Preface

Cosmic Adolesapia consists of TWO parts.
   The first is Tombo’s Reminiscences, my memories of elementary school and junior high school days. Tombo (“tailless dragonfly”) is the nickname by which the neighborhood kids in my childhood called me.
   More than thirty years ago, from 1983 to 1984, I translated my diaries, compositions, and the like from those days into English. I asked Sarah Couchman to proofread and come up with more natural school-age expressions wherever possible, and she was kind enough not only to do a superb job of it but to add her memories of her girlhood in California (italicized) in between my accounts. Sarah Couchman was at that time residing in Central Japan, helping a major company with their English communications．I owe her a great deal for her generous and intelligent contributions, which significantly improved the quality of my translation.
   The second part is Adolesapia, a collection of pieces of my writing mostly in English and English translation of some I wrote in Japanese from my high school days and a subsequent year or so up to my age of twenty. It’s about my brush with Christianity, the trial of new friendship, and the experience of first love, and the ends of them.
   The content is therefore decidedly autobiographical, and I feared that the individuals appearing in it may not appreciate the mention of their names, so I changed most of the names to avoid intruding on their privacy.
   Also, unable to find Sarah’s address, which I had stowed away in the nook of one of my cluttered drawers, I couldn’t ask her permission to publish this book. So I allowed myself an unwarranted discretion of changing a couple of names in her beautiful narratives. My sincere apology to Sarah Couchman.

Early in life, Tom Hiramatz was exposed to English
and Christianity. One he embraced. The other, after
careful consideration, he chose to reject.

Tom―nicknamed Tombo―grew up in post-World War II Japan. Oblivious to most of the concerns and hardships of the adults who were struggling to rebuild the country, he spent his days playing. Like any child, he was bored, adventurous, and serious by turns, and he recorded his feelings and exploits in a diary.

In high school, enthusiastic Christian missionaries introduced Tom to both English and Christ. While Tom ultimately found Christianity to be too contradictory a religion for his tastes, his fluency in English would serve him well in his career.

Coupling translations of his childhood diary entries with letters and essays from his early adulthood, Cosmic Adolesapia reveals a young man drawn to truth, beauty, and the exploration of the human consciousness.