Drifting with Time

Drifting with Time I have pursued the profession of writing for over forty years. During this time, I have published forty-one books. This means I have put out one book a year, but—though I say so myself—they are all obscure, niche books that are hard to sell, and in fact, they did not sell well. Most of them are lengthy works of four hundred or five hundred manuscript pages, with some even exceeding eight hundred pages. To top it off, despite not being a photographer, I have even published works that resemble photo books. All that remains is the simple fact that I have kept publishing books. People say to me, "Looking back, it’s just a mountain of rubble." Perhaps that is true. Yet, within myself, I take pride in knowing that each one was something that had to be written in response to the demands of the times. They are, so to speak, reflections of social conditions and issues.

Among them, however, is a single, small book of a "personal correspondence" nature. It is The Tagayama Diary and Nine Essays, published in 2003. This was a compilation of one hundred installments of a personal column—each the length of a single postcard—that I kept sending to acquaintances and friends in Kyoto during my first six years after moving from Kyoto to Kagoshima. With the cooperation of Mr. Nakawaki of Saikaisha, I published it in a form that was practically a private edition.
Twenty years have passed since then, and I decided it was time to once again gather the shorter pieces that could not be included in any of my other works during that interval. They are, so to speak, fragments of my daily life. That is what this book, At the Mercy of Time (Jikan no Mani-mani), is. Each small piece is a reflection of myself—like sea foam, drifting, surfacing, and vanishing within time.
With my heartfelt gratitude to the many people who have supported me to this day, and to Mr. Nakawaki of Saikaisha.

March 2025
Tetsuo Shimizu

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