During the 2010 world tour for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Kojima…

“I walked in and the shopkeepers knew about me. I couldn't believe it. It was the most surprising moment in my life.”

“couldn't even talk to them – he had to talk through someone else. That's how that game was finished.”

“There was a sort of legend at Konami, that if you got involved in this project, you'd up demoted or transferred. (laughs) [...] once we got a working build running, and they saw that exclamation mark pop up when the enemy gets surprised, that sold them on the concept.”

After the Tohoku earthquake, fans and associates from around the world advised Kojima to leave Japan and use his life and resources to create elsewhere rather than spend them rebuilding the past. Kojima did not leave: he realized he could not separate his own purpose from Japan’s reconstruction and that, despite considering himself cosmopolitan, his substance was innately Japanese. Satori helped him out of the standstill with a further conclusion: he should not confine himself to Eastern, Western, or national labels, but create and share his own world—the world of Hideo Kojima.

After returning to Japan following the freight-elevator incident, Kojima bought the DVD of Elevator to the Gallows and watched it for the first time in about forty years. The film proved different from his childhood impressions: he felt sympathy for Jeanne Moreau and realized it was not film noir to him but a hymn to love. He concluded that he had been trapped inside that movie for decades and that the real elevator accident had set in motion again the elevator that had long stood still in his heart.