Joining the English Speaking Society (ESS) on entering Chuo University in 1954, I devoted myself to club activities to the extent I told myself complacently upon leaving school that I am a graduate of the ESS rather than the Law Department. I spent my campus life when Japanese society was beginning to settle after finding its way out of the postwar doldrums. The colorful American civilization during what was touted later as the “Golden Sixties” was having a strong impact on every facet of Japanese life. Many Japanese knew of a typical American family life through the serial cartoon “Dagwood,” got carried away by the glamorous Hollywood movies and coveted a copy of Reader’s Digest to get a glimpse of American lifestyle. Perhaps, it was during those days that the Japanese paved their way step by step toward their ideal society, which was later to be ridiculed as a nation where “all 100 million people think they belong to the middle class.” Many of the ESS seniors had strong vitality, working part-time as interpreter at the U.S. military bases in Yokota and Tachikawa in Tokyo’s western suburbs. Arguably among them was the one who later became a famed actor, Tetsuro Tamba.

Those seniors often talked it up that Mitsuo Hirayama, a member of the ESS, won the Gen. Douglas McArthur trophy in the annual intercollegiate speech contest. Other than that, however, the ESS was just an ordinary club where members practiced English conversation, speech and drama under the guidance of professors and seniors.

One day in 1955, one of my ESS colleagues shouted his resentment on returning from ameeting of the International Students Association (ISA). “Keio has Mita Campus and Waseda has Waseda Guardian. Why don’t we have our English campus paper at Chuo?” he protested. Another colleague responded offhand, “Well, we can make it for ourselves, can’t we?” “Yes, why not?” echoed all others in the club room. That was the start of what proved to be a really tough project – launch of the first English newspaper at Chuo.

 

Publication of club journal

Students are often reckless and venturous. And easiness in planning is another feature common to them. A group of volunteers had rounds of discussion on how to get the project officially recognized by the school authority (so that they can get a budget to finance it), how to write and edit articles, how to lay them out on pages and where to print the newspaper. Another crucial subject on the agenda was how to organize the editorial, liaison and accounting staff. Our discussions got nowhere. Eventually, Tsutomu Yoshida, then chairman of the ESS, had to pronounce that we give up on our scheme. One of decisive drawbacks was the lack of prospects to secure a budget. Yoshida offered a compromise plan. He said that while taking time lobbying for official recognition of the project, we can stencil our writings to publish them as a club journal. The proposal meant an anticlimax to those avid members who had talked much of their dream. It was not easy to retain their enthusiasm.

Somehow, however, the inaugural issue of our club journal “Cosmopolitan” was published in July 1955. It was literally a hand-made publication. Members did everything from printing to binding. The number of copies roughly equaled that of the club members. If I remember right, a total of five issues were published, the last one dated on April 1, 1962.

English sentences reproduced in the journal were not of commendable quality. However, a sensible reader might understand the zeal with which the members worked in putting together their product.

 

Encounter with Nakajima-san

Naoji Shimada, then a junior, took over Yoshida as ESS chairman in April 1956. At the time, some of the club members were engaged in part-time work for a dual purpose of practicing English conversation while earning some money. They visited American families at the Yokota and Tachikawa bases to solicit subscriptions to the Asahi Evening News (AEN), an English newspaper published by the Asahi Shimbun. The head office of the AEN was located in a narrow space beneath the elevated railways between Tokyo’s Yurakucho and Shimbashi stations. Some of our seniors were working there, which helped us a lot. It was through our part-time job that we became acquainted with Mr. Shinshow Nakajima, a veteran journalist and a director of the AEN. One day, Shimada and his colleague Kazuo Yamada happened to sit close to each other with Nakajima-san at a Japanese-style pub near Shimbashi Station. Shimada and Yamada passionately talked about their dream of publishing an English newspaper at Chuo. A thirsty mortal himself, Nakajima-san went down with the two bibulous students and promised his full support for their scheme. Hakumon Herald would not have blossomed without their casual encounter with Nakajima-san. Later on, after the newspaper was founded, Nakajima-san was to serve as advisor, helping and pepping successive editors-in-chief in an ineffable way.

Meanwhile, Yamada went on setting up contacts with advertisement managers of some business corporations. He took out ad reservations for Hakumon Herald from Pilot Corp., Honda Motor Co. and the Japan Times as well as coffee shops and restaurants in the vicinity of the school. Toshiaki Nakatani, another senior who represented the ESS on the university’s Federation of Cultural Associations (Bunren), fought his way to have direct negotiations with the Bunren boss. He won assurances of a special budget to finance the project. This gave a final push to the birth of Hakumon Herald.

 

Inaugural edition rolls off the press on Nov. 1, 1956

Shimada and his colleagues decided to launch the newspaper in the autumn of 1956 in time for the annual campus festival. Both Nakatani and I were assigned to have an overview of entire news articles. Noboru Kimura and Kiyoshi Akimoto busied themselves preparing articles to be put on the culture and sports pages, respectively. Masateru Saito, Hiroshi Ito, Masaiku Ueno and Hirotoshi Kuroyanagi made tremendous efforts to deal with managerial as well as editorial affairs. The newspaper was officially named Hakumon Herald at an

editorial meeting. The masthead was designed by Kinji Kuwata, my younger brother, who was later to become a member of the Hakujitsu-kai, a time-honored voluntary association of professional painters. We paid him a gratuity only enough to buy a cup of coffee. Day after day, with a red pen in hand, Nakatani and I frequented the printing room of Tokyo News Co. adjacent to the AEN to do the proofreading work. Not everything went well, though. We were often told by Nakajima-san that our English was way remote from journalistic styles. Some members made a mess of collected ad fees. Both Prof. Magoichi Uchikata, president of the ESS, and Prof. Kokichi Watanabe, his predecessor, might have had a lot of white-knuckle over the way their students did their job.

We were all elated when we saw parcels containing 3,000 copies of the inaugural issue delivered to the semi-basement club room on the now-defunct Surugadai campus. But our joy proved short-lived. We had scarcely scanned through all pages when two gross errors were found. In the front-page message contributed by Chuo President Raizaburo Hayashi, the word “congratulation” was misspelled as “conglatulation.” The opening date of the campus festival was given as October instead of November. We managed to correct the errors manually on the copies for circulation on the first day. But this was a memorable issue. We had to have a limited number of copies reprinted. This episode remains for good in my memory.

 

Job taken over by juniors

Hakumon Herald had been started as a monthly. However, it did not come out regularly due to varied reasons. Many of the senior members had to spend more of their time seeking a job amid a serious hiring slump. I thank those younger members who kept on publishing the newspaper, undaunted by numerous hardships. I could graduate from school, or rather from the ESS, happy and thankful to see the November 14, 1957 issue which they published in commemoration of the first anniversary. It carried a congratulatory message of President Hayashi, which contained no errors.

Most of my colleagues managed to find a decent job upon graduation. However, we had to be workaholic employees in the Japanese business world as it rushed for rapid economic growth. Personally, I was kept too busy for years even to attend an annual meeting of the ESS alumni association. During that period, I had to distance myself from Hakumon Herald against my will. But I was always grateful to those younger members who punctually sent me a copy of every issue.

When I learned of Hakumon Herald’s independence from the ESS, I took it as good news meaning the newspaper’s further development in the subsequent years. I was grateful to those junior members who kept in frequent contact with me. Among them, I might mention

Masaru Hiyama, Tetsuro Takahashi, Koichi Hikida, Takashi Hoshino, Eiichiro Tokumoto, Toshiyuki Minagawa, Akihiko Kanno, Kozo Kashiwazaki (birth name Kubo), Arata Sugimoto, Masayuki Kikuchi, Makoto Ichii, Tsutomu Nakamura and Nobuyuki Fujino.

 

Publication discontinued

Publication of Hakumon Herald ran into difficulties in later years. That may have had something to do with the campus unrest around 1980. I could understand the circumstances that had led to the newspaper’s changeover to a magazine format. But I felt deeply regrettable when I learned that Hakumon Herald had gone out of existence.

Now that things have come to this, I do hope that attempts will be made to put down the past existence of an English newspaper in Chuo’s history in some form or other. I was told by Susumu Hiyama, who served for years as adviser to the paper, that an alumni association of Hakumon Herald has just been organized. Members of this association may help compile a brief history of the newspaper. Personally speaking, I do hope that the day will come when members of the ESS and Hakumon Herald alumni associations, who had once shared the same dream, will be able to meet each other in a joint session.

(The writer, who is President of the ESS Alumni Association, graduated in 1958)

 

 

同じ夢を追いかけた仲間たち

―中央大学英字新聞発行の黎明期―

桑田 泰久

1954年の入学と同時に英語学会(ESS)に入会した私は、卒業後、法 学部卒というよりはESS卒業だとうそぶくほど、この会にのめり込んでいた。

戦後の混乱から抜け出して、世間はようやく落着いてきたかに見えた時期で ある。時あたかも最盛期を迎えた米国の「黄金の1960年代」と呼ばれる華やかな文明が日本全国に強い影響を与えていた。「ダグウッド」の漫画で米国人 の家庭を知り、ハリウッドの華やかな映画に浮かれ、「リーダーズ・ダイジェス ト」を読んでいた我々は後に揶揄された「1億総中産階級」への道をひとつの 社会の理想として次第に固めて行ったのであろう。ESSの上級生達は横田、 立川の米軍基地で通訳などのアルバイトをしていて生活力旺盛で、それらの先 輩たちの中にあの丹波哲郎も居たらしい。

ESSの活動実績としては平山光雄氏がスピーチ・コンテストでマッカーサー杯を取ったと宣伝されていたが、会話教室やスピーチ・サークル、英語劇などが教授や上級生達の指導で行われるなどごく平凡な会だった。

1955年のそんな或る日、ISA(International Students Association) の会合から戻ってきた友人が、慶応に「Mita Campus」、早稲田に「Waseda Guardian」という英字新聞があるのに、何故わが中央大学に英字新聞がないのだ?と憤慨していた。それじゃ、作ればいいじゃないか! 皆が簡単に飛びついた言葉、それがこの困難な事業のスタートだったのだ。

 

▼先ずは会誌「コスモポリタン」から 意気がいいのは結構だが、その計画性が甘いのも学生の特徴である。大学の

1英字新聞として認知されるための交渉、記事の編集、作成、新聞の印刷、それ らの渉外や経理を管理するスタッフの確保などの具体的検討を重ねるに至って、 遂に時の吉田勉委員長は断念を宣言した。諸々の障害の中でやはり致命的だったのは、予算の目途が全く立たなかった事であった。従って、大学側の認知は 時間をかけて交渉しつつ、それまでは部の会誌として文集をガリ版刷りで発行 しようということになったが、竜頭蛇尾のこの案に会員たちの盛り上がりを期待するのも無理だった。会誌「コスモポリタン」は1955年7月に発刊され、 毎号、部員数程度の印刷で製本も皆部員の手作りである。決して褒められた文 章、内容ではないが、当時の部員たちの一生懸命さはわかって頂けるだろう。

(駿河台旧本校舎)

 

▼妙なところから突破口が 吉田の後を受けてESSの委員長を引き受けたのは3年生となった島田直治

である。当時、我々6~7名が英会話の実地訓練も兼ねて横田や立川の基地内 の米人家庭を訪問し、「朝日イブニング・ニュース」の購読を勧誘するアルバイ トをしていた。「朝日イブ」の事務所は有楽町のガード下にあって先輩たちが働 いていた関係もあり、大変勉強にもなったが、そこで知己を得たのがアドバイ ザーの中島申祥氏である。島田、山田(和夫)の両君はこの酒好きの中島氏に 気に入られて英字新聞発行には全面的な協力が約束された。その後も筆舌に尽 くせぬお世話になったが、この方なしでは「白門ヘラルド」は生れなかった。 一方、山田は広告営業部にもコネができてパイロット、ホンダ、ジャパンタイ ムズなどのほか、近辺のコーヒー店や食堂から広告の予約も取れた。丁度、文 連(文化団体連盟)の委員だった中谷敏昭が強談判で特別予算を獲得するに及 んで、いよいよ中大英字新聞発行の機は熟したのである。

 

▼創刊号誕生! 創刊は1956年秋、学園祭で第1号を発売しようと決定して歯車は動き出

した。全般的な記事内容には中谷と私が当たり、文化、スポーツ面では木村(昇)、 秋本(清)君等が記事集めに走り回っていたが、斉藤(昌輝)、伊藤(博)、上野

2

(昌郁)、畔柳(博年)君らの縦横無尽な活動は大きな力だった。 新聞名も「Hakumon Herald」と決まって、レタリングも白日会の画家である 桑田謹次氏に、コーヒー1杯の謝礼で依頼した。中谷や私たちは赤ペンを片手 に校正のため、何日も朝日イブの印刷所に通った。しかし、新聞記事の英語に 不慣れだと叱られたり広告料集金の不手際を露呈したり、実務に慣れない学生 達の仕事を内片(孫一)教授、渡辺(幸吉)教授ら関係者たちは冷や冷やしながら見守っていたらしい。 そして意気揚々刷り上がった第1号で、大変なミスを仕出かしたのだ。冒頭

ページの林頼三郎総長の挨拶記事でLをR、学園祭の日付を Nov.を Oct.と間違 えていたのが発覚。当日の販売分だけは部員総動員で手直ししたが、記念すべき第1号でしかも冒頭ページのミスとあっては刷り直しが避けられず、大変恥ずかしい思いをしたことは一生忘れられない。

 

▼順調に引き継いでくれた後輩たち 月刊を目指してスタートした英字新聞だったが、その後我々が4年生となって就職難の苦労でろくな活動もできない中、後を継いで慣れない態勢ながら順 調に発刊してくれた後輩たちの努力には本当に頭が下がった。翌年11月14 日発刊の1周年記念号では林総長の祝辞も掲載されていて、無事に育っている 喜びに感謝しつつESSを、いや大学を離れたのである。

その後、無事に就職したものの、高度成長に向かって突き進む日本経済の中 で猛烈社員を余儀なくされた我々は、OB会への出席もままならぬ年月が流れ、 几帳面にヘラルドを郵送してくれた後輩たちに感謝しつつも心ならずご無沙汰 を続ける結果となった。

ヘラルドがESSから独立したことも、発展と言う意味で好意的に理解して いた。常時接触を続けてくれた飛山(優)、高橋(哲郎)、疋田(弘一)、星野(貴)、 徳本(栄一郎)、皆川(敏行)、菅野(明彦)、柏崎(幸三=旧姓久保)、杉本(新)、 菊地(雅之)、一井(誠)、中村(務)、藤野(信行)君など後輩諸君のご好意に は感謝している。

 

▼白門ヘラルド消滅 1980年頃吹き荒れた学園紛争なども多少は関係あったのか、その後新聞

発行が困難になり、英文誌とせざるを得なかった事も止むを得まいと理解でき たが、廃刊となったことは誠に残念でならなかった。この上は、せめてある一 時期に中央大学にも英字新聞が存在したことを歴史に残すべくご努力頂ければ と願っている。そのためにもかつてヘラルドのアドバイザーだった飛山将君か ら耳にした「白門ヘラルドOB会」は是非実現させて欲しいものである。そして私見ではあるが、同じ夢を追ってきた仲間としていつの日か、ESSとの合 同OB会ができたら、と密かに思っている。(ESS・OB会会長、昭和33年 卒)