Hyoryu

Kojima said he had a particular fondness for true escape and survival stories and recalled rewatching The Great Escape and Papillon in theaters, as well as seeing 127 Hours. He came to Hyoryu because novelist Naoki Hyakuta had read Kojima’s essay on Papillon and recommended Hyoryu and Hagoku (Prison Break).

From Hyoryu, Kojima concluded that the human body needs work and movement: the castaway who balances his diet, exposes himself to the sun, and keeps active survives where others fall ill after long periods of immobility. He thought this lesson also applied to modern urban life and that an idle, purposeless existence guided only by desire is not sustainable.

Kojima distinguished in Hyoryu between passive survival and regaining a human goal: returning home. He was struck that the shipwrecked men combined physical strength, artisan memory, and cooperation to make, from driftwood and remnants, things as basic as a reservoir and ultimately a ship, and that when they left they left tools and instructions for future castaways. He saw in that two meanings of survival—enduring adversity and making it back alive—and the passing on of something human beyond mere genes.