Biography|Masamichi Kogai — The Arigasaki School He Left for Sendai

People treat a prefectural high school as a name on a résumé line.

This one sits on Arigasaki in Matsumoto, at 3-8-1, looking toward the North Alps.

Kogai came here from Chino for secondary school.

Nagano Prefectural Matsumoto Fukashi High School is the school named in his later interviews and in the Japanese biographical record.

A student born in August 1954 would finish a Japanese high school in March 1973.

From this campus he sat the entrance path that put him in Tohoku University's Faculty of Engineering that April.

The school dates to 1876, when it opened inside Matsumoto's Kaichi School as the 17th irregular middle school.

The present name remembers Fukashi, the old name for this part of Matsumoto.

The local tradition is thin on uniforms and thick on the idea that students govern themselves.

He did not become a car man on this ridge.

He became a student who could leave Matsumoto for Sendai.

The building in the photograph is the No. 1 building, shot in 2006.

The campus is still here.

The view west toward the Alps is the same one a 1970s student would have had between classes.

Nothing on the gate records his name.

The record that matters is the later sentence that always pairs Fukashi with Tohoku.

Photo: Tgmsito, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons