Two days after my meeting with Miyamoto, I went to Sonobe to have a look around.

NEWYORKER: Master of Play

Miyamoto fans have made pilgrimages to some of the larger limestone caves near Sonobe.

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We got off the highway in Sonobe, which seemed both rural and light-industrial in a way that reminded me of Nyack.

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Next up was Komugi Mountain, atop which, Miyamoto had told me, I would find the ruins of Sonobe Castle, the epicenter of his childhood explorations.

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This was in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, in the rural village of Sonobe, about thirty miles northwest of Kyoto, in a river valley surrounded by wooded mountains.

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Unless he overcomes these obstacles and establishes a harmonious working relationship with Mr Sonobe, he will find it hard to wrest the distinction of Japan's biggest comeback story away from Mr Ghosn.

ECONOMIST: Daimler and Mitsubishi Motor: In the shadow of Ghosn | The

The trouble is that Mr Eckrodt will probably have less authority than Mr Ghosn, since Takashi Sonobe, president of Mitsubishi, is not a lame duck as was Yoshikazu Hanawa, Nissan's former president and present chairman.

ECONOMIST: Daimler and Mitsubishi Motor: In the shadow of Ghosn | The

Indeed this week Mr Sonobe spelled out his own plans for rescuing the company, drafting restructuring goals by the end of the year, making final decisions by March and starting to implement them by April.

ECONOMIST: Daimler and Mitsubishi Motor: In the shadow of Ghosn | The

We stopped alongside the Sonobe River, where Miyamoto, as a boy, had caught fish with his hands, and I descended the bank and stared at the riffles for a while until I realized, with a start, that there were six or seven giant carp in a pool right by my feet.

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