The Western-style living room of Eriko's residence follows the taste of the previous resident Goroji Suga. The chandelier hung from the ceiling is sending down a quiet light.
Tsubune leaves the seat, eating adzuki-bean jelly, goes to the window and see the trace of sunset. The silhouette away over the roof may be the Tanzawa peaks.
Eriko is looking through one volume of the large encyclopedia of Heibon-sha.
Mari, massaging Suga's shoulders with practical hands, says, "You feel relaxed a little, don't you?"
Suga seems very comfortable.

Suga has not received any satisfactory documents nor informations yet concerning how TCC (Tokyo Commercial College) moved the campus from Kanda faraway to Musashino after the Great Kanto Earthquake.
Soon after the disaster, president Sano met Yasujiro Tsutsumi, president of Hakone Land Company. The campus recovery committee was set up one week after their meeting.
Suga admires Sano's quick action under the emergency, while, on the other hand, he still has unclear doubt about something like why it was only Hakone Land that cooperated with Sano or TCC to look for the moving candidates.
Just as he admits the lack of his investigation, such matters as other real estates Sano might have contacted with and candidate places besides Musashino and Ohizumi will probably turn out someday.
Suga unusually expresses the irritatition of not getting such physical evidence.

"I am not enthusiastic about it as far-fetched."
His tone is melancholic.
"Since our purpose is to pursue the Four-God Statues on the facade of Kanematsu Auditorium, let me go forward for the present."
Concerning to the selection of the place to move to and the dealers, Suga has given several phonecalls to the people in school to ask about them, prospecting that it would immediately be solved because they might have most of the ducuments in school. However unexpectedly, he has not received any answers to the point, though some of them are with supporting evidences.

One of them is the documents from Mr. Isao Tsukioka, professor at the social fuculty of TCC. They have become a precious material for Suga's logic making.
Professor Tsukioka was also pusuing the history of the school, so he wrote his thought in the attached paper.
The documents were various articles and advertisements of the newspapers, magazines and the publicity of Kunitachi town. In addition, several documents on Zensaku Sano and his son's paper. Most of them were news to Suga.

Suga is going to state his guess about the campus moving with the support of such informations, but Eriko stops him at the point where the story was just the earthquake occurred which motivated and accelerated the move in the result.
"About the Great Kanto Earthquake, ... according to this ...," she begins to talk with the encyclopedia in hand.

The stage is on September 1, Taisho 12 (1923).

"This 7.9-8.2 magnitude earthquake was centered around the north-western corner of Sagami Bay, and the most disastrous places are said to have been Tokyo and Yokohama. The densely populated areas were damaged directly. The houses completely destroyed and partially destroyed were each more than 100,000, the houses burned down were more than 400,000, and the dead and the missing in all were more than 100,000. Especially in Tokyo big fire made the disaster more serious, so this article says the dead were totally over 60,000 in Tokyo city only, and among them the people burned were fifty and several thousand."

"Thanks a lot,"
Saying so, Suga makes use of her comment to the school matter since then.
"The article in the documents Mr. Tsukioka sent to me says that president Sano met Yasujiro Tsutsumi, the president of Hakone Land nine days after the destruction of Kanda Campus by the Great Kanto Earthquake. Also it says that on September 16, one week after their meeting, he set up the campus recovery committee in the college and named the 16 professors including him as the members."
Suga shows the document again, saying,
"The members were Fukuda, Hori, Ueda, ..., mostly popular professors. Supposedly a series of heated discussions. However, if anything had been settled, he could surely have persuaded the whole school. They were such strong members."
Suga wants most to know the detail of heated discussions, but he has not found any related documents yet.
"Mr. Ue-Tei wrote something about it in his autobiography."
It is the diary of professor Teijiro Ueda, died just one year after becoming the president.

The committee was held several tens of times this year.
The most time-spending matter was the relocation of the site and the design of the new school buildings.
We often discussed and consulted about them until late at night.

At this moment Eriko asks Suga as a sure thing.
"There must be the records at every meeting of the committee, right?"
"No, not for now strangely, though they earnestly tries to find any for me."
Junior Tsubune is also baffled by Suga's ambiguous talk.
"The sixteen professors had a frank and heated argument, so there must be something written by any of them including professor Ueda even if the record were not found at last."
"It is unlikely to think all their meetings of several tens of times were off-the-record. If there is no trace we cannot help doubting anything wrong behind, rather than they were careless."
Suga seems he cannot get rid of distrust. ... President Sano's dictatorship/tyranny, the hangers-on's ambition, Yasujiro Tsutsumi's activity behind the scene. ...
"Anyway, ... it may be said this way as a generalization."
He shows a note and changes the viewpoint for a while, trying to shake those doubts off.
"President Sano and such professors as Fukuda, Iura, Hori, Miura and Ueda returned from Germany, certainly dreamed of the reproduction of Gottingen, their ideal school city in the center of Germany. Therefore at least, the Musashino wilderness made them remember Gottingen University as the new campus, and they must have reached a tacit agreement."
Suga takes out several photos of Gottingen University. The streets and houses look like the present Kunitachi city.
Suga continues his talk mostly to himself.

I suppose they were forcusing their attention on Musashino area and looking for a suitable place around there, partly because TCC had bought a playground at Shakujii not far from Musashino several months before.
Above all it was one of the decisive factors that Yasujiro Tsutsumi was a friend of president Sano. Tsutsumi was the president of Hakone Land, the powerful real estate agent around there.
Perhaps Sano approached Tsutsumi with the condition of the new campus the professors' committee was asking, and with the idea if compromised he would decide this land to be the campus.

"What was the condition of the new campus?"
Eriko asks Suga promptly.
"It may be summerized to four points," answers Suga, continuing his talk,
"First: convenient transportation. Second: water and sewage services. Third: quiet, no factory nor busy street. Fourth: reasonable land price. Anyway it was just after the big earthquake, so the Government was severer in the budget than usual. Tsutsumi side can easily be imagined to have used every trick, and Tsutsumi accepted every condition. In the result, the new campus was settled at the Musashino wilderness in Yaho village."
Looking at the three's unsatisfactory faces, the elderly frowns, too. He asks Tsubune to read the letter from professor Tsukioka.

There is Tonogayato Garden very near the south exit of JR Kokubunji Station, next to Kunitachi Station. It is designated as a scenic spot of Metropolitan Tokyo.
This garden used to be the second residence of Teijo Eguchi, the first chair of Josui-kai, was built in Taisho 4 (1915), making skillful use of the landform of Musashino wilderness. He was then the general sales manager of Mitsubishi Joint-stock Company, and later served as vice president of Manchurian Railroad.
Here in this residence, the garden parties and victory celebrations of TCC had been held for years before the Great Kanto Earthquake, the cause of the college's campus move from Kanda to Kunitachi.
Therefore, the people related to the college had known well the existence of the broad thickly-wooded area in Yaho village of Musashino, and it had supposedly been one of the candidates of the college town some time before.
The garden was bought by Mitsubishi conglomerate in Showa 4 (1929), and transferred into the ownership of Metropolitan Tokyo in Showa 49 (1974).
Especially Jiro-Benten Pond still remains the original shape Teijo Eguchi made, the landscape of which is worth viewing from the maple house on the hill of tens of steps up.

The campus-recovery committee of the college submitted the plan of the move to Musashino wilderness to the Government and the Diet at the end of the year of the Great Earthquake. But the Diet was dissolved early the next year and so the plan was virtually rejected.
Suga goes forward to the next time axis, commenting that it was an unstable time such as the suppression of anti-government thought, hectic changes of cabinets, etc.
"It was the fact the rejection of the plan demoralized them, but it could never stop their brave movement. In February, Taisho 13 (1924), TCC entrusted Hakone Land to investigate whether Yaho village of Kita-tama county was suitable for the new campus or not on the assumption of the decision. Hakone Land proceeded it with a large-scale investigation including the dispatch of Nakajima, executive director, to Europe and America to inspect the college cities. It goes without saying that his main purpose was to visit Gottingen city in Germany."

Mari is now with an earnest look. She is also getting along with the story.
Suga's talk goes deeper on.
"Concerning the relationship between Sano and Yasujiro Tsutsumi, it is clear they were friendly. Sano was a dozen and more older than Tsutsumi, at the age of 34. Tsutsumi, a real estate broker, set his eyes on the collapse of TCC's Kanda campus and approached Sano in a business-minded way, or Sano firstly consulted Tsutsumi with the plan in his mind, ... there are still several opinions about it. The opinion that Tsutsumi approached Sano is commonly stronger, but as you understand me, I rather think Sano approached Tsutsumi with the plan when they met together nine days after the earthquake or before. But, ..."
"But...?"
Tsubune returns the same word to the hesitating elderly.
"Whichever was a proposer, it is no doubt that president Sano made good use of the high business mind of Tsutsumi side. Not choosing content over name, Sano realized the school city with TCC as a core in Musashino, to say nothing of the big profit on the Tsutsumi side."

Then Suga opens the document beside him.
"This is the own-written memoir of Yasuhiko Sano, the 6th son of Mr. Sano."
Late yasuhiko used to be the Japanese Minister in UK.

Most of the people seem to believe (rather to be made to believe) this theory:
The construction of Kunitachi town was wholely planned and carried out by Tsutsumi, president of Hakone Land, and after that he invited TCC from Kanda.
But the following details prove it is wrong.
That is, Hakone Land might have had some relationship with Kunitachi area all right, but it newly bought the site for TCC and other surrounding area, and it developed the Kunitachi town as the college city just as based on the request from TCC side.
Mr. Tsutsumi was surely the purchaser of the land for town-making in Kunitachi or the constructor of the college street, etc., but the original layout plan of Kuntachi town was made by my father Zensaku Sano.

Apart from the claim of Yasuhiko Sano, Tsutsumi, the president of Hakone Land, visited the office of Yaho Village himself according to the plan worked out by "TCC Campus-Recovery Committee" and his company's energetic survey. It was in the summer of Taisho 13 (1924) less than one year after the big earthquake, when started the purchase of the woodlands of Musashino.
"It must actually have been the final stage after every approval had been obtained by all the involved. This is the article of a magazine about what happened then, talked by the General Affairs Chief of Yaho Village Office."
Saying it, Suga takes out another document.

"On a certain day of August, a car was pulled over in front of Yaho Village Office along the Koshu local road.
It was the days there was no car at all and two rickshaws were used for important people in our village. Therefore, the road was barely wide enough for the car.

The visitor was Mr. Yasujiro Tsutsumi, president of Hakone Land with the executive director and another man. For our side, Village Mayor, Vice Mayer and me, Manager of General Affairs, received them.

Their story was they wanted to purchase the one million tsubo (3.3 million square meters) of the mountain forest in the northern part of our Yaho Village, and would improve and sell it in lots.
The executive director explained as follows.

1. To invite Tokyo Commercial College and Tokyo Music College, and to make the land be an ideal college city.
2. To locate a new railroad station between Tachikawa and Kokubunji.
3. To aim at a comfortable city with enough medical facilities, etc.

"I understand that the start of the purchase negotiation would have been like that, since Yasujiro Tsutsumi was a highly enterprising man."
Tubune, the junior, says frankly what he thinks.
"This business practically became the foundations for their Seibu group's great development. We surely admire Tsutsumi's excellent business sense, his keen sense of smell for the chance and his quick action."
Suga seems to finish this stage.

"Here, we can say the Musashino wilderness actually dashed to the Kunitachi College City. The official contract between TCC and Hakone Land was in September the next year (1924), two years after the Great Kanto Earthquake, which was so-called the ceremony of after-the-fact over the Government authorization. The town construction started just after that. This is the brief summery of the contract."
Tsubune reads the sentences for Suga, stumblingly because of kanji and katakana letters.

* Hakone Land quickly procures the land of about 1 million tsubo (3.3 million square meters) for its management, and exchanges the 75,000 tsubo (248,000 square meters) with the TCC's Kanda campus of about 10,000 tsubo (33,000 square meters). Hakone pays the difference by the government bond.
* To build a railroad station on the Chuo Line near the college site by June, Taisho 15 (1926).
* The trunk road from the station is wide by 24 ken (43 meters) through the college land, and by 30 ken (54 meters) through the college site.
* Water and sewage services with the electricity supply are ready by June, Taisho 15 (1926).
* The new transportation system is open between the new college site and the college preliminary course site in Shakujii.