What was Itoi’s childhood like? During a biography in which Itoi is asked about his life called Koga Fumitake ga Matometa Itoi Shigesato no Koto, which I’d translate to Shigesato Itoi Stuff Collected by Fumitake Koga, Itoi talks about his childhood and much more. Here are the highlights during the childhood portion of the biography:

• Itoi’s dad was a part of WWII and had Itoi in 1948 after returning from the war.
• Itoi’s name was based off of the Japanese pronouciation of the name Julien, specifically Julien Sorel, who is the protagonist in the book The Red and the Black.
• His mother left him when he was young, so he was raised by his father and grandmother.
• In school, on Mother’s Day, kids would give red carnations to their moms, but for kids without moms, they’d be given white carnations. Itoi felt singled out and embarrassed by it as a kid. He tried his best not to cry about it.
• His father remarried around 2nd or 3rd grade, but it was hard for Itoi to call her mom.
• People treated him with a lot of pity when he was a kid because he didn’t have a mom.
• He has no memory of ever being hugged, “after all, I couldn’t hug myself.”
• In the 1980s, he saw John Lennon hugging Yoko Ono on the cover of a Rolling Stones book and he really understood that feeling after going through all he had and remembering Lennon’s song, saying, “It’s MOTHER!”