TOKYO HIPSTERS SCHOOL / A series of Lectures on Che Guevara by Jugatsu Toi

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　A portrait on a red background decorates the pillar at the center of the first floor of the Tokyo Hipsters Club (THC). For people walking around the Harajuku area it is not particularly difficult to tell that this is a portrait of Ernesto Che Guevara. This may be due to the recent popularity of t-shirts printed with images of Guevara, as well as the story of “The Motorcycle Diaries” that described traveling with his motorcycle and was later made into a film. Therefore, people who see a portrait of Guevara’s, who has become something of a fashion icon, may say, “Now Guevara?” This thought may exist for many visitors to THC, but how much about Guevara do they know? Guevara is not a figure to be consumed as a passing fashion, but as a life and handed down for coming generations.

The first project of the Tokyo Hipsters School was held on 23, 27 and 30 January and 3 February 2006. The title of the lectures was ‘Hope for the Name of Ernesto Che Guevara’ and were delivered by Mr. Jugatsu Toi, a writer, movie director and documentary director. In 1997 he began travels that took him through 5 continents, visiting South America in 2005 as the fourth of these. He is an author of an historical novel that described Guevara's life, “Ernesto Che Guevara's Distant Travels” and “Castro, a Man of Power without a Bronze Statue,” which is a critical biography of Fidel Castro in which Guevara's sworn friend serves as a person now in charge of Cuba. There is almost no one that goes out to the right of him in Japan to talk about this theme.

Guevara's life was traced in the first lecture that had been named “Traveler, Guevara.” Creating the framework for the man Guevara was to become, he grew up struggling with illness in infancy and acquired a wanderlust in his younger days while moving many times. The second lecture “People who change Guevara” introduced those people he met up until his role as a revolutionary, people such as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda whom Guevara read in his youth; Alberto Granard, who is six years older and traveled together with Guevara; Hilda Gadea, who taught Marxism, Cuban Nico who named Guevara as “Che;” and especially, Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos that fought together. The third lecture, “Cuba Hope,” was mainly about Cuba and Guevara’s efforts there with Castro, who had the maximum influence. And in the fourth lecture, “What he desperately searched for,” Toi presented the case that the world which these people were striving for had still not yet been realized, and does not end completely while approaching the Guevara’s human aspect.

After listening to these lectures, it appears futile to introduce Guevara in so few sentences as here. However, if I write one thing to summarize at the end of the fourth lecture, Mr. Toi said, “Love people. For us to be able to do is to think so.” Guevara's greatest talent was his love for people. Guevara was a doctor, a soldier, a politician, a poet, a photographer, and a painter. Mr. Toi says that he had common love to think of people all over the world. And he added, “Do you think that most people doing politics now cannot love other people? Therefore, we first start thinking about loving each other, is necessary.

After all the lectures, all participants stated their impressions. I noticed a wide age range among those participants, and saw people from students to those in publishing and those in the fashion industry. A lot of participants said they “came to think about the world.” They said that recently they had only been thinking about what was directly in front of them, about their work, and so on, and had forgotten about their ideals.

This is not a huge number of people and not a group or people with any common ideological connection. On the contrary, they do not have even a common objective. Therefore, it is indescribably mysterious but very meaningful to find this result from learning about one man’s life in this place located in the town of fashion, “Harajuku.” The first step starts only from our small minds. Guevara does not die there. Mr. Toi said with laugh, “If Guevara were to see this lecture, what would he think?” The portrait of Guevara, which usually decorates the first floor, was always put behind Mr. Toi during lectures.

text by Shintaro Uchinuma

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