Kurashi - News From Japan

 In April 2023 I held a lecture about the 1937 flight from Tokyo to London, and to my great surprise, the grandson of Tsukagoshi Kenji (the navigator) was there. Turns out he has a connection to Ito City, Shizuoka, and noticed the poster about my lecture.    His name is Tsukagoshi Yuji, and he was kind enough to agree to write a foreword to the Second Edition of my book. Many thanks also to Alan Graham who helped with the edit, and Patrick Sherriff who published it on Tower English. The Second Edition is now available on Amazon , both as a Paperback and as a eBook. Please order, rate and comment!  

Today, I went to the Aviation Museum in Tokorozawa, Saitama prefecture, to give them a copy of my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon. I bet they were a bit surprised. I had not called ahead, which I should have done, and I have no calling card (meishi) to explain the details of my endeavor. 所沢航空発祥記念館 Tokorozawa Aviation Museum They kindly accepted my book for their library, and we had a lot of laughs. I suggested that they do a more thorough and large exhibition of the 1937 flight. I also mentioned that at Croydon in London, they had a proper display of the arrival, with lots of photos and more, while here in Japan, there is no such thing. Click here, and you can purchase my novel Kamikaze to Croydon on Amazon Iinuma Masaaki is a promising young pilot from the mountains of Nagano, Japan, who only has thoughts of flying for the Morning Sun newspaper. When he learns of a prize for the first aviator to fly from Tokyo to London in under 100 hours, he knows he has the will to...

Amazing images from April, 1937 as the Kamikaze-go landed at Croydon, London. From my new friends at the HCAT Archives, Peter Skinner and Ian Forsyth. Record breaking flight from Tokyo. Can you spot Tsukagoshi climbing out of the airplane in the first picture? That's the easy one. Finding Iinuma in the last image may be more difficult, what with all the London policemen escorting him. He smiles a lot, holding on to a bunch of flowers, and is rather sun burnt from the long flight over the desert. Don't you think he was the happiest man on earth, that day. It inspired my wish to write about his long flight from Japan to Europe. And you can order my novel about it here, Kamikaze to Croydon . Bonus image: I took this photo of Iinuma Masaaki's pilot licence at his museum in Nagano:

If you have read my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon, you know that our two Japanese flyers went straight from Karachi to Basra. Their Mitsubishi Ki-15 had that much power. Out in the desert, there were many other established aerodromes or airfields, but what were conditions there and what did they actually look like? You can order Kamikaze to Croydon here at Amazon as a paperback, and also at Kindle as an eBook. I hope you will also be kind enough to leave comments and rate it. Here is an excerpt: Our altitude was again near 3,000 metres, which the Ki-15 seemed to find most agreeable, no matter what the conditions were. We had Iran on our right, and there was Arabia proper and Oman, according to the new maps. Tsukagoshi read the names. We reached Musandam and the Strait of Hormuz, which was just 54 kilometres wide. I clearly recalled all we had back a few months ago was a terrible old chart, with no elevations indicated, and Charles Lindbergh’s new maps were such a revelation...

Novel Approach My editor Patrick Sherriff over at Tower English in Abiko helped me publish my novel on July 21, 2018. I have a lot to say about his skills as an editor, with a keen sense of sticking to his three approaches to fiction editing. Well, it helped me a lot, and his support was terrific... Here is how Patrick puts it: Character arcs. Every story is a journey. For a story to have meaning, there has to be change. Characters start out one way, they experience difficulty or, as the novelist calls it, conflict, until by the end of the story they have changed. That basic pattern — starting with a goal in mind, dealing with conflict, changing — should be present in the novel as a whole and within each scene and for every major character. You can order Kamikaze to Croydon here at Amazon as a paperback, and also at Kindle as an eBook. I hope you will also be kind enough to leave comments and rate it. Iinuma Masaaki is a promising young pilot from the mounta...

This is a fun movie about how Toyota got its start in the early 20th century, with a lot of details from the factory floor and how to fund such an adventure. In the 1920s, Japan was importing some 2000-4000 cars and trucks and made almost nothing domestically. GM and Ford had factories in Japan, back then. Now, the foot is firmly on the other shoe, ahem... How to get that first model A1 to go that extra mile, in 1936 or so? In my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon, I mention how young Iinuma Maasaki, the pilot of my novel, reacts to seeing one of these Toyotas in Tokyo. You can order Kamikaze to Croydon here at Amazon as a paperback, and also at Kindle as an eBook. I hope you will also be kind enough to leave comments and rate it. Do click that link, and go through the easy steps. His sempai and navigator, Tsukagoshi Kenji, warns him that making such vehicles would require a lot of resources, that Japan did not have. We were interrupted as a black car drove past on t...

New update in my novel: 　Then I went to watch this sad new movie, Osaka Elegi, about a girl and the city which I almost never had any time to venture into, with its neon lights and modern music and the Kansai accent that I found hilarious. But, I could not understand the ending.     After that, I had the sense that Osaka would surpass anything, if left to its own devices. The new subway line from Umeda was in the movie, and I mentioned it in a letter to Tsukagoshi in Tachikawa. And he replied, “I hope to join you soon.” You can order Kamikaze to Croydon here at Amazon as a paperback, and also at Kindle as an eBook. I hope you will also be kind enough to leave comments and rate it. Do click that link, and go through the easy steps. These guys make the best radio controlled "scale flying" events, which in 2016 involved the Mitsubishi Ki-15 "Kamikaze-go" that was privately owned by Asahi Shimbun in 1937.

Just a few years before I first arrived on these shores, TV Asahi made a special dramatization about the events I cover in my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon . Order it here at Amazon The 1985 TV drama is a bit silly, but then so was a lot of TV back then. These scenes, however, are really beautiful, filmed with a model airplane, set to the music by Brahms. 美貌なれ昭和 (Bibonare Showa) means something like "The Beautiful Showa" and the dramatization included segments about the female Japanese violinist, Nejiko Suwa , who was studying and performing in Europe during the 1930s until 1945. Enjoy. Now, if seeing that makes you want to make a balsa wood model of the Ki-15 , there are the drawings and lots of helpful advice, from Mike Stuart in the UK! Thanks for finding, P.

A couple of years ago while I was writing the novel Kamikaze to Croydon, I made the trip to a very special place. 飯沼飛行士記念館 While Japan has a lot of (small or medium-size) airplane museums, see Paul Thompson's excellent website, J-HangarSpace , I think this is the only one dedicated to a single pilot. This is Iinuma Masaaki's birthplace, in what is now Azumino, Nagano Prefecture. A wonderful old farm house located a short walk from the station, with the Japanese Alps as the backdrop. Not far from Matsumoto, it is worth the trip if you are interested in aviation history. The exhibits are mostly a collection of items from The Asahi Shimbun, that sponsored his famous flight to London in April 1937. As you all probably know by now, he was a civilian pilot employed by the newspaper, setting records to Beijing and Taipei even before that famous event. The photo above shows his real Pilot's Licence from 1941. The light wasn't the best, but here is a ma...

It was just great to take the train and then the bus and suddenly it was there, way south of London, this airport that had been a fixture of my imagination for so long. The end of the journey for the two characters in my novel, and there it was. A much larger white Art Deco building than I had imagined, and as I took the tour, "Where is the airfield?" I had to ask. The Tower has been wonderfully restored and is also used for offices. You can take the tour and walk up into the Tower, and enjoy the displays. And, yes! There is a delightful collection of photos and other items related to the 1937 flight from Tokyo. Peter Skinner was my guide, and he invited me to the Archives, where I could go through their official file called "Divine Wind" - the translation of the Japanese word kamikaze. Remember, please, that the April 1937 flight that I describe in my novel happened before the end of WW2, when that particular word took on a completely different meani...

Hello, Kurashi readers, it has been a while. I had blogged for 10 or so years and had a big project I wanted to finish, a historical novel about the 1937 goodwill flight from Japan to Europe. Stay tuned. You can order it here at Amazon as a paperback, and also at Kindle as an eBook. I hope you will also be kind enough to leave comments and rate it. Do click that link, and go through the easy steps.