I have a mental disorder.

"I have a mental disorder. At the age of 21, I was attacked by schizophrenia. Now I go to the hospital once in two weeks.

Personally I'm a member of Soka Gakkai, a lay organization, and there I realized that having a mental disorder is my fate, but my mission is to protect and help others with the same challenge. Well, such friends have saved me too, so it's also a return."

- How did your friends save you?

"Depression is one of the symptoms, which deprives me of energy to do anything or to even speak. It makes me sleep longer, and at worse times I even think of suicide. Depression leads to people getting in 'train accidents', you know. The suffering did often make me believe that ending my life is better off than enduring life.

But a friend in Soka Gakkai told me that if one commits suicide, he will end up doing it again in his next life and that the agony would continue forever. Soka Gakkai has this sort of deep life philosophy."

- When did you get to know Soka Gakkai?

"At the age of 32, a woma whom I wanted to marry recommended me to join. But when I was 33, my condition got worse, so I was hospitalized again. So we never ended up together. But well, now she is an owner of a Ramen noodle shop now, so I can drop by once in a while to eat Ramen and see her.

I know that she still loves me, and so do I. Although I can’t support her for now because I’m on welfare at the moment, my hope is to use my language skills that I'm learning right now, so that we can be together one day."

（7/6/2014 千歳烏山 Chitose-Karasuyama）