Tetsuro Kosaka, 78, is the owner of Hibiya Matsumotoro, one of Japan's most historical restaurants. A three-story building resembling a cozy country estate, Matsumotoro was designed to sit in the center of Japan's first Western-style park, Hibiya Koen, and it has been in business since the park opened to the public in 1903. Today, the restaurant continues to serve the same simple and inexpensive yōshoku (Western style foods) that made it famous 107 years ago, and guests can enjoy dishes such as omuraisu (rice omelet) and Japanese curry under a 400-year-old tree on the restaurant's terrace. It was in the Matsumotoro building that Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), often referred to as the Founding Father of the Republic of China, and his best friend Shokichi Umeya (1868-1943) — Kosaka's wife's grandfather — planned and prepared the 1911 Chinese Revolution to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Today, Kosaka and his children keep Umeya and Sun's memory, as well as their incredible contribution to history, alive.
Born in the park, raised in the park and died in the park: I hope that'll be my life story. My family lived and worked in this building and my mother gave birth to me here. When I tell people I was born in Hibiya Koen, they assume I was an unwanted child who was dumped there. Not at all! My only hope is that I die in Hibiya Koen; that death will be instantaneous and happen when I'm happy. I'd like to be walking back to the restaurant alone, just after my girlfriend and I have parted. Then, while still smiling, boom, I fall and die, looking up at a tree.
As society develops and matures, people become more childish. My wife's grandfather, Shokichi Umeya, was 14 years old when he traveled alone by boat from Nagasaki in Japan to Shanghai, China, in 1882. Sun was 13 when he sailed from China to Hawaii to study. Today few parents would allow their children to see the world so early on.