psychiatrist was on a roll, but in reality, he was mentally exhausted: since he always had to suppress his true feelings both at the clinic and on YouTube, he couldn’t let off steam at all. Only on Sundays, when he had decided to take a day off and practiced Zazen, he could relax: he could put both his work and his patients aside only during Zen meditation.

Around that time, he began to experience moments both when he was dominated by a tremendous sense of omnipotence and when he was devastated by his pettiness. Perhaps, Adolf Hitler suffered from such feelings just before the fall of Berlin too. While signs of Allied Forces’ approach grew, he might also have been tortured by his self-image being split in two: one as “the almighty Supreme Leader” and the other as a war criminal who was destined to be executed miserably. Like this, Honda, by that time, had also begun to suffer from the gap between his inflated ego who could make impacts on society as an influencer and his true self who couldn’t treat even one patient in front of himself well enough.

He, seeking salvation, started to think that all the troubles of human mind could be cleared up through emptying their heart. To begin with, the remote cause of his suffering was that he had done unnecessary things out of his wicked heart (though he himself didn’t recognize it so), and psychiatric patients who complaint of their mental issues were suffering because they thought “I want to be freed from my current tough situation,” or “I’m in a tight situation out of my inability to meet my demand.” Therefore, he concluded that they could eradicate all the troubles of human mind by “shutting down” their mind as if to shut down a nuclear reactor.

Clearly, it was an abnormal thinking, but he no longer preserved his sanity at that time. Through prolonged exposure to public attention, he had been mentally collapsed. In the first place, however hard he appealed to the public with hypocritical words on the media or YouTube, it never improved his actual skills as a psychiatrist, and they had stopped developing a few years after he started to work as a psychiatrist. After that, obsessed with his wicked heart and engaging in YouTube activity, he didn’t have any energy to spare for committing himself to psychiatric care. It was he himself who recognized this fact more precisely than anyone else, and as the gap between what he was expected to be by people around himself and what he really was grew larger, his suffering also increased.

He was sure that among mental functions, instinctive desires were the root of all evil, and concluded that all the troubles of human mind could be cleared up if they could suppress them using the function of intellect which was completely opposite to instinct.

Therefore, one day in winter, he decided to continue to practice Zazen even after he returned home from the temple during the daytime. It was the function of his intellect that enabled him to practice Zazen because only when his consciousness ordered his body to do so, it was possible for him. Therefore, he assumed that provided he was able to continue to practice Zazen without meeting his instinctive desires, such as appetite and desire for sleep, it meant that he was able to transcend his instinct using the function of intellect and tried to confirm it using his own body.

Since he had already been quite accustomed to practicing Zazen, he immediately achieved a deep meditative state. Amid the chilly winter air, he continued the meditation even without turning the heater on. He succeeded in emptying his heart so much so that he even wasn’t aware how much time had passed.

13.

Around a week later, Honda’s parents and friend, who became worried about him and came to his house, found him continuing practicing Zazen and took him to the hospital. It seemed that he had been continuing practicing Zazen for one week, and he was emaciated pitifully. Even after arriving at the hospital, his appetite never returned, and despite the utmost treatment, he passed away one and a half months later.

Saito, the director of Honda’s clinic, couldn’t help regretting it, thinking “Where did it all go wrong?” In a sense, the titles like a doctor’s license or honorable things such as public attention and good reputation may drive a person mad. Perhaps, Honda had too pure-hearted an aspect to accept such kinds of things. Anyway, if Saito had had a chance to save Honda from destruction, it would have been when Honda became obsessed with his wicked heart for the first time.

Many doctors must be doing their jobs with a professional attitude and engaging in medical care cooperating with each other. However, if a person is placed in a situation where nobody gives advice to them, they can lose their mind. Our egos are formed through relations with others, and the relations with others are formed through our daily communications around ourselves, not shallow ones on the Internet.

In Honda’s case, we can say, can’t we, that he carelessly set his foot on such spaces as the Internet and the media where it is difficult to form real relationships without putting importance on communications with his patients and supervisors who were actually around himself, and it caused a pathological and inflated ego to emerge, which ruined everything?