One day, Hideo was watching a TV program titled “Why Their Lives Failed Despite Their High Academic Backgrounds?” Everyone is vaguely aware that one’s success in life and their academic background aren’t necessarily correlated, but still, when they see a highly educated person ended up unemployed, their nasty curiosity begins to be stimulated, their thinking, “Why has he or she ended up like this?” as well as “It’s such a waste.” This program, in which many highly educated people whose lives hadn’t been going well after graduating from schools appeared and failure in their lives was introduced in comical ways, was intended to appeal to such curiosity many people had.

  Morita Yuji was among those people who appeared in the program. He whose IQ score was exceptionally high was a person with a prominent academic background, who had gotten even a doctoral degree at Tokyo University. However, he revealed in the program that he had failed in the management of the school he had founded, and after that, he had been writing sci-fi novels targeting minority hardcore fans, from which he got a modest income.

  In the program, Morita presented an anecdote which had been told to him by a psychiatrist that one’s IQ score didn’t represent all of their intellectual abilities when he was depressed just after the failure of the management of his school. Hearing this, Hideo snapped his fingers thinking “See, I knew it!” In fact, he had taken an IQ test a bit before the program and told by his doctor that his IQ score was 85.

  Hideo had majored in humanities at a prestigious private university and graduated from it. Therefore, he had never imagined his IQ score would be low, and even after hearing the result of the test, he had been trying not to pay attention to it telling himself “An IQ test isn’t reliable at all.” So, the anecdote in which Morita had failed at his job despite his high IQ score encouraged Hideo.

  Though Hideo had graduated from a prestigious private university as mentioned before, he had spent five years studying for the entrance exam after finishing high school. In Japan, when companies recruited new graduates, their ages were prioritized, so despite his prominent academic background, the only company which employed him after his graduation was a so called “Black Company,” which offered terrible working conditions. Unreasonable demands and severe bullying he experienced there made him mentally ill, which led him to see a psychiatrist, who recommended him to take the IQ test, which revealed his IQ score.

  Looking back, Hideo had been persecuted by others all his life. He was born in a low-income household in an old town area in Osaka and didn’t have any chance to get to know highly educated people throughout his childhood. If he had had good communication skills or had been physically strong, he would have lived a better life, but actually, Hideo was poor at sports, probably because of which he became introvert, so that he was not good at socializing either. He didn’t go to a cram school during his childhood, and naturally his grades were bad too, so he had no choice but to enter a technical high school in his neighborhood which was known for a lot of delinquent students gathering there.

  At the school, he was marked by a delinquent group and bullied in an indescribably awful way. He nearly quit going to school, but thanks to the assistance from his homeroom teacher, he managed to earn minimum credits necessary to graduate. However, at the end of his high school days, it was often for him to stay home and watch TV all day.

  And one day, he had an opportunity to watch a TV series in which a delinquent boy got to know an enthusiastic teacher and decided to aim at Tokyo University.

  “This is it!”

  Watching the TV series, he felt a spark. All his life, he had been made aware of his own clumsiness and frailty, but as to studying, he had never engaged in it from the beginning, so he thought he might have had untapped potential. At that moment, he became determined to enter a prominent university so that he could turn his life around.

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  At that time, his high school days were about to come to an end, and it was amid the entrance exam season. He funneled what little money he had into some textbooks and began to study without knowing how. However, when he started studying, he realized that he had to study quite a few subjects in order to take the entrance exam of Tokyo University, which the delinquent boy in the TV series aimed at, so that he couldn’t help feeling that it was an unattainable goal for him despite his enthusiasm. Even so, he couldn’t give up his desire to enter a prominent university. Therefore, he reached the conclusion that he should aim at a humanities course which the prestigious private university offered.

  During the five-year period when Hideo studied for the entrance exam, he was literally risking his life. He confined himself to his room to study frantically, but of course, his parents objected to his taking the entrance exam. It was often that they got into an argument, and there was even an occasion where Hideo, who became furious, started to brandish a kitchen knife, so that it nearly became a police matter. Since Hideo thought he wouldn’t be able to pass the exam if he worked, he was determined to do anything to protect the environment where he could focus on studying. Each time he ended up failing the entrance exam, he had to confront a threatening situation, and he barely overcame each of the crises and succeeded in passing the exam after the five years.

  Due to such enormous efforts he had made to enter the university, Hideo was proud of his academic background he had gained, and he was sure that it was because he had got a wrong job that he, who had become so smart thanks to such efforts of his, had stumbled over life after beginning to work. At the same time, he cursed his own misfortune of not having been born in the environment where he would have been interested in studying naturally.

  To begin with, it was the five-year period during which he had studied for the entrance exam after graduating from high school that led him to end up being employed by the “Black Company,” and if he had started to study hard when he was a child, he might have avoided studying for such a long time.

  “There must be something which only I who have lived in this way can do. Even though my IQ score is low, what’s wrong with that?”

  Hideo thought this way when he saw the TV program mentioned at the start of this story and decided to bring up the topic in the next interview with his psychiatrist.

  “In the program, a man who failed at the management of his school even though he got an IQ score as high as 180. I wondered what on earth IQ scores mean. By the way, I’m also thinking of founding a school because I think I will be able to make use of my experience in which I managed to overcome the entrance exam.”

  His psychiatrist, who listened to him saying so typing something into a computer, turned to him without altering his facial expression at all and said by the way of introduction,

  “Between us, it was I who examined the man too.”

  And then, he mentioned as below with a sigh:

  “I understand the hardship you’ve undergone very well. Also, as you might guess, one’s IQ score doesn’t represent all of their intellectual abilities. That’s quite right. But still, that doesn’t mean IQ scores are totally meaningless figures. There is no doubt that factors necessary to organize one’s social life are contained among the abilities measured as IQ scores. That is, while some people can’t manage their lives successfully despite their high IQ scores, those with low IQ scores are more prone to be confronted with troubles. Let me put it simply. For example, we sometimes see such a catchphrase as ‘an outfielder with a strong arm who throw max toss of 400 ft’ in profiles of baseball players. Certainly, not all of such players can be premier players because many of the physical abilities necessary to be a premier player can’t be quantified.

  “Even so, it isn’t that ‘a strong arm whose max toss is 400 ft’ is pointless, and conversely, if there is a player whose max toss is 200 ft, it must be difficult for him to be a premier player. Rather, it may be impossible for him even to be a professional player. We can say measurable intellectual abilities such as IQ are something like that. To organize one’s social life well, high IQ is a necessary but not sufficient condition. That’s it.”