Photo/Illutration Nankichi Niimi, when he was a teacher at a girls' school in Anjo, Aichi Prefecture (Provided by Niimi Nankichi Memorial Museum)

An unusual cough persisted, and his temperature remained high. There was no longer any doubt that he’d been infected, and he desperately wanted to get better and go back to writing.

This was the predicament in which Nankichi Niimi (1913-1943) found himself, as outlined in a special exhibition titled “Korona-ka ni Nankichi wo Yomu” (Reading Nankichi during the novel coronavirus pandemic), which I went to see recently at the Niimi Nankichi Memorial Museum in Handa, Aichi Prefecture.

The famed author of “Gon, the Little Fox” and other exquisite children’s stories died from tuberculosis at a young age. The anguish he must have felt was palpable from the exhibition, and my heart ached for him.

The plague and the Spanish flu did not spare Nankichi’s hometown when he was a young boy. He was 17 or 18 when he expressed his fears about his ill health in a “tanka” poem that went to this effect: “Looking right and left to make sure there is nobody around/ I cough like a lung disease patient.”

Upon fulfilling his dream to go to Tokyo, he gained confidence when his work was published in a literary magazine.

But he was diagnosed with tuberculosis at age 20. He wrote, “When I showed up, the laughter of the people gathered there stopped at once, and the atmosphere became rather awkward.”

As his condition worsened, his fear deepened, and it showed in this letter: “The disease has already progressed considerably. It is now painful to even slurp hot porridge in the morning and in the evening.”

He was 29 when he died in the spring of 1943.

Back then, TB was dreaded as an incurable disease.

From the exhibition, I learned that the antibiotic streptomycin was discovered in the United States one year after his death. It was dubbed the “magic bullet” for its dramatic effectiveness.

Since the 1950s, TB vaccines and other successful treatment methods have become widely available in Japan, eventually bringing the disease under control.

“Ojiisan no Ranpu” (Grandfather’s lamps), a story depicting the sorrow of a craftsman falling behind the times, stirred me the deepest among all of Nankichi’s works.

Had he survived just a few more years, he probably would have been saved by medicine and continued his successful career into the postwar era.

I regret anew the all-too-premature demise of this extraordinary author.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 8

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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