13 Oct 2010 / Maestro Inoue took part in the award ceremony of Praemim Imperiale, a global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association. Maestro Inoue himself is a member of the selection committee in the category of music. 2010 laureate, selected from the field of music, is pianist Maurizio Pollini.
12 Dec 2010 / Maestro Inoue was awarded the 'Chopin passport' by the Embassy of Poland during a grand reception, which was held in honour of Chopin's 200th birthday anniversary at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo
I am writing this message from my room of the Cancer Institute Hospital of the JFCR(Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research) in Tokyo, while looking at the Tokyo Gate Bridge and landing airplanes through the hazy filter of the rainy season, which just began. I see black-headed gulls flying in front of me, here, where I would normally pass by quickly in my Mitsuoka Himiko convertible if I was healthy.
I’ll start off by explaining why I didn’t go into hospital as soon as they found my throat cancer. As doctors have, just like musicians, strong and weak fields, I took my time choosing my hospital by carefully considering the most suitable skills and experience for the very type of my cancer and the access from my house, above all. My stay in the hospital for treatment finally started on May 26. Before this day, I was visiting hospitals in an effort to be informed so that I wouldn’t end up regretting this very important decision.
Sometimes I was even excessively cautious, like going to see the best doctors my loving friends introduced to me and trying to feel directly each hospital’s people’s atmosphere. As an audience member, I often go away quietly from concert hall when the performance is really bad, but this time, I didn’t want to leave the hospital I trust my own life to.
Now I’m starting to think my case might not be as serious as I thought, as I’m seeing more and more patients around me. As I am in the Cancer Institute Hospital, all inpatients around me have cancer. I feel pity for them. It seems everyone is looking down.
Luckily my cancer wasn’t compounded by any other health problems, so in the end I decided to be treated in this special institute that has a lot of experience in treating various cancers.
The current progress is about a quarter of all the treatment. The radiation’s influence is getting out. My lower face got red and my tongue got grainy: when I have soba-noodle-soup, I feel like eating cement noodles in a salty weak coffee. I mutter to myself that, in the end I wasn’t born with a good palate and, before this, I always enjoyed the texture when I had foods...
Basically my treatment process is going well, but I am suffering from a couple of unexpected ambushes: A double attack by a violent cough and urinary stone, my old enemy.
Night and day, every five minutes, the cough didn't stop, as if they twisted my body painfully. This coughing may be a bronchial reflex motion to avoid pulmonary aspiration at the bottom of my throat which had been already quite swollen before I came to the hospital.
It drove me crazy (I was as crazy as before, I assume...) not being able to sleep, and thus, I lost my strength due to lack of sleep (but coughing toned up my abdominal muscles...) I kept saying to the hospital staff, “If you stop my cough, I will make another cancer institute hospital for you”, but they didn’t try to do that, because, according to them, stopping my cough by using force may cause a risk of pulmonary aspiration and incorrect swallowing.
My words “My god, I can’t sleep, do something...!” sounded in vain.Just in that period, my wife Tamayo’s mother Fumiko Kuroda suddenly passed away at the age of 91. Tamayo had to run in a hurry to her native place Nishinomiya, leaving the worldwide great conductor Michiyoshi alone in the Guadalcanal-like battle field. I was then subjected to three straight days of torturous coughs and a fever. Then, the urinary stone, that always relapses when I stay in the bed for a long time, kindly gave me a dull pain around the right of my back: After a two-day-long crescendo, my pain finally peaked - OUCH! The pain was dramatically allayed by the Voltarian pain relievers, which finally enabled me to sleep.
This hospital has a Chinese Herbal Medicine department which is quite a rare thing.
We can’t declare that the opinions of the specialists of this department, quite different from the other doctors in western medicine, are needless, such as those “maverick” players that many orchestras have.
When there was a difference of opinion about my cough between a doctor from the Chinese Herbal Medicine department and my doctor from the Head and Neck Oncology department, I myself assumed the responsibility of navigating it. I don’t know yet if it works in the long run, but for now, at least, my cough is going away and I am tending to sleep a little.
The cough I reported on before was identified as whooping cough on June 13th
extremely furious, saying “We are in a hospital, and your patient was complaining of a
violent cough. I couldn’t sleep at night for a week. Why, for three weeks, you didn’t suspect
I had whooping cough, a disease spread among adults actually!” Again, my words of protest sounded in vain... A nurse in charge of me started coughing, too.
Then I asked the opinion of my old elementary school classmate Nobuhiko Okabe, now the director of the Infectious Disease Surveillance Center of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases – he sometimes appears on TV. According to him, “Doctors specialized in infectious disease would immediately think about whooping cough, but for other doctors, it wouldn’t be a high priority in their mind.” I started to accept his explanation and my anger settled. But...
With this matter, I fully realized that in this world, there are so many people who don’t know at all about whatever lies outside their expertise. In fields such as music, theater, painting and movie-making for example, everyone is focused on their own little world. People also rely too heavily on their smartphones for their general knowledge. People are losing their ability to imagine possibilities outside their domain. Those who are not at all interested in a diversity of things are dangerous. They most likely don’t even have friends in other fields to whom they can easily ask an opinion... Is this vicious situation caused by the Japanese virtue called “modesty”...?
I myself made a gross error. I was feeling as if I were aboard a perfectly run great ship, after going to the “big and distinguished hospital highly specialized in cancers”. But in fact I was like the students on that sinking Korean ship. Is this the way people who own guns for self-defense feel in the supposedly great US? This might seem like an illogical leap in what I write... probably because I am in such a long difficult situation.
I finally reached midway point day of my whole treatment.
It's becoming more and more difficult for me to swallow. I hear that within the last four years feeding tube techniques have been becoming more common. Before using feeding tubes became more common, almost half of all throat cancer patients were discouraged halfway through radiation therapy and thus they couldn’t get ideal treatment. I can totally understand it. This extreme suffering is about five times worse than I imagined.
Give up smoking, everyone! My case is not caused by smoking, but hey.... I got
I’ve been hospitalized several times before, but in my life I’ve never had such long, painful and multilayered problems, that undermine my whole body and spirit. In any case, my so-called “treatment” is going to be completed in a few days. In the basement floor of the hospital, each patient is bound by a net over their face so that he or she doesn’t move their upper body. Five days per week, a few minutes per day, radioactive rays are emitted to a predetermined part. Saturday and Sunday there is no treatment so the body can recover without submitting to radiation, and to wait for the extinction of cancer cells incapable of reproducing themselves. As if cancer cells care to match up with human beings’ activity cycle... During this radiation therapy, coughing is strictly prohibited! In my case, smothering my cough was very difficult, each time.
The radiation burns the inside of my mouth, which inevitably causes sores. Dentists of the hospital take good care of me though. The dentists, mostly women, I don’t know why, wear a light pink and light blue thin cover over their scrubs. With the most delicate touch, they treat the inside of my mouth so gently. How good would it be if normal city dentists could copy this technique? Well, of course, here almost all the patients are in serious condition, and they can hardly open their mouths because of the pain.
Since long before, I’ve wondered strongly why dentists don’t work next to otolaryngologists. Besides, at the dentist, many treatments are not covered by national health insurance. Also, I think it’s criminal that silver fillings are evidently toxic for the body, but are covered by health insurance but strangely expensive healthy ceramic one is not.
Probably I’m actually in the most miserable period. I've lost weight, and my neck is all skin and bone like a turtle. I don’t want to see anyone.
How will I return to my former self? What kind of life do I want to rebuild? I should consider these questions, to see how I will interpret this trial given by God (?).
People may tend to me kindly. However, I know that art itself is not as superficial as this. Among encouraging words to me, people said “This may be a short break in your life” and “Please relax and take your time”, but so far at least, reality has not been like this. I have been in too much agony to think about anything else besides my body, the pain and the treatment. Also, why has this happened to me? Well, there are people who are in more serious condition than me. Still, I am wondering why…
A celebration? I was released from the hospital! But now is the most miserable period.
Firstly, I cannot talk (it will take at least two weeks for me to find my voice.) Because of my mouth sores and radiation burns, my throat is too swollen to drink… of course I cannot eat (drinking a little bit of water is already very difficult.)
Furthermore, as I survive by feeding tube, I cannot go out and move around freely.
Now all I have to do is to wait patiently for all my body functions to be reactivated little by little.
That’s why I am not glad that people are coming to see how I’m doing…
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*Originally posted in Japanese on 5th August, 2014
The “downhill”, since 4th April, got finally flat. These days since the beginning of August, I can feel little by little that luck is turning in my favor on “uphill” road. I don’t cough, any longer. The inside of my mouth is full of foam like a crab, though I’m starting to eat. I lost energy and weight but I will do my best to get my second wind within the two months of rehabilitation I have coming up.
As for the radiation therapy on the middle part of my pharynx, my doctor whispered the other day, “In fact, nine out of ten people are defeated.” I was greatly surprised to hear that and knew that, I, who neither drink nor smoke, was lucky. I have no idea about how long I will be able to live healthy from now on, but I guess nothing is more precious than the joy of being useful to others. My wife Tamayo lost her mother and then got exhausted with nursing me now. Besides, her beloved dog has a serious illness. Also, I truly realized how my sister’s existence is irreplaceable.
After all, the real value of human beings is defined when he or she is obliged to find the answer for what they really live for. Let’s talk leisurely about this when I get better and my normal voice is back.
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*Originally posted in Japanese on 5th September, 2014
One month has passed since my last message. This summer had certainly some hot days but I feel it passed fast somehow. I have been taking it easy in my villa in Izu. The interiors were renovated this spring as if to predict my stay here under these circumstances. I’d like to swim… though I’m not motivated to do so, as I have a plastic plug on my stomach for feeding tube, and after losing ten kilograms, my body is hardly returning to its former shape. Yesterday, however, I passed the MRI scan exam at the Cancer Institute Hospital, and the result told me: “Rejoice, you have completely recovered from your cancer!” I’d like to think that this is because of all the cheerful encouragement and “loving fan messages (?)” that everyone gave me.
The next week I will be rid of the feeding tube. In a month I wonder to what extent I’ll be able to bear people seeing me. I have no idea so far, but I have to eat a lot…and yet despite this I don’t have any appetite as I feel that everything tastes vague. And, well, music…I am wondering how God wants me to live my life from now on. I would like to live in a new world…
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*Originally posted in Japanese on 15th September, 2014
To my great joy, Tadaaki Otaka came to visit me. Since many years ago I have proposed that he join me at the villa. His visit finally happened, even if it was because of my illness. He is well informed on health problems and taught me about some water and medicines for diverse prognosis. Because you know, we have been friends for the last fifty years. I was excitedly recalling the memories of our youth while Tadaaki retained his signature calm. Also, Yutaka Sado took a one day trip from Osaka to visit me. We haven’t had a close relationship each other so far, but with this opportunity I feel we suddenly became friends! I felt like throwing everything away so it was a good “medicine” to realize that Yutaka and Tadaaki are both walking the similar path in their own way.
Yoshiki Nakamura from the Tokyo Metropolitan Theater came to see me with his son. Being teased by a sixty-seven-year-old phantom could be a lifetime trauma for the four-year-old boy…
