Kojima recalls that, as a child, he was the first to come home alone:…

“It became a habit which I still have. ... I'd think up stories because I had so much time alone.”

“As soon as I got home, I turned on every light in every room and switched on the TV at high volume—not to watch anything, but to distract from the loneliness.”

Kojima recalled that when his son was small they did all kinds of activities and trips together, but that abruptly ended when his son started junior high and preferred to be with his friends. Since Kojima's own father died when he was thirteen and he had no experience of going through adolescence with a father, he said he did not know what closeness or distance to adopt with his son; he sought guidance by rereading Early Autumn.

Kojima said loneliness had accompanied him since childhood and reached its worst during his adolescence, even when he was surrounded by family, friends, school and activities. He described how a switch could flip in the middle of having fun, making the feeling stronger the more numerous the crowd was; at the end of the year, when the city was liveliest, he spent sleepless nights fearing that the loneliness might one day kill him.

Kojima says that going to a bookstore was a daily routine he did not abandon even during the frenetic start of his studio. There he takes books in his hands, buys the ones that call to him, and loses himself reading them; on business trips he is not at ease unless he has several books in his bag, and he considers choosing and reading books to be part of who he is.