In late February 2022, I was down in Okinawa exploring the spring training facilities of as many NPB teams as I could. My hotel was in Chatan, just a few minutes walk from the Chunichi Dragons camp. Because Covid restrictions were still in place, there were not too many people in attendance. At the top of the bleachers behind home plate, one man in his late 50s (?) was sitting by himself, watching the action. I decided to approach him and start a conversation. His name is Toshinaga Kitatsuji, and he is a born-and-raised Chunichi Dragons fan. He has parlayed that fandom into writing a column and authoring a couple of books: the first was about growing up following the team, and the second was this book.
What fascinated me about our conversation is that, though he is Japanese and has followed the Dragons since his childhood, our stories are not too different. I am a huge Hanshin Tigers fan whose love of the team has spiraled out of control to the point of becoming a columnist and (hopefully) authoring a book or two. So I picked up his book in the hopes of picking up a few pointers about how to publish one of my own. It sat on my shelf for several months (find me a Tigers fan who spends his offseason reading books about a rival team, and I’ll get to work on selling ice cubes to penguins) but I finally started reading it at the start of this year.
Little by little, I read through the collection of his newspaper columns (dating from August 2017 to November 2018), and kept reading until I knew his personal all-time Dragons Best Nine, plus the back-ups and honorable mentions. I have to say, Mr. Kitatsuji has a great writing style. It made me realize why sometimes, my own column gets bashed for being quite low-level Japanese. What a wealth of expressions this book had! I need to steal a few of those for my own future writing! Through his detailed knowledge of team legends and unforgettable games (many of which he attended), I also got a great lesson in Dragons history, which was reinforced by the fact that the same information kept coming through in multiple columns or player bios. (The biggest stand-outs were: (a) the fact that the Dragons won the CL in 1974 after a 20-year blank, (b) Ochiai managed the team to 8 straight A-class finishes, including 4 pennants, and (c) the team was mired in a 6-7 year drought of missing the playoffs at the time of publication.) The repetition of those facts did not annoy me too much (I saw it as an opportunity to actually remember them) but if I were a Dragons fan and common knowledge, it might have.
On the whole, I have been encouraged to give this a try for myself, and the sooner, the better! After all, my column celebrated 5 years last month, so I have enough material for a book, for sure! I am glad to have met Mr. Kitatsuji and to have read his book, and heck, I might even pick up the other one he wrote so I can get more wisdom about how to become a better Japanese writer! I did not grow in my love of the Dragons through his book, but I did learn to appreciate them a little bit more.