Kojima said he continued to pursue dreams and roman —aspirations for…

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.

“They can't break free, they can't quit, they can't lose. It felt like that when Metal Gear started gaining fans and I started getting fan letters.”

In 2009 Kojima wrote that if he could have only one wish it would be to go into space before he dies. He said a brief orbit just beyond Earth’s atmosphere would be enough, and that to make it happen he would give up even his position as a game designer, his family, or his own life.

Kojima argued that stories about impossible journeys can circulate through culture and help turn them into reality. In response to accusations of escapism, he maintained that fiction contains truth and can serve as a frontline tool to correct real-world problems; for that reason he wants to continue telling stories and creating connections between people, worlds, and times.

Kojima abandoned the idea of becoming a professional astronaut almost upon entering senior high: Japan’s space agency had no astronauts, becoming a cosmonaut on the other side of the Iron Curtain seemed impossible, and NASA required U.S. citizenship which he was not going to change. He later judged those to be simplistic excuses to force himself to grow up; he did not abandon the desire to travel to space and, as a college student, carried Takashi Tachibana’s Return from Space in his pocket.