Punch Isn't Just a Name to Him. Meet the Man Who Loves Him Like a Son.

[00:00:00]They call him the man made of stone, the one who [music] almost never smiles and whose face is always set.

[00:00:07]And then, with no warning at all, comes the small gesture that undoes every one of us.

[00:00:14]A kiss [music] laid gently on the neck, the particular kiss that a father gives a son.

[00:00:22]His name is Shunpei Miyakoshi. He is 34 years old.

[00:00:27]And the little one [music] he carries is, in every way that matters, his son.

[00:00:32]A son the world has come to know simply as >> [music] >> Punch.

[00:00:36]Punch is almost 11 months old now, which, in the slow arithmetic of growing, >> [music] >> means he is close to a human child of three.

[00:00:45]And that is why this kiss weighs as much as it does, [music] for it is the kiss of a father leaving his son at the gate of the nursery school.

[00:00:54]The man made of stone bending down to make the simplest [music] gesture of love there is.

[00:01:01]Miyakoshi [music] was one of the two keepers who took Punch into their hands in the very first hours, when he weighed only 500 g [music] and his mother, worn down by the heat and the birth, could not hold him.

[00:01:13]And it was Miyakoshi himself who gave him his name, choosing Punch after [music] Monkey Punch, the artist behind Lupin the Third, the manga he had loved since he was young.

[00:01:24]Of the two of them, [music] it is Miyakoshi whom people call the man made of stone, the one who walks [music] slowly across the enclosure with his brow drawn tight. And yet, the moment you watch this single [music] gesture, you see, all at once, how much tenderness that stone had [music] been holding in.

[00:01:43]Many people grow angry when we speak of Punch as a son or of the keepers as his fathers.

[00:01:49]And yet, for Punch, [music] that is exactly what they are, because the imprint of a Japanese macaque is sealed in the first days [music] of life.

[00:01:58]And in those days, Punch had no one in the world but them.

[00:02:02]>> [music] >> He will never be able to look upon any other Mac as his mother.

[00:02:06]For they are his family now.

[00:02:09]And Miyakoshi [music] is his father. Not like a father, but his father.

[00:02:14]>> [music] >> Because the brain has never once learned to deal in metaphors.

[00:02:18]He gives very few interviews. And yet, whenever [music] he stands before the cameras, the man made of stone says the same quiet things. That Punch [music] is strong.

[00:02:28]That even when the older ones scold him, he recovers quickly. [music] That he is learning a little more with every passing day.

[00:02:36]And he says that he hopes when Punch is grown, the small one will come to live an ordinary life inside [music] the troop and on his own. Which is a father's whole wish folded into a single flat sentence. [music] The wish for independence.

[00:02:51]The very thing you long for in a child, even though it is [music] the thing that will carry the child away from you.

[00:02:57]And then, on an ordinary morning, with both his hands full and the troop waiting, and no one in the world asking him to, the man made [music] of stone turned his head and kissed Punch on the neck.

[00:03:10]Stone does not feel any less than the rest of [music] us. For stone is only feeling that was never once allowed to move.

[00:03:18]And today, it moved.