I’m not sure which is more amazing: the fact that a self-proclaimed illiterate man has written four books or the fact that I have read three of them. Tsuyoshi Shinjo is indeed a man of mystery. Though he divulges a lot about himself in interviews and his three books (including this one), it seems quite clear that he is not telling the whole picture.
Waitakora is Fukuoka dialect for WTH, basically. The premise of this whole story is that he was duped out of more than $20 million of his savings by a man he had trusted, and bounced back down in Bali by changing his way of thinking.
To briefly go through the main elements of the book…
Shinjo grew up in a very poor environment, with a father who was stoic but would be viewed as an alcoholic anywhere but Japan (he came home in the middle of the night most nights after drinking with anyone and everyone) and a mother who was a wild, cagey woman. He lived a frivolous youth, thriving most when the odds were against him. He was the most athletic student in school and baseball was far and away his worst sport. He was mad about having been drafted by the Tigers in the fifth round out of high school after having been promised an earlier selection by other teams. He almost retired at age 23 because of clashes with then-manager Taira Fujita. He went to the US to try his hand at the majors because being a superstar in Japan wasn’t appealing (or hard) enough, let alone being an established star in Kansai. He took a huge pay cut, turning down deals in excess of $2 million per year to play for just $220,000 for the New York Mets. When he came back to Japan in 2004, he vowed to fill Sapporo Dome, bring the Nippon-Ham Fighters a pennant, and raise the Pacific League’s image. He did all three, retiring in 2006.
When he went to Bali to film a Japanese commercial, he fell in love with the island and spontaneously decided to move there. When he went to close his bank accounts in Japan, the harsh reality hit him. The man he had entrusted his finances to had taken that money and blown it. He still moved to Bali and discovered what true living was all about: doing things for oneself, living in anonymity, and enjoying the simple pleasures of life.
It’s really a cool narrative, and combined with his other two books that I’ve read (one written as he left Japan for the majors in 2001, the other in 2022 when he became manager of the Fighters), paint a picture of someone whose story needs to be properly written and shared with the world outside of Japan. (I think I’m the guy to do it, but then, I have a lot of ideas but lack the ability to break out of inertia.)
That said, this reads in part as a light version of Jose Canseco’s “literature”, which, I admit, I have never read. What I mean is, since it was “written” by a man who thinks the world of himself, it is unabashedly positive and probably hides a ton of stuff that would enrapture readers a lot more than his success story does on its own. (I am not saying anything in this book would stir up ire in former teammates or opponents, as was the case with Canseco. Rather, it needs to all be taken with a grain of salt because it’s almost as far from objective as you can get.)
And when I say it was written, I mean that it appears he was interviewed extensively and much of the text is just a dictation of his words. It reads very quickly and as though one was sitting next to him at a bar. Really conversational and not really feeling like literature. They ought to make these into audiobooks, really, with the man himself as the narrator!
But when you accept these things from the start (not Pulitzer material, not revelatory of the whole truth) and just read it for what it is, you can definitely enjoy it. The more I know about Tsuyoshi Shinjo, the more I hope to someday be able to shake his hand and have a real conversation with him.