Eurythmics
After summer vacation was over, the second semester began, for in Japan the school year starts in April. In addition to the children in her own class, Totto-chan had made friends with all the older boys and girls, thanks to the various gatherings during summer vacation. And she grew to like Tomoe Gakuen even more.
Besides the fact that classes at Tomoe were different from those at ordinary schools, a great deal more time was devoted to music. There were all sorts of music lessons, which included a daily period of eurythmics--a special kind of rhythmic education devised by a Swiss music teacher and composer, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. His studies first became known about 1904. His system was rapidly adopted all over Europe and
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America and training and research institutes sprang up everywhere. Here is the story of how Dalcroze's eurhythmics came to be adopted at Tomoe.
Before starting Tomoe Gakuen, the headmaster, Sosaku Kobayashi, went to Europe to see how children were being educated abroad. He visited a great many elementary schools and talked to educators. In Paris, he met Dalcroze, a fine composer as well as an educator.
Dalcroze had spent a long rime wondering how children could be taught to hear and feel music in their minds lather than just with their ears; how to make them feel music as a thing of movement rather than a dull, lifeless subject; how to awaken a child's sensitivity.
Eventually, after watching the way children jumped and skipped and romped about, he hit on the idea of creating rhythmic exercises, which he called eurythmics.
Kobayashi attended the Dalcroze school in Paris for over a year and learned this system thoroughly. Many Japanese have been influenced by Dalcroze --the composer Koscak Yamada; the originator o modern dance in Japan, Baku Ishii; the Kabuki actor
Ichikawa Sadanji II; the modern drama pioneer Kaoru Osannai; the dancer Michio Ito. All of these people felt that Dalcroze's teachings were fundamental to many of the arts. But Sosaku Kobayashi was the first to apply it to elementary education in Japan.
If you asked him what eurythmics was, he would reply, "It's a sport that refines the body's mechanism; a sport that teaches the mind how to use and control the body; a sport that enables the body and mind to understand rhythm. Practicing eurythmics makes the personality rhythmical. And a rhythmical personality is beautiful and strong, conforming to and obeying the laws of nature."
Totto-chan's classes began with training the body to understand rhythm. The headmaster would play the piano on the small stage in the Assembly Hall and the children, wherever they stood, would start walking in time to the music. They could walk in whatever manner they liked, except that it wasn't good to bump into others, so they tended to go in the same circular direction. If they thought the music was in two-beat time, they would wave their arms up and down, like a conductor, as they walked. As for their feet, they were not supposed to tramp heavily, but that didn't mean they were to walk with toes pointed either, as in ballet. They were told to walk completely relaxed, as if they were dragging their toes. The most important thing was naturalness, so they could walk in any way they felt was right. If the rhythm changed to three-beat time, they waved their arms accordingly and adjusted their pace to the tempo, walking faster or slower as required. They had to learn to raise and lower their arms to fit rhythms up to six-beat time. Four-beat time was simple enough:
"Down, around you, out to the sides, and up.”
But when it came to five beats it was:
"Down, around you, out in front, out to the sides, and up.”
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"Down, around you, out in front, around you again, out to the sides, and up.”
So when the beat kept changing it was pretty difficult.
What was even harder was when the headmaster would call out:
"Even if I change my tempo on the piano don't you change until I tell you to!"
Suppose they were walking in two-beat time and the music changed to three beats, the children had to keep on walking in duple time while heating the triple rhythm. It was very hard, but the headmaster said it was to cultivate the children's powers of concentration.
Finally he would shout, "You can change now!"
With relief, the children would immediately change to the triple rhythm. But that was when they had to be especially alert. In the time it took to mentally abandon the two beats and get the message to their muscles to adapt to three beats, the music might suddenly change to five-beat time! At first, their arms and legs were all over the place and there would be groans of “Teacher, wait! wait!” But with practice, the movements became pleasant to do, and the children even thought up variations and enjoyed themselves.
Usually each child moved individually, but sometimes a pair would decide to act in unison, holding hands when the rhythm was in two-beat time; or they would try walking with their eyes closed. The only thing that was taboo was conversation.
Sometimes, when there was a parent-Teacher Association meeting the mothers would peek in through the window. It was lovely to watch—each child moving arms and legs with ease, leaping about joyfully, in perfect time to the music.
Thus, the purpose of eurythmics was first to train both mind and body to be conscious of rhythm, thereby achieving harmony between the spirit and the flesh, and finally awakening the imagination and promoting creativity.
The day she arrived at the school for the very first time, Totto-chan had looked at the name on the gate and asked Mother, "What does Tomoe mean?"
The tomoe is an ancient comma-shaped symbol, and for his school the headmaster had adopted the traditional emblem consisting of two tomoe - one black and one white--united to form a perfect circle.
This symbolized his aim for the children: body and mind equally developed and in perfect harmony.
The headmaster had included eurythmics in his school curriculum because he felt it was bound to have good results and help the children's personalities to grow naturally, without being affected by too much adult interference.
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The headmaster deplored contemporary education, with its emphasis on the written word, which tended to atrophy a child's sensual perception of nature and intuitive receptiveness to the still small voice of God, which is inspiration.
It was the poet Basho who wrote:
Listen! a frog
Jumping into the silence
Of an ancient pond!
Yet the phenomenon of a frog jumping into a pond must have been seen by many others. Down through the ages and in the whole world, Watt and Newton cannot have been the only ones to notice the steam from a boiling kettle or observe an apple fall.
Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.
As for Totto-chan, as she leaped and ran about in her bare feet, like Isadora Duncan, she was tremendously happy and could hardly believe that this was part of going to school!
“The Only Thing I Want!”
It was the first time Totto-chan had ever been to a temple fair. In the middle of Senzoku Pond, near her former school, was a small island with a shrine dedicated to Benten, the goddess of beauty and music. On the night of the annual fair, as she walked along the dimly lit road with Mother and Daddy, the night was suddenly ablaze with lights as they reached the fair. Totto-chan poked her head inside each of the little stalls. There were strange sounds everywhere--squeaks and sizzles and pops--and all sorts of enticing aromas. Everything was new and strange.
There were toy pipes, which you "smoked" by inhaling peppermint. They were decorated with pictures of cats and dogs and Betty Poop. There were lollipops and cotton candy. There were bamboo guns - tubes through which you pushed pieces of a certain kind of plant stem to make a loud pop.
A man by the side of the road was swallowing swords and eating glass; and there was a man selling a sort of powder you rubbed on the rim of a bowl to make it resound. There were magic golden rings that made money disappear, and pictures that developed when exposed to sunlight, and paper flowers that blossomed when dropped in a glass of water. As she walked along, her eyes darting this way and that, Totto-chan suddenly stopped.
"Oh, look!" she cried, seeing a box full of yellow baby chicks all cheeping away.
"I want one!" she said, pulling Mother and Daddy over. "Please buy me one! Please!"
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The chicks all turned toward Totto-chan and raised their little heads to look at her, wiggling their tiny bottoms and cheeping even louder.
"Aren't they cute?" Totto-chan thought she had never seen anything quite so appealing in all her life, and she crouched down beside them.
"Please," she begged, looking up at Mother and Daddy. But to her amazement, her parents quickly tried to drag her away.
"But you said you'd buy me something, and this is the only thing I want!"
"No, dear," said Mother quietly. “These poor chicks are going to die very soon."
"Why?" asked Totto-chan, starting to cry.
Daddy drew her aside so the vendor couldn't hear, and explained, "They're cute now, Totsky, but they're terribly weak, and they won't live long. You'll only cry when it dies. That's why we don't want you to have one."
But Totto-chan had set her heart on having a baby chick, and wouldn't listen.
"I won't let it die! I'll look after it!"
Mother and Daddy kept trying to drag Totto-chan away from the box, bur she looked longingly at the chicks, and the chicks looked longingly at her, cheeping even louder still. Totto-chan had made up her mind that the only thing she wanted was a chick. She beseeched her parents, "Please, please buy me one.
Mother and Daddy were adamant.
"We don't want you to have one because it will only make you cry in the end."
Totto-chan burst out crying and started walking home with tears streaming down her cheeks. Once they were back on the dark road, she said, sobbing convulsively, "I've never wanted anything so much in my whole life. I’ll never ask you to buy me anything ever again. Please buy me one of those chicks!"
Finally Mother and Daddy gave in.
It was like sunshine after rain. Totto-chan was all smiles now as she walked home carrying a small box containing two baby chicks.
The next day, Mother had the carpenter make a special slatted box, fitted with an electric light bulb to keep the chicks warm. Totto-chan watched the chicks all day long. The little yellow chicks were very cute. But, alas, on the fourth day one of them stopped moving and on the fifth day the other did, too. She stroked them and called to them, but they didn't give a single "cheep." She waited and waited but they never opened their eyes again. It was just as Mother and Daddy had said. Crying to herself, she dug a hole in the garden and buried the two little birds. And she laid a tiny flower over the spot. The box they had been in now seemed awfully big and empty. Catching sight of a tiny yellow feather in the corner of the box, she thought of the
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way the little chicks had cheeped when they saw her at the fair, and she clenched her teeth as she cried soundlessly.
She had never wanted anything so much in her life and now it was gone so soon. It was her first experience of loss and separation.
Their Worst Clothes
The headmaster was always asking parents to send their children to school at Tomoe in their worst clothes. He wanted them to wear their worst clothes so that it wouldn't matter if they got muddy and torn. He thought it a shame for children to worry about being scolded if their clothes got dirty or to hesitate joining in some game because their clothes might get torn. There were elementary schools near Tomoe where the girls were dressed in sailor-suit uniforms and the boys wore high-collared jackets with shorts. The Tomoe children came to school in their ordinary clothes, and they had their teachers' permission to play to their hearts' content without giving their clothes a thought. Trousers in those days weren't made of anything durable like today's jeans, so all the boys had patches on their trousers and the girls wore skirts or dresses made of the strongest material available.
Totto-chan's favorite pastime was crawling under the fences of other people's gardens and vacant lots, so it suited her very well not to have to think about her clothes. There were a lot of barbed-wire fences in those days, and some of them had wire right down to ground level. In order to get under one like that you had to burrow like a dog. No matter how careful she was, Totto-chan would always manage to catch her dress on the barbs and tear it. Once, when she had on an old muslin dress that was really quite threadbare, the whole thing got shredded from top to bottom. Although it was old, she knew Mother was very fond of that dress, so Totto-chan racked her brains about what to say. She hadn't the heart to tell Mother she had torn it on barbed wire. She thought it would be better to think up a lie that would make it sound as if she couldn't help tearing it. She finally hit on the following story.
"As I was walking along the road," she lied, on arriving home, "a lot of children I didn't know threw knives at my back. That's why my dress got torn like this." But as she spoke she wondered how to answer further questions her mother might ask.
Thankfully, all her mother said was, "It must have been awful!"
Totto-chan heaved a sigh of relief. Mother obviously realized that under chose circumstances she couldn't help getting Mother's favorite dress torn.
Naturally, Mother didn't believe her story about the knives. Knives thrown at her back would have injured her as well as tearing her dress, and Totto-chan didn't seem at all frightened by the incident. Mother realized at once it was a fabrication. However, if was unusual for Totto-chan to go to such lengths to make up an excuse. She realized Totto-chan must have felt badly about the dress and that pleased her. But there was something Mother had wanted to know for some rime, and this seemed a good opportunity to find out.
“I can see how your dresses can pet torn by knives and things like that," said Mother, "but how do you manage to tear your panties too, day after day!"
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Mother could never understand how Totto-chan's lace-trimmed panties got torn every day around the rear. She could see how panties could get muddy and worn thin by going down slides or falling on one's bottom, but how did they get torn to shreds?
Totto-chan thought about it for a while, then said, "You see, when you burrow under a fence you can't help catching your skirt as you go through, and your panties when you back out, and you have to do an 'Excuse me, may I come in!' and a 'Well, goodbye then from one end of the fence to the other, so your panties and things are bound to tear.”
Mother didn't really understand, but it sounded rather amusing.
"Is it fun?" she asked.
"Why don't you try it?" said Totto-chan, astonished at the question. "It's great fun and you'll tear your panties, too!"
The game that Totto-chan liked so much and found so thrilling went like this.
First you had to find a large vacant lot surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. "Excuse me, may I come in?" consisted of lifting up the spiked wire, digging a hole, and crawling under. Once inside you lifted up a neighboring bit of barbed wire and dug another hole, this time backing out saying, "Well, goodbye then." It became quite clear to Mother how Totto-chan's skirt got drawn up as she backed out causing her panties to catch on the barbed wire. The process would be repeated over and over again—burrowing under the wire with an "Excuse me, may I come in?" and then backing our through a fresh hole with a "Well, goodbye then," tearing skirt and panties every time. Totto-chan happily zigzagged back and forth burrowing under the barbed-wire fence from one end to the other. No wonder her panties got torn.
To think that a game like that, which would only tire a grown-up and not be amusing at all, could be such fun to a child! Watching Totto-chan, with dirt in her hair and fingernails and even in her ears, Mother couldn't help feeling a little envious. And she couldn't help admiring the headmaster. His suggestion that the children wear clothes they could get as dirty as they liked was just another example of how well he understood them.
Takahashi
One morning, when they were all running about the school grounds, the headmaster said, "Here's a new friend for you. His last name is Takahashi. He'll be joining the first grade train."
The children, including Totto-chan, looked at Takahashi. He took off his hat and bowed, and said shyly, "How do you do?"
Totto-chan and her classmates were still quite small, being only in the first grade, but Takahashi, although he was a boy, was much smaller still, with short arms and legs. His hands, in which he held his hat, were small, too. But he had broad shoulders. He stood there looking forlorn.
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"Let's talk to him," said Totto-chan to Miyo-chan and Sakko-chan. They went over to Takahashi. As they approached him he smiled affably, and they smiled back. He had big round eyes and looked as if he wanted to say something.
"Would you like to see the classroom in the train?" Totto-chan offered.
"Mm!" replied Takahashi, putting his hat back on his head.
Totto-chan was in a great hurry to show him the classroom and bounded over to the train, calling to him from the door, "Hurry up."
Takahashi seemed to be walking fast but was still a long way off.
"I'm coming," he said as he toddled along trying to run.
Totto-chan realized that while Takahashi didn't drag his leg like Yasuaki-chan, who had had polio, he was taking the same amount of time to get to the train. She quietly waited for him. Takahashi was running as fast as he could and there was no need to say, "Hurry," for he was hurrying. His legs were very short and he was bow-legged. The teachers and grown-ups knew that he had stopped growing. When he saw that Totto-chan was watching him, he tried to hurry faster, swinging his arms, and when he got to the door, he said, "You do run fast." Then he said, "I'm from Osaka."
"Osaka!" cried Totto-chan excitedly. Osaka was a dream city she had never seen. Mother's younger brother--her uncle--was a university student, and whenever he came to the house he used to take her head in both his hands and lift her up as high as he could, saying, "I'll show you Osaka. Can you see Osaka?"
It was just a game grown-ups used to play with children, but Totto-chan believed him. It stretched the skin of her face horribly and pulled her eyes our of shape and hurt her ears, but she would frantically look into the distance to try and see Osaka.
But she never could. She always believed, however, that one day she would be able to see it, so whenever her uncle came, she would ask, "Show me Osaka." So Osaka had become the city of her dreams. And Takahashi came from there!
"Tell me about Osaka," she said to Takahashi.
"About Osaka?" he asked, smiling happily. His voice was dear and mature. Just then the bell rang for the first class.
"What a pity," said Totto-chan. Takahashi went in gaily, swinging the little body that was almost hidden by his bag, and sat down in the front row. Totto-chan hurriedly sat down next to him. She was glad you could sit anywhere you liked. She didn't want to leave him. Thus, Takahashi became one of her friends, too.
"Look before You Leap!"
On the way home from school, just as she had almost reached home, Totto-chan discovered something enticing by the side of the road. It was a huge pile of sand. How extraordinary to find sand there, so far from the sea! Was she dreaming! Totto-chan was thrilled. After a preliminary little hop she ran at great speed toward the pile of sand and leaped onto its summit. But it wasn't sand after all! Inside, it was a heap
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of prepared gray wall plaster. She sank into it with a "blop" and found herself covered in the gummy stuff right up to her chest, like a statue, complete with schoolbag and shoe bag. The more she snuggled to get our, the more her feet slid about. Her shoes almost came off, and she had to be careful not to become buried in it completely. So there was nothing she could do but stay still, with her left arm stuck in the gooey mixture holding onto her shoe bag. One or two women whom she didn't know went by, and she said to them, "Excuse me .. ." in a small voice, but they all thought she was playing and smiled and went on their way.
As evening fell and it began to get dark, Mother came looking for her and was astonished to find Totto-chan's head sticking out of the pile. She found a pole and had Totto-chan hold one end of it while she pulled her out. She had first tried to pull her out by hand, but Mother's foot started to get stuck in the plaster.
Totto-chan was covered with gray plaster just like a wall.
"I thought I told you once before," said Mother, "when you see something that looks intriguing, don't jump on it straight away. Look before you leap!"
The "once before" that Mother was referring to happened during a lunch hour at school. Totto-chan was strolling along the little path behind the Assembly Hall when she saw a newspaper lying in the middle of the path. Thinking it would be fun to see if she could jump onto the newspaper, she took a few steps back, gave a little hop, and then, aiming for the center of the newspaper, ran toward it with tremendous speed and leaped onto it. But the newspaper had been left there by the janitor as a temporary covering for the cesspool opening mentioned before. He had gone away to do something and had laid the newspaper over the hole to keep the smell in because the concrete lid was off. Totto-chan fell right through and into the cesspool with a great big "plop." It was really awful. But fortunately they managed to make a clean little girl of Totto-chan again. That was the time Mother was talking about.
"No, I won't jump on anything again," said Totto-chan, quietly. Mother was relieved.
But what Totto-chan said next made Mother think her relief was a bit premature.
"I won't jump onto a newspaper or a pile of sand ever again."
Mother was quite sure Totto-chan might easily take it into her head to lump onto something else.
The days were getting shorter and it was quite dark by the time they reached home.
“And Then... Uh…”
Lunchtime at Tomoe had always been fun, but lately a new interest had been added.
The headmaster still inspected the lunchboxes of all fifty pupils to see if they had "something from the ocean and something from the hills"--and his wife with her two saucepans was ready to supply the missing elements from anyone's lunch--after which they would all sing "Chew, chew, chew it well, Everything you eat," followed by, "I gratefully partake." But from now on, after "I gratefully partake," someone had to give a little talk.
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One day the headmaster said, "I think we all ought to learn how to speak better. What do you think? After this, while we are eating our lunch, let's have somebody different each day stand in the middle of the circle and tell us about something. How about that?"
Some children thought they weren't very good at speaking, but it would be fun to listen to others. Some thought it would be super to tell people things they knew. Totto-chan didn't know what she would talk about but was willing to give it a try. Most of the children were in favor of the idea so they decided to start the talks the next day.
Japanese children are usually taught at home not to talk at mealtimes. But as a result of his experience abroad, the headmaster used to encourage his pupils to take plenty of time over their meals and enjoy conversation.
Besides that, he thought it was essential for them to learn how to get up in front of people and express their ideas clearly and freely without being embarrassed, so he decided it was time to put this theory into practice.
After the children had agreed to the idea, this is what he told them. Totto-chan listened attentively.
"You needn't worry about trying to be a good speaker," he said. "And you can talk about anything you like. You can talk about things you'd like to do. Anything. At any rate, let's give it a try.”
The order of speakers was decided upon. And it was also decided that whoever was going to speak that day would eat lunch quickly, straight away after the song was over.
The children soon discovered that unlike talking to two or three friends during lunch hour, standing up in the middle of the whole school needed a good deal of courage and was quite difficult. Some children were so shy at first that they just giggled. One boy had gone to a lot of effort and prepared a talk only to forget all of it the moment he stood up. He repeated several times his fine-sounding title, "Why Frogs Jump Sideways," then started off with, "When it rains..." but got no further. Finally he said, "That's all," bowed, and went back to his seat.
Totto-chan's turn hadn't come yet, but she decided that when it did she would tell her favorite story, "The Prince and the Princess." Everyone knew it, and whenever she wanted to tell it during breaks, the children would say, "We're tired of that one.”
But all the same, she decided, that was the story she was going to tell.
The new scheme was beginning to work rather well when, one day, the child whose turn it was to give a talk firmly refused.
"I have nothing to say," the boy declared.
Totto-chan was amazed to think that anyone could possibly have nothing to say. But that boy just didn't.
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"So you have nothing to say," he said.
"Nothing."
The boy wasn't trying to be clever, or anything like that. He honestly couldn't think of anything to talk about.
The headmaster threw back his head and laughed, heedless of the gaps in his teeth.
"Let's try and find you something to say.
"Find me something?" The boy seemed startled.
The headmaster got the boy to stand in the center of the ring while he sat down at the boy's desk.
"Try and remember," he said, "what you did this morning after you got up and before you came to school. What did you do first!"
"Well," said the boy and then just scratched his head.
"Fine," said the headmaster, "You've said, 'Well.' You did have something to say.
What did you do after 'well?' "
"Well,... uh ... I got up," he said, scratching his head some more.
Totto-chan and the others were amused, but listened attentively. The boy went on, "Then, uh..." He scratched his head again. The head-master sat patiently watching the boy, with a smile on his face and his hands clasped on the desk. Then he said, "That's splendid. That will do. You got up this morning. You've made everyone understand that. You don't have to be amusing or make people laugh to be a good speaker. The important thing is that you said you hadn't anything to talk about and you did find something to say.”
But the boy didn't sit down. He said in a very loud voice, "And then... uh...
All the children leaned forward. The boy took a deep breath and went on, "And then...uh... Mother...uh...she said, 'Brush your teeth'... uh...so I brushed my teeth."
The headmaster clapped. Everyone else clapped, too. Whereupon the boy, in an even louder voice than before, went on again, "And then... uh...”
The children stopped clapping and listened with bated breath, leaning forward even more.
Finally, the boy said, triumphantly, "And then ... uh...I came to school."
One of the older boys leaned forward so far he lost his balance and hit his face on his lunchbox. But everyone was terribly pleased that the boy had found something to talk about.
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The headmaster clapped vigorously, and Totto-chan and the others did, too. Even "And then... uh...," who was still standing in their midst, clapped. The Assembly Hall was filled with the sound of clapping.
Even when he was a grown man that boy probably never forgot the sound of that applause.
“We Were Only Playing!”
Totto-chan had a terrible accident. It happened after she got home from school, while she and Rocky were playing "wolf' in her room before dinner.
They had begun by playing a game where you rolled toward each other from opposite sides of the room, ending in a brief tussle when you bumped into each other. They played this several times and then decided to try something a little more complicated--although it was Totto-chan, of course, who did the deciding. The idea was that when they met in the middle of the room after rolling toward each other, the one who made the fiercer wolf face at the other would be the winner. Rocky was a German shepherd, so it wasn't hard for him to look like a wolf. Ah he had to do was point his ears, open his mouth, and bare all his teeth. He could make his eyes look pretty fierce, too. It was a little more difficult for Totto-chan. She would hold both hands up on either side of her head to look like ears, open her mouth and eyes as wide as she could, make growling noises, and pretend to bite Rocky. At first, Rocky played the game very well. But he was a puppy, and after a while, he forgot it was just a game and suddenly bit Totto-chan in earnest.
Although still a puppy, Rocky was almost twice as big as Totto-chan and had sharp, pointed teeth, so before she realized what was happening her right ear was dangling from her head and blood was streaming down.
Hearing her screams, Mother came rushing from the kitchen to find Totto-chan in the corner of the room with Rocky, holding her right ear with both hands. Her dress was splattered with blood. Daddy, who had been practicing the violin in the living room, came rushing in, too. Rocky seemed to realize he had done something terrible. His tail hung between his legs and he looked pathetically at Totto-chan.
The only thing Totto-chan could think of was what would she do if Mother and Daddy got so angry with Rocky they got rid of him or gave him away. That would have been the saddest and most dreadful thing as far as she was concerned. So she crouched down beside Rocky, holding her right ear and crying out repeatedly, "Don't scold Rocky! Don't scold Rocky!"
Mother and Daddy were more interested in seeing what had happened to her eat and tried to pull her hands away. Totto-chan wouldn't let go and shouted, "it doesn't hurt! Don't be cross with Rocky! Don't be cross!" Totto-chan truly wasn't conscious of the pain at the time. All she could think of was Rocky.
Blood kept trickling down, and Mother and Daddy eventually realized that Rocky must have bitten her. But they assured Totto-chan they wouldn't be cross with him, and the child finally removed her hands. When she saw Totto-chan's ear dangling, Mother screamed. Daddy carried his little girl to the doctor's with Mother leading the
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way. Luckily, because it was treated in time, the doctor was able to fasten the ear back, just as it was before, to her parents' great relief. But the only thing Totto-chan was concerned about, however, was whether Mother and Daddy would keep their promise not to scold Rocky.
Totto-chan went home all bandaged from the top of her head to her chin, looking just like a white rabbit. In spite of his promise not to scold Rocky, Daddy felt very inclined to admonish the dog in some way. But Mother gave him a look with her eyes as much as to say, "Please keep your promise," and Daddy reluctantly did so.
Totto-chan rushed into the house, anxious to let Rocky know, as soon as possible, that everything was all right, and nobody was cross any more. But she couldn't find Rocky anywhere. For the first time Totto-chan cried. She hadn't cried at the doctor's, she had been so afraid that if she did, it would increase her parents' anger with the dog. But there was no stopping her tears now. As she cried, she called, “Rocky! Rocky! Where are you!"
After calling several more times, her tear-stained face lifted into a smile as a familiar brown back emerged slowly from behind the sofa. Going up to Totto-chan, he gently licked the good ear that was just visible among the bandages. Totto-chan put her arms around Rocky's neck and sniffed inside his ears. Mother and Daddy used to say they were smelly, but how she loved that dear familiar odor.
Rocky and Totto-chan were tired and very sleepy.
The end-of-summer moon looked down from above the garden on the little bandaged girl and the dog who never wanted to play "wolf' again. The two were even better friends now than they had been before.
Sports Day
Tomoe's Sports Day was held every year on the third of November. The headmaster had decided on that day after a lot of research, in which he found out that the third of November was the autumn day on which it had rained the fewest times. Perhaps it was due to his skill in collecting weather data, or perhaps it was just that the sun and clouds heeded his desire--that no rain should mar the Sports Day so anticipated by the children, who had decorated the school grounds the day before and made all sorts of preparations. Whatever it was, it was almost uncanny the way it never rained on that day.
As all kinds of things were done differently at Tomoe, its Sports Day, too, was unique. The only sports events that were the same as at other elementary schools were the Tug of War and the Three Legged Race. All the rest had been invented by the headmaster. Requiring no special or elaborate equipment, they made use of familiar everyday school things.
For instance, there was the Carp Race. Large tubular cloth streamers, shaped and painted like carp-the kind that are flown from poles in May for Boys' Day Festival-- were laid in the middle of the school grounds. At the signal, the children had to start running toward the carp streamers and crawl through them from the mouth end to the tail end and then run back to the starring point. There were only three carp one red
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and two blue--so three children raced at a time. The race looked easy but was quite difficult. It was dark inside, and the carp were long, so you could easily lose your sense of direction. Some children, including Totto-chan, kept coming out of the mouth, only to realize their mistake and hurriedly burrow inside again. It was terribly funny to watch because the children crawling backward and forward inside made the carp wriggle as if they were alive.
There was another event called Find-A-Mother Race. At the signal the children had to run toward a wooden ladder propped up on its side, crawl through it between the rungs, take an envelope from a basket, open it, and if the paper inside said, for instance, "Sakko-chan's mother," they would have to find her in the crowd of spectators, take her hand, and return together to the finishing line. One had to ease oneself through the ladder with catlike grace or one's bottom could get stuck. Besides that, a child might know well enough who Sakko-chan's mother was, bur if the paper read "Miss Oku's sister," or Mr. Tsue's mother," or Mrs. Kuninori's son," whom one had never met, one had to go to the spectators' section and call in a loud voice, "Miss Oku's sister!"
It took courage. Children who were lucky and picked their own mothers would jump up and down shouting, "Mother! Mother! Hurry!" The spectators, too, had to be alert for this event. There was no telling when their names might be called, and they would have to be ready to get up from the bench or from the mat where they were sitting, excuse themselves, and wend their way out as fast as they could to where someone's child was waiting, take his or her hand, and go running off. So when a child arrived and stopped in front of the grown-ups, even the fathers held their breath, wondering who was going to be called. There was little time for idle chit-chat or nibbling food. The grown-ups had to take part in events almost as much as the children.
The headmaster and other teachers joined the children in the two teams for the Tug of War, pulling and shouting, "Heave-ho, heave-ho!" while handicapped children, like Yasuaki-chan, who couldn't pull, had the task of keeping their eyes on the hand-kerchief tied to the center of the rope to see who was winning.
The final Relay Race involving the whole school was also different at Tomoe. No one had to run over, far. All one had to do was run up and down the semicircular flight of concrete steps leading to the Assembly Hall. At first glance it looked absurdly easy, but the steps were unusually shallow and close together, and as no one was allowed to take more than one step at a time, it was quite difficult if you were tall or had large feet. The familiar steps, bounded up each day at lunchtime, took on a fresh, fun aspect on Sports Day, and the children hurried up and down them shrieking gaily. To anyone watching from afar, the scene would have looked like a beautiful kaleidoscope. Counting the top one there were eight steps in all.
The first Sports Day for Totto-chan and her classmates was a fine day just as the headmaster had hoped. The decorations of paper chains and gold stars made by the children the day before and the phonograph records of rousing marches made it seem like a festival.
Totto-chan wore navy blue shorts and a –white blouse, although she would have preferred to wear athletic bloomers. She longed to wear them. One day after school
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the headmaster had been giving a class in eurythmics to some kindergarten teachers, and Totto-chan was very taken with the bloomers some of the women were wearing. What she liked about them was that when the women stamped their feet on the ground, their lower thighs showing beneath the bloomers rippled in such a lovely grown-up way. She ran home and got out her shorts and put them on and stamped on the floor. But her thin, childish thighs didn't ripple at all. After trying several times, she came to the conclusion it was because of what those ladies had been wearing. She asked what they were and Mother explained they were athletic bloomers. She told Mother she definitely wanted to wear bloomers on Sports Day, but they couldn't find any in a small size. That was why Totto-chan had to make do with shorts, which didn't produce any ripples, alas.
Something amazing happened on Sports Day. Takahashi, who had the shortest arms and legs and was the smallest in the school, came first in everything. It was unbelievable. While the others were still creeping about inside the carp, Takahashi was through it in a flash, and while the others only had their heads through the ladder, he was already out of it and running several yards ahead. As for the Relay Race up the Assembly Hall steps, while the others were clumsily negotiating them a step at a time, Takahashi--his short legs moving like pistons --was up them in one spurt and down again like a speeded-up movie.
"We've got to try and beat Takahashi," they all said.
Determined to beat him, the children did their utmost, but try as they might, Takahashi won every time. Totto-chan tried hard, too, but she never managed to beat Takahashi. They could outrun him in the straight stretches, but lost to him over the difficult bits.
Takahashi went up to collect his prizes, looking happy and as proud as Punch. He was first in everything so he collected prize after prize. Everyone watched enviously.
"I’ll beat Takahashi next year!" said each child to himself. But every year it was Takahashi who turned out to be the star athlete.
Now the prizes, too, were typical of the head-master. First Prize might be a giant radish; Second Prize, two burdock roots; Third Prize, a bundle of spinach. Things like that. Until she was much older Totto-chan thought all schools gave vegetables for Sports Day prizes.
In those days, most schools gave notebooks, pencils, and erasers for prizes. The Tomoe children didn't know that, but they weren't happy about the vegetables. Totto-chan, for instance, who got some burdock roots and some onions, was embarrassed about having to carry them on the train. Additional prizes were given for various things, so at the end of Sports Day all the children at Tomoe had some sort of vegetable. Now, why should children be embarrassed about going home from school with vegetables! No one minded being sent to buy vegetables by his mother, but they apparently felt it would look odd carrying vegetables home from school.
A fat boy who won a cabbage didn't know what to do with it.
"I don't want to be seen carrying this," he said. "I think I'll throw it away.”
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The headmaster must have heard about their complaints for he went over to the children with their carrots and radishes and things.
"What's the matter? Don't you want them?" he asked. Then he went on, "Get your mothers to cool them for you for dinner tonight. They're vegetable you earned yourselves. You have provided food for your families by your own efforts. How's that? I’ll bet it tastes good!"
Of course, he was right. It was the first time in her life, for instance, that Totto-chan had ever provided anything for dinner.
"I'll get Mother to make spicy burdock!" she told the headmaster. "I haven't decided yet what to ask her to make with the onions."
Whereupon the others all began thinking up menus, too, describing them to the headmaster.
"Good! So now you've got the idea," he said, smiling so happily his cheeks became quite flushed. He was probably thinking how nice it would be if the children and their families ate the vegetables while talking over the Sports Day events.
No doubt he was thinking especially of Takahashi-whose dinner table would be overflowing with First Prizes-and hoping the boy would remember his pride and happiness at winning those First Prizes before developing an inferiority complex about his size and the fact he would never grow. And maybe, who knows, the headmaster had thought up those singularly Tomoe-type events just so Takahashi would come first in them.
The Poet Issa
The children liked to call the headmaster "Issa Kobayashi." They even made up affectionate verses about him like the following:
Issa Kobayashi!
Issa's our Old Man
With his bald head!
That was because the headmaster's family name was Kobayashi, the same as that of the famous nineteenth-century poet Issa Kobayashi, whose haiku he loved. He quoted Issa's haiku so often, the children felt as if Issa Kobayashi was just as much their friend as Sosaku Kobayashi, their headmaster.
The headmaster loved Issa's haiku because they were so true and dealt with the ordinary things in life. At a time when there must have been thousands of haiku poets, Issa created a world of his own that nobody was able to imitate. The headmaster admired his verses with their almost childlike simplicity. So at every opportunity, he would teach his pupils verses by Issa, which they would learn by heart, such as:
Lean Frog,
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Here's Issa by you.
Fledgling Sparrows!
Make way, make way,
Way for the noble Horse!
Spare the Fly!
Wringing his hands, wringing his feet,
He implores your mercy!
The headmaster once improvised a melody for
one, and they all sang it.
Come and play with me Little Orphan
Sparrows for mother less ye be .
The headmaster often held haiku classes, although hey were not a formal part of the curriculum.
Totto-chan's first effort at composing haiku described her favorite comic-strip character Norakuro, stray black dog who had joined the army as a private and gradually earned promotion in spite of he ups and downs in his career. It ran in a popular boy's magazine.
Stray dog Black sets off
For the Continent, now that
He has been demobilized.
The headmaster had said "Try making up an honest, straight forward haiku about something that is in your thoughts."
You couldn't call Totto-chan's a proper haiku. But it did show what sort of thing impressed her in those days. Her haiku didn't quite conform to the proper 5-7-5 syllable form. Hers was 5-7-7. But then, Issa's one about the fledgling sparrows in Japanese was
5-8-7, so Totto-chan thought it would be all right.
During their walks to Kuhonbutsu Temple, or when it rained and they couldn't play outdoors but gathered in the Assembly Hall, Tomoe's Issa Kobayashi would tell the children about haiku. He also used haiku to illustrate his own thoughts about life
and nature.
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The snow thaws--
And suddenly the whole village is full of children!
Very Mysterious
Totto-chan found some money for the first time in her life. It happened during the train ride going home from school. She got on the Oimachi train at Jiyugaoka. Before the train reached the next station, Midorigaoka, there was a sharp curve, and the train always leaned over with a great creaking. Totto-chan would brace herself with her feet so she wouldn't go "Oops." She always stood by the right-hand door at the rear of the train, facing the way the train was going. She stood there because the platform at her own station was on the right-hand side and that door was nearest the exit.
That day, as the train leaned over, creaking as usual as it went around the curve, Totto-chan noticed something that looked like money lying near her feet. She had picked up something once before that she thought was money but it turned out to be a button, so she thought she had better have a good look this time. When the train straightened out, she put her head right down and looked at it carefully. It was definitely money--a five-sen coin. She thought somebody nearby must have dropped it and it had come rolling toward her when the train leaned over. But nobody was standing anywhere near Totto-chan.
What should she do, she wondered! Just then she remembered someone saying that when you found money, you should hand it to a policeman. But there wasn't a policeman on the train, was there?
Just then, the conductor's compartment opened and the conductor entered the car in which Totto-chan was. Totto-chan herself didn't know what made her do it, but she put her right foot over the five-sen piece. The conductor knew her and smiled. But Totto-chan couldn't smile back whole heartedly because she felt guilty about what was under her right foot. All she could manage was a weak grin. At that moment the train stopped at Ookayama, the station before hers, and the doors on the left side opened. An unusual number of people got on and Totto-chan was pushed and jostled. Totto-chan had no intention of moving her right foot and desperately stood her ground. While doing so, she thought our her plan. When she got off the train she would take the money and hand it to a policeman. Then another thought occurred to her. If any grown-ups saw her pick up the coin from under her foot, they might think she was a thief! In those days you could buy a small packet of caramels or a bar of chocolate for five sen. So while if wouldn't seem like much of a sum to a grown-up, it was a large amount of money as far as Totto-chan was concerned, and she became quite worried about it.
"That's it!" she said to herself "I’ll say quietly, “Oh, I've dropped some money. I must pick it up. Then everyone's bound to think it's mine!"
But immediately another problem occurred to her, "What if I say that and everyone looks at me and someone says, “That's mine!' What will I do?"
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After turning over lots of ideas in her mind, she decided the best thing to do would be to crouch down as the train neared her station, pretending to tie her shoelace, and pick up the money secretly. It worked. When she stepped onto the platform, damp with perspiration and clutching the five-sen piece, she felt exhausted. The police station was a long way off and if she went and handed in the money she would get home late and Mother would be worried. She thought hard as she clumped down the stairs, and this is what she decided to do.
"I’ll put it in a secret place, and then tomorrow I'll take it to school and ask everyone's advice. I ought to show it to them anyway, because nobody else has ever found any money.
She wondered where to hide the money. If she took it home, Mother might ask about it, so it would have to be hidden somewhere else.
She climbed into a thicket near the station. Nobody could see her there, and no one was likely to climb in, so it seemed pretty safe. She dug a tiny hole with a stick, dropped the precious five-sen coin into it, and covered it with earth. She found an oddly shaped stone and put it on top as a marker. Then she ran home at tremendous speed.
Most nights Totto-chan would stay up talking about school until Mother announced, "Time to go to bed." But that night, she didn't talk much and went to bed early.
The following morning she awoke with the feeling there was something terribly important she had to do. Suddenly remembering her secret treasure, she
was very happy.
Leaving home earlier than usual, she raced Rocky to the thicket and scrambled in.
“It's here! It's here!"
The stone marker was just as she had left it.
"I'll show you something lovely," she said to Rocky, removing the stone and digging carefully. But strangely enough, the five-sen coin had disappeared! She had never been so surprised. Did someone see her hide it, she wondered, or had the stone moved! She dug all around, but the five-sen piece Was nowhere to be found. She was very disappointed not to be able to show it to her friends at Tomoe, but more than that she couldn't get over the mysteriousness of it.
Thereafter, every time she passed by she would climb into the thicket and dig, but never again did she see that five-sen piece.
"Perhaps a mole took it?" she would think. Or, "Did I dream it?" Or, "Maybe God saw me hide it." But no matter how much she thought about it, it was very strange, indeed. A very mysterious happening that she would never forget.
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One afternoon, near the ticket gate at Jiyugaoka Station, two boys and one girl slightly older than Totto-chan were standing together, looking as if they were playing "stone, paper, scissors." But she noticed they were making a lot more signs with their fingers than usual. What fun it looked! She went closer so she could get g better view. They seemed to be holding a conversation without making a sound. One would make a lot of signs with his hands, then another who was watching would immediately make a lot more different signs. Then the third would do a few, and they would all burst out laughing, without making much sound. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. After watching them for some time, Totto-chan came to the conclusion they were talking with their hands.
"I wish I could talk with my hands, too," she thought enviously. She considered going over and joining them, but she didn't know how to ask them with her hands. And besides, they weren't Tomoe students, so it might be rude, so she just went on watching them until they left for the Toyoko train platform.
"Someday I'm going to learn how to talk to people with my hands," she decided.
But Totto-chan didn't know yet about deaf people, or that those children went to the municipal deaf and dumb school in Oimachi, the last stop of the train she took to school each day.
Totto-chan just thought there was something rather beautiful about the way those children watched each other's fingers with shining eyes, and she wanted to make friends with them someday.
The Forty Seven Ronin
While Mr. Kobayashi's system of education was unique, he had been influenced a great deal by ideas from Europe and other foreign countries, as we can see from Tomoe's eurythmics, its mealtime customs, its school walks, and the lunchtime song that was sung to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
The headmaster's right-hand man--at an ordinary school he would be the vice-principal--Mr. Maruyama, was in many ways the exact opposite of Mr. Kobayashi. Like his name, meaning "round hill," his head was completely round, without a single hair on top, but with a fringe of white hair at the back at ear level. He wore round glasses, and his cheeks were bright red. He not only looked quite different from Mr. Kobayashi, but he used to recite classical Chinese-style poems in a solemn voice.
On the morning of December fourteenth, when the children were all assembled at school, Mr. Maruyama made the following announcement:
"This is the day, nearly two and a half centuries ago, that the Forty-seven Ronin executed their famous vendetta. So we are going to walk to the temple of Sengakuji and pay our respects at their graves. Your parents have already been told."
The headmaster did not oppose Mr. Maruyama's plan. What Mr. Kobayashi thought of it the parents didn't know, but they knew if he didn't oppose it, he must have
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approved of it, and the prospect of Tomoe children visiting the tombs of the Forty-seven Ronin was indeed an intriguing one.
Before they left, Mr. Maruyama told the children the story of the famous Forty-seven-how Lord Asano's brave and loyal men had plotted for almost two years to avenge the honor of their dead master, who had been so grievously wronged. Besides the Forty-seven there was a courageous merchant called Rihei Amanoya. It was he who supplied the weapons, and when he was arrested by the officials of the shogun he declared, "I, Rihei Amanoya, am a man" and refused to confess or give away a single secret. The children didn't understand much of the story, but they were excited about missing classes and going for a walk to a place much further away than Kuhonbutsu Temple--and a picnic lunch.
Taking their leave of the headmaster and the other teachers all fifty, students started off, led by Mr. Maruyama. Here and there in the line children's voices could be heard declaiming, "I, Rihei Amanoya, am a man." Girls declaimed it, too, causing passersby to nod their heads and laugh. It was about seven miles to Sengakuji, but motor vehicles were scarce, the December sky was blue, and, to the children strolling along firing a constant barrage of, "I, Rihei Amanoya, am a man," the way did not seem long at all.
When they got to Sengakuji, Mr. Maruyama gave each child a stick of incense and a few flowers. The temple was smaller than Kuhonbutsu, but there were lots of graves all in a row. The thought that this place was sacred to the memory of the Forty-seven Ronin made Totto-chan feel very solemn as she offered the incense and the flowers, and she bowed silently, imitating· Mr. Maruyama. A hush fell upon the children. It was unusual for Tomoe pupils to be so quiet. The smoke from the incense sticks placed before each tomb drifted up, drawing pictures in the sky for a long, long time.
After that, the smell of incense always made the children think of Mr. Maruyama and of Rihei Amanoya. It also became for them the aroma of silence.
The children may not have understood all about the Forty-seven Ronin, but for Mr. Maruyama, who spoke of these men with such fervor, the children felt almost as much respect and affection as for Mr. Kobayashi, although in a different way. Totto-chan loved his little eyes that peered from behind the thick lenses of his glasses, and his gentle voice that didn't seem to go with such a large body.
“MaSOW-chaan!"
On her way to and from the station, Totto-chan used to pass a tenement where some Koreans lived. Totto-chan, of course, didn't know they were Koreans. The only thing she knew about them was that there was a woman there who wore her hair parted down the middle and drawn back into a bun, and who was rather plump and wore white rubber shoes that were pointed in front like little boats. She wore a dress with a long skirt and a ribbon tied in a big bow on the front of her short blouse, and always seemed to be looking for her son, calling out. "MaSOW-chaan!" She was always calling his name. And instead of pronouncing it "Ma-sa-o-chan," as people normally would, she stressed the second syllable and drew out the "chan" in a high-pitched voice that sounded sad to Totto-chan.
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The tenement was right beside the Oimachi train necks on a small embankment. Totto-chan knew who Masao-chan was. He was a little bigger than she was and probably in second grade, although she didn't know which school he went to. He had untidy hair and always had a dog with him. One day, as Totto-chan was walking home post the embankment, Masao-chan was standing on top of it with his feet apart and his hands on his hips, in an arrogant posture.
"Korean!" he shouted at Totto-chan.
His voice was scathing and full of hatred. Totto-chan was scared. She had never done anything mean to him, or even spoken to him for that matter, so she was startled when he yelled at her from above in such a spiteful way.
When she got home she told Mother about it. "Masao-chan called me a Korean," she said. Mother put her hand to her mouth and Totto-chan saw her eyes fill with mars. Totto-chan was perplexed, thinking it must be something very bad. Mother didn't stop to wipe away her tears, and the tip of her nose was red. "poor child!" she said. "People must call him 'Korean! Korean!' so ofmn that he thinks it's a nasty word. He probably doesn't understand what it means because he's still young. He thinks it's like baka, which people say when they mean 'you fool.' Masao-chan has probably had 'Korean' said to him so often he wanted to say something nasty to somebody else, so he called you a Korean. Why are people so cruel?”
Drying her eye, Mother said to Totto-chan very slowly, "You're Japanese and Masao-chan comes from a country called Korea. But he's a child, just like you. So, Totto-chan dear, don't ever think of people as different. Don't think, 'That person's a Japanese, or this person's a Korean.' Be nice to Masao-chan. It's so sad that some people think other people aren't nice just because they're Koreans."
It was all rather difficult for Totto-chan to understand, but what she did understand was that Masao-chan was a little boy whom people spoke ill of for no reason at all. That must be why his mother was always searching for him so anxiously, she thought. So next morning, as she passed the embankment and heard his mother calling out, "MaSOW-chaan" in her shrill voice, she wondered where he could be, and made up her mind that even though she herself wasn't a Korean, if Masao-chan called her that again, she would reply, "We're all children! We're all the same," and she'd try to make friends with him.
Masao-chan's mother's voice, with its combination of irritation and anxiety, had a special quality of its own that seemed to linger in the air for a long time, until it was drowned by the sound of a passing train.
"MaSOW-chaan!"
Once you heard the sad, tearful sound of that voice you could never forget it.
Pigtails
About that time, Totto-chan had two great ambitions. One was to wear athletic bloomers, and the other was to braid her hair. Watching older school-girls with long braids in the train, she decided she wanted to wear her hair that way, too. While the
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rest of the little girls in her class wore their hair short, with bangs, Totto-chan wore hers longer, parted at the side and tied with a ribbon. Mother liked it that way, and besides, Totto-chan wanted it to grow so she could wear pigtails.
Finally, one day she got Mother to braid her hair into two little pigtails. With the ends secured by rubber bands and tied with slender ribbons, she felt like an older student. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she realized that, unlike the girls in the train, her braids were thin and short and really looked like pigs' tails, but she ran to Rocky and held them up proudly for him to see. Rocky blinked once or twice.
"I wish I could braid your hair, too," she said.
When she got on the train she held her head as still as she could for fear the braids might come undone. "How nice it would be," she thought, "if someone noticed them on the train and said, 'What lovely braids!' " But nobody did. When she got to school, however, Miyo-chan, Sakko-chan, and Keiko Aoki, who were all in her class, exclaimed in unison, "Oooh! Pigtails!" and she was awfully pleased and let the girls feel them.
None of the boys seemed impressed. But all of a sudden, after lunch, a boy from her class named Oe said in a loud voice, “Wow! Totto-chan's got a new hairdo!"
Totto-chan was thrilled to think one of the boys had noticed, and said proudly, "They're pigtails."
Whereupon he came over, took hold of them with both hands, and said, "I'm tired. I think I'll hang onto them for a while. Gee, they're much nicer than the hand snaps on the train!" But that wasn't the end of her trouble.
Oe was twice as big as skinny little Totto-chan. In face, he was the biggest and fattest boy in the class. So when he pulled on her pigtails she staggered and fell smack on her bottom. To have them called hand scraps was hurtful enough, without being dragged to the ground as well. But when Oe tried to pull her up by her pigtails, with a "Heave-ho, heave-ho!" just like at the Sports Day Tug of War, Totto-chan burst into tears.
To Totto-chan, pigtails were the emblem of an older girl. She had expected everyone to be very polite to her because of them. Crying, she ran to the headmaster's office. When he heard her knocking on the door, sobbing, he opened it, and bent down as usual so their faces were level.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
After checking to see if her pigtails were still properly braided, she said, "Oe pulled them, saying, 'Heave-ho, heave-ho.' "
The headmaster looked at her hair. In contrast to her tearful face, her little pigtails looked as if they were dancing gaily. He sat down and had Totto-chan sit down, too, facing him. As usual, heedless of his missing teeth, he grinned.
"Don't cry," he said. "Your hair looks lovely.
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"It's terrific!" he said.
Totto-chan stopped crying, and got down from her chair saying, “I won’t cry any more even if Oe says 'Heave-ho.' "
The headmaster nodded approval with a grin.
Totto-chan smiled, too. Her smiling face suited her pigtails. Bowing to the headmaster, she ran back and began playing with the other children.
She had almost forgotten about having cried when she saw Oe standing in front of her, scratching his head.
"I'm sorry I pulled them," he said in a loud, flat voice. "I've been scolded by the headmaster. He said you've got to be nice to girls. He said to be gentle with girls and look after them."
Totto-chan was somewhat amazed. She had never heard anyone before say you had to be nice to girls. Boys were always the important ones. In the families she knew where there were lots of children,-it was always the boys who were served first at meals and at snack time, and when girls spoke, their mothers would say, "Little girls should be seen and not heard."
In spite of all that, the headmaster had told Oe that girls should be looked after. It seemed strange to Totto-chan. And then she thought how nice that was. It was nice to be looked after.
As for Oe, it was a shock. Fancy being told to be gentle and nice to girls! Moreover, it was the first and last time at Tomoe that he was ever scolded by the headmaster, and he never forgot that day.
“Thank You"
New Year's vacation drew near. Unlike summer vacation, the children didn't gather at school at all but spent the whole time with their families.
"I'm going to spend New Year's with my grandfather in Kyushu," Migita kept telling everyone, while Tai-chan, who liked doing science experiments, said, "I'm going with my older brother to visit a physics laboratory." He was looking forward to it.
“Well, I’ll be seeing you," each said, telling one another their plans as they parted company.
Totto-chan went skiing with Daddy and Mother. Daddy's friend Hideo Saito, the cellist and conductor in the same orchestra, had a beautiful house in the Shiga Highlands. They used to stay with him there every winter, and Totto-chan had started learning how to ski from the time she was in kindergarten.
You took a horse-drawn sleigh from the station to the skiing area--a pure white snowscape, unbroken by ski lifts or anything but the stumps of trees here and there.
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For people who didn't have a house like Mr. Saito's to go to, Mother said there was only one Japanese-style inn and one Western-style hotel. But, interestingly lots of foreigners went there.
For Totto-chan, this year was different from the year before. She was now a first grade pupil at elementary school, and also she knew one bit of English. Daddy had taught her how to say, "Thank you."
Foreigners who passed Totto-chan standing on the snow in her skis always used to say something. It was probably, "Isn't she sweet," or something like that, but Totto-chan didn't understand. And until this year she hadn't been able to reply, but from now on She tried bobbing her head and saying, "Thank you."
That made the foreigners smile even more and say something to each other. Sometimes a lady would bend down and put her cheek against Totto-chan's cheek, or a gentleman would hug her. Totto-chan thought it was great fun to be able to make such good friends with people just by saying, "Thank you."
One day a nice young man came over to Totto-chan and gestured as much as to say, “Would you like a ride on the front of my skis?" Daddy told her she could.
"Thank you," replied Totto-chan, and the man had her sit down by his feet on his skis with her knees drawn up. Then, keeping both his skis together, he skied with Totto-chan down the gentlest and longest slope at Shiga Highlands. They went like the wind, and as the air rushed past her ears it made a whistling sound. Totto-chan hugged her knees tightly taking care not to fall forward. It was a bit scary, but tremendous fun. When they came to a halt, the people who were watching clapped. Getting up from the man's skis, Totto-chan bowed her head slightly to the onlookers, and said, "Thank you." They clapped all the more.
Much later on she learned that the man's name was Schneider, and that he was a world-famous skier, who always used a pair of silver ski poles. But that day, what she liked about him was that after they had skied down the slope, and everybody had clapped, he crouched down beside her and, taking her hand, he looked at her as if she was somebody important and said, "Thank you." He didn't treat her like a child, but like a real grown-up lady. When he bent down, Totto-chan knew in her heart, instinctively, that he was a gentleman. And beyond him, the snow-white landscape seemed to go on forever.
The Library Car
When the children returned to school after the winter vacation, they discovered something wonderful and new, and greeted their discovery with shouts of joy. Opposite the row of classroom cars stood the new car, beside the flower bed by the Assembly Hall. In their absence it had become a library! Ryo-chan, the janitor, whom everyone respected and who could do all sorts of things, had obviously been working terribly hard. He had put up lots and lots of shelves in the car, and they were filled with rows of books of all kinds and colors. There were desks and chairs, too, where you could sit and read.
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"This is your library," the headmaster said. "Any of these books may be read by anyone. You needn't fear that some books are reserved for certain grades, or anything like that. You can come in here any time you like. If you want to borrow a book and take it home, you may. When you've read it, be sure and bring it back! And if you've got any books at home you think the others would like to read, I'd be delighted if you'd bring them here. At any rate, please do as much reading as you can!"
"Let's make the first class today a library class!" cried the children, unanimously.
"Is that what you'd like to do?" said the head-master, smiling happily to see them so excited. "All right, then, why not?"
Whereupon, the whole student body of Tomoe--all fifty children--piled into the library car. With great excitement they picked our books they wanted and tried to sit down, but only about half of them could find seats and the rest had to stand. It looked exactly like a crowded train, with people reading books standing up. It was quite a funny sight.
The children were overjoyed. Totto-chan couldn't read too well yet, so she chose a book with a picture in it that looked most entertaining. When everyone had a book in hand and started turning the pages, the car suddenly became quiet. But not for long. The silence was soon broken by a jumble of voices. Some were reading passages aloud, some were asking others the meaning of characters they didn't know, and some wanted to swap books. Laughter filled the train. One child had just started on a book called Singing Pictures and was drawing a face while reading out the accompanying jingle in a loud singsong:
A circle and a spot; a circle and a spot;
Criss-crosses for the nose; another round and dot.
Three hairs, three hairs, three hairs--and wow!
Quick as a wink, there's a fat hausfrau.
The face had to be encircled on the word "wow, and the three semicircles drawn as you sang "Quick as a wink." If you made all the right strokes, the result was the face of a plump woman with an old-fashioned Japanese hairdo.
At Tomoe, where the children were allowed to work on their subjects in any order they pleased, it would have been awkward if the children let themselves be disturbed by what others were doing. They were trained to concentrate no matter what was going on around them. So nobody paid any attention to the child singing aloud while drawing the hausfrau. One or two had joined in, but all the others were absorbed in their books.
Totto-chan's book seemed to be a folk tale. It was about a rich man's daughter who couldn't get a husband because she was always breaking wind. Finally her parents managed to find a husband for her, but She was so excited on her wedding night that she let out a much bigger one than ever before, and the wind blew her bridegroom out of bed, spun him around the bedroom seven and a half rimes, and knocked him
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unconscious. The picture that had looked so entertaining showed him flying through the room. Afterward, that book was always in great demand.
All the students of the school, packed into the train like sardines, devouring the books so eagerly in the morning sunlight that was pouring through the windows, must have presented a sight that gladdened the heart of the headmaster.
The children spent the whole of that day in the library car.
After that, when they couldn't be outdoors because of rain, and at many other times, the library became a favorite gathering place for them.
"I think I'd better have a bathroom built neat the library," said the headmaster one day.
That was because the children would become so absorbed in their books that they were always holding out until the very last minute before making a dash for the toilet beyond the Assembly Hall, holding themselves in strange contortions.
Tails
One afternoon, when school was over and Totto-chan was preparing to go home, Oe came running to her and whispered, "The headmaster's mad at somebody." .
"Where?" asked Totto-chan.
She had never heard of the headmaster getting angry and was amazed. Oe was obviously amazed, too, the way he had come running in such a hurry to tell her.
"They're in the kitchen," said Oe, his good-natured eyes opened wide and his nostrils a little dilated.
"Come on!"
Totto-chan took Oe's hand and they both raced toward the headmaster's house. It adjoined the Assembly Hall, and the kitchen was right by the back entrance to the school grounds. The time Totto-chan fell into the cesspool she was taken through the kitchen to the bathroom to be scrubbed clean. And it was in the headmaster's kitchen that "something from the ocean and something from the hills" were made to be doled out at lunchtime.
As the two children tiptoed toward the kitchen, they heard the angry voice of the headmaster through the closed door.
"What made you say so thoughtlessly to Takahashi that he had a tail?"
It was their homeroom teacher who was being reprimanded.
"I didn't mean it seriously," they heard her reply.
"I just happened to notice him at that moment, and he looked so cute."
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"But can't you see the seriousness of what you said? What can I do to make you understand the care I take with regard to Takahashi?"
Totto-chan remembered what happened in class that morning. The homeroom teacher had been telling them about human beings originally having tails. The children had thought it great fun. Grown-ups would have probably called her talk an introduction to the theory of evolution, it appealed to the children greatly. And when the teacher told them everybody had the vestige of a tail called the coccyx, each child started wondering where his was, and soon the classroom was in an uproar. Finally the teacher had said jokingly, "Maybe somebody here still has a tail! What about you, Takahashi!"
Takahashi had quickly stood up, shaking his head emphatically, and said in deadly earnest, "I haven't got one."
Totto-chan realized that was what the headmaster was talking about. His voice had now become more sad than angry.
"Did it occur to you to think how Takahashi might feel if he was asked if he had a tail?"
The children couldn't hear the teacher's reply. Totto-chan didn't understand why the headmaster was so angry about the tail. She would have loved being asked by the headmaster if she had a tail.
Of course, she had nothing wrong with her, so she wouldn't have minded such a question. But Takahashi had stopped growing, and he knew it. That was why the headmaster had thought up events for Sports Day in which Takahashi would do well. He had them swim in the pool without swimsuits so children like Takahashi would lose their self consciousness. He did all he could to help children with physical handicaps, like Takahashi and Yasuaki-chan, lose any complexes they might have and the feeling they were inferior to other children. It was beyond the headmaster's comprehension how anyone could be so thoughtless as to ask Takahashi, just because he looked cute, whether he had a tail.
The headmaster happened to be visiting that class, standing in the back of
the classroom, when she said it. Totto-chan could hear the homeroom teacher crying. "It was terribly wrong of me," she sobbed. "What can I do to apologize to Takahashi?"
The headmaster said nothing. Totto-chan couldn't see him through the glass door, but she wanted so much to be with him. She didn't know what it was all about, but somehow she felt more than ever that he was their friend. One must have felt that way, too.
Totto-chan never forgot how the headmaster had reprimanded their homeroom teacher in his kitchen and not in the faculty room, where the other teachers were. It showed he was an educator in the very best sense of the word, although Totto-chan did not realize that at the time. The sound of his voice and his words remained in her heart forever.
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Her Second Year at Tomoe
Tender green leaves were sprouting on all the trees in the school grounds, and the flowers in the flower beds were busy blossoming. Crocuses, daffodils, and pansies popped out their heads in Nm to say, "How do you do?" to the pupils of Tomoe, and the tulips lengthened their stalks as if stretching themselves. Cherry buds trembled in the soft breeze, all set and ready, waiting for the signal to burst into bloom.
The black popeyes, followed by the rest of the goldfish that lived in the small square concrete foot-rinsing basin by the swimming pool, shook themselves and started to swim about happily.
There was no need to say, "It's spring," for the season when everything looks shining and fresh and lively needed no announcement. Everyone knew it was spring!
If was exactly a year since the morning Totto-chan first arrived at Tomoe Gakuen with Mother. She was so surprised to find a Bate growing out of the ground, and so excited to see classrooms in a train, that she jumped up and down, and so certain that Sosaku Kobayashi, the headmaster, was her friend. Now Totto-chan and her classmates rejoiced in their new status as second graders while in came the new first grade children looking all around curiously just as Totto-chan and her classmates had done.
It had been an eventful year for Totto-chan, and she had eagerly looked forward to every single morning of it. She still liked street musicians, but she had learned to like many, many more things around her. The little girl who had been expelled for being a nuisance had grown into a child worthy of Tomoe.
Some parents had misgivings about Tomoe's education. There were times when even Totto-chan's Mother and Daddy wondered if they had done the right thing. Among parents who regarded Mr. Kobayashi's educational system dubiously and judged it superficially, just by what they saw, were some who became so alarmed about leaving their children at his school that they arranged to transfer them elsewhere. But the children themselves did not want to leave Tomoe, and cried. Fortunately, no one was leaving in Totto-chan's class, but a boy one grade above had rears streaming down his cheeks as he vented his despair by pounding on the head-master's back with clenched fists, the scab from a grazed knee flapping all the while. The headmaster's eyes were red from crying, too. The lad was finally led away from the school by his mother and father. As he went, he kept on turning around and waving, time after time.
But there were not many sad occasions like that, and Totto-chan was now a second grader, with the expectation of more daily surprises and delight.
By this time Totto-chan's schoolbag was well acquainted with her back.
Swan Lake
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Totto-chan was taken to Hibiya Hall to see the ballet Swan Lake. Daddy was playing the violin solo and a very fine troupe was performing. It was the first time she had ever been to a ballet. The queen of the swans wore a tiny sparkling crown on her head and leaped through the air effortlessly, like a real swan. Or so it seemed to Totto-chan. The prince fell in love with the Swan queen and spurned all others. Finally, the two of them danced together so tenderly. The music, too, made a great impression on Totto-chan, and after she got home she couldn't stop thinking about it. Next day, when she woke up, she went straight down to the kitchen where Mother was, without even brushing her hair, and announced, "I don't want to be a spy any more, or a street musician, or a ticket seller. I'm going to be a ballerina and dance in Swan Lake!"
"Oh," said Mother. She didn't seem surprised.
It was the first rime Totto-chan had ever seen a ballet, but she had heard a great deal from the head-master about Isadora Duncan, an American lady who danced beautifully. Like Mr. Kobayashi, Isadora Duncan had been influenced by Dalcroze. If the headmaster She admired so much liked Isadora Duncan, that was enough for Totto-chan, and although she had never seen her dance, she felt as if she knew her. So to be a dancer didn't seem anything out of the ordinary to Totto-chan.
It so happened that a friend of Mr. Kobayashi's who came and taught eurythmics at Tomoe had a dance studio nearby. Mother arranged for Totto-chan to take lessons at his studio after school. Mother never told Totto-chan that she must do this or must do that but when Totto-chan wanted to do something, she would agree, and, without asking all sorts of questions, she would go ahead and make the arrangements.
Totto-chan began taking lessons at the studio, longing for the day when she would be able to dance Swan Lake. But the teacher had his own special method. Besides the eurythmics they did at Tomoe, he would have the pupils amble about to piano or phonograph music, repeating to themselves some such phrase as "Shine upon the mountain!" from the prayer "Cleanse my soul; Oh, shine upon the mountain!" chanted by pilgrims as they climb Mount Fuji. Suddenly the teacher would exclaim, "Pose!" and the pupils would have to assume some pose they devised themselves and stand still. The teacher would pose, too, with some emotive cry like "Aach!" and assume a "looking up to heaven" pose or sometimes that of "a person in agony, crouching down and holding his head with both hands.
The image Totto-chan cherished in her mind, however, was that of a swan wearing a sparkling crown and a frilly white costume. It was not "Shine upon the mountain!" or "Aach!"
One day Totto-chan plucked up courage and went over to the teacher. Although he was a man, he had curly hair and bangs. Totto-chan stretched her arms out and fluttered them like the wings of a swan.
"Aren't we ever going to do anything like this!" she asked.
The teacher was a handsome man with large round eyes and an aquiline nose.
"We don't do that kind of dancing here," he said.
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After that Totto-chan stopped going to his studio. True, she liked leaping about in bare feet, not wearing ballet shoes, and striking poses she thought up herself. But, after all, she did so want to wear one of those tiny, glittering crowns!
"Swan Lake is nice," said the teacher, "but I wish I could get you to like just dancing according to you fancy.
It wasn't until years later that Totto-chan found out that his name was Baku Ishii and that he not only introduced free ballet to Japan but also gave the name Jiyugaoka ("freedom hill”) to the area. In addition to all that--he was fifty at the time--this man tried to teach Totto-chan the joy of dancing freely.
The Farming Teacher
"This is your teacher today. He's going to show you all sorts of things." With that the headmaster introduced a new teacher. Totto-chan took a good look at him. In the first place, he wasn't dressed like a teacher at all. He wore a short striped cotton work jacket over his undershirt, and instead of a necktie, he had a towel hanging around his neck. As for his trousers, they were of indigo-dyed cotton with narrow legs, and were full of patches. Instead of shoes, he wore workmen's thick two-toed, rubber-soled socks, while on his head was a rather dilapidated straw hat.
The children were all assembled by the, pond at Kuhonbutsu Temple.
As she stared at the teacher, Totto-chan thought she had seen him before. "Where!" she wondered. His kindly face was sun burnt and full of wrinkles. Even the slender pipe dangling from a black cord around his waist that served as a belt looked familiar. She suddenly remembered!
"Aren't you the farmer who works in the field by the stream!" she asked him, delighted.
"That's right," said the "teacher, with a toothy smile, wrinkling up his face. "You pass my place ev’ry time you go fer yer walks to Kuhonbutsu! That's my field. That one over there full o' mustard blossoms."
"Wow! So you're going to be our teacher today, cried the children excitedly.
"Naw!" said the man, waving his hand in front of his face. “I ain't no teacher! I'm just a farmer. Your headmaster just asked me to do it, that's all."
"Oh yes, he is. He's your farming teacher," said the headmaster, standing beside him. "He very kindly agreed to teach you how to plant a field. It's like having a baker teach you how to make bread. Now then," he said to the farmer, "tell the children what to do, and let's get started."
At an ordinary elementary school, anyone who taught the children anything would probably have to have teaching qualifications, bur Mr. Kobayashi didn't worry about things like that. He thought it important for children to learn by actually seeing things done.
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The place where they were assembled was besides the Kuhonbutsu pond and it was a particularly quiet section--a pleasant place, where the pond was shaded by trees. The headmaster had already had part of a railroad car put there for storing the children's farming implements, such as spades and hoes. The half-car had a peaceful look, neatly placed as it was right in the middle of the plot they were going to cultivate.
The farming teacher told the children to spades and hoes from the car and started them on weeding. He told them all about weeds: how hardy they were; how some grew faster than crops and hid the sun from them; how weeds were good hiding places for bad insects; and how weeds could be a nuisance by taking all the nourishment from the soil. He taught them one thing after another. And while he talked, his hands never stopped pulling out weeds. The children did the same. Then the teacher showed them how to hoe; how to make furrows; how to spread fertilizer; and everything else you had to do to grow things in a field, explaining as he demonstrated.
A little snake put its head out and very nearly bit the hand of Ta-chan, one of the older boys, but the farming teacher reassured him, "The snakes here ain't poisonous, and they won't hurt you if you don't hurt them."
Besides teaching the children how to plant a field, the farming teacher told them interesting things about insects, birds, and butterflies, about the weather, and about all sorts of other things. His strong gnarled hands seemed to attest that everything he told the children, he had found out himself through experience.
The children were dripping with perspiration when they had finally finished planting the field with the teacher's help. Except for a few furrows that were a bit uneven, it was an impeccable field, whichever way you looked at it.
From that day onward, the children held that farmer in high esteem, and whenever they saw him, even at a distance, they would cry, "There's our farming teacher!" Whenever he had any fertilizer left he would bring it over and spread it on the children's field, and their crops grew well. Every day someone would visit the field and report to the head-master and the other children on how it was doing. The children learned to know the wonder and the joy of seeing the seeds they had planted themselves sprout. And whenever two or three of them were gathered together, talk would turn to the progress of their field.
Terrible things were beginning to happen in various parts of the world. But as the children discussed their tiny field - they were still enfolded in the very heart of peace.
Field Kitchen
One day, after school Was over, Totto-chan went out the gate without speaking to anyone or even saying goodbye and hurried to Jiyugaoka Station, muttering to herself over and over, "Thunder canyon field kitchen, thunder canyon field kitchen...”
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It was a difficult phrase for a little girl, but no worse than the name of that man in the comic rakugo tale whose name took so long to say he drowned in the well before his rescuers knew who he was. Totto-chan had to concentrate hard on the phrase, however, and if anyone nearby had suddenly started saying that famous long name that began, “Jugemu-Jugemu," she would have forgotten the phrase straight away. Even if she said, "Here we go," as she jumped over a puddle, she would be bound to get it muddled, so she could do nothing but keep on repeating it to herself. Thankfully, nobody tried to speak to her in the train and she tried not to discover anything interesting, so she managed to reach her station without even a single "What was that!" But as she was leaving the station, a man she recognized who worked there said, "Hello, back already?" and she was on the point of replying but stopped herself, knowing it would mix her up, so she just waved to him and ran home.
The moment she reached the front door, she shouted to Mother at the top of her voice, "Thunder canyon field kitchen!" At first Mother wondered if it was a judo yell or a rallying cry of the Forty-seven Ronin. Then it clicked. Near Todoroki Station, three stops beyond Jiyugaoka, there was a famous beauty spot called Todoroki Keikoku, or Thunder Canyon. It was one Of the most celebrated places of old Tokyo. It had a waterfall, a stream, and beautiful woods. As for field kitchen-that must mean the children were going to have a cookout there. What a difficult phrase to teach children, she marveled. But it proved how easily children learn once their interest is aroused.
Grateful to be released at last from the difficult phrase, Totto-chan gave Mother all the relevant details, one after the other. The children were to assemble at the school the following Friday morning. The things they had to bring were a soup bowl, a rice bowl, chopsticks, and one cup of uncooked rice. The headmaster said it became two bowlfuls when cooked, she remembered to add. They were going to make pork soup, too, so she needed some pork and vegetables. And they could bring something for an afternoon snack if they wanted.
The next few days Totto-chan stuck close to Mother in the kitchen and carefully observed how she used a knife, how she held a pot, and how she served the rice. It was nice watching her work in the kitchen, bur what Totto-chan liked most was the way Mother would say, "Ooh, that's hot!" and quickly put her thumb and index finger to her ear-lobe whenever she picked up something hot like a lid.
"That's because earlobes are cold," Mother explained.
Her gesture impressed Totto-chan as being very grown-up and evidence of kitchen expertise. She said to herself, "When we thunder-canyon-field-kitchen, I'm going to do that, too!"
Friday finally arrived. When they had reached Thunder Canyon after leaving the train, the head-master surveyed the children gathered in the woods. Their dear little faces glowed in the sunlight as it filtered through the tall trees. With their knapsacks bulging, the children waited to hear what the head-master had to say, while beyond them the famous waterfall fell in booming torrents, making a beautiful rhythm.
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"Now then," said the headmaster, "first of all, let's divide into groups and make stoves with the bricks the teachers have brought. Then some of you can wash the rice in the stream and put it on to cook. After that, we'll start making the pork soup. Now then, shall we get started?"
The children divided themselves into groups by playing "stone, paper, scissors." Since there were only about fifty of them, it wasn't long before they had six groups. Holes were dug and surrounded with piled-up bricks. Then they laid thin iron bars across to support the soup and rice pots. While that was going on, some gathered firewood in the forest, and others went off to wash the rice in the stream. The children themselves allotted their various tasks. Totto-chan offered to cut up the vegetables and take charge of the pork soup. A boy two years senior to Totto-chan was also assigned to chopping vegetables, but he cut them into pieces that were either too big or too small and made a mess of the job. He labored manfully with the task, however, his nose glistening with perspiration. Totto-chan followed Mother's example and skillfully cut up the egg-plants, potatoes, onions, burdock roots, and so forth, that the children had brought, in just the right bite-sized pieces. She even took it upon herself to make some pickles by slicing egg plant and cucumber very thin and rubbing the slices with salt. She gave advice, too, to some of the older children who were having trouble with their chores. Totto-chan really felt as if she had already become a mother! Everyone was impressed with her pickles.
"Oh, I just thought I'd try and see if I could make some," she declared modestly.
When it came to flavoring the pork broth, everyone was asked for an opinion. From the various groups came startled cries of, "Wow!" "Gee!" and a great deal of laughter. The birds in the forest twittered, too, joining in the general uproar. In the meantime, tempting aromas rose from every pot. Until then, hardly any of the children had ever watched something cooking or had to regulate the heat. They had merely eaten what was put before them on the table. The joy of cooking something themselves, with its attendant traumas--and seeing the various changes the ingredients have to undergo--was a whole new experience to them.
Eventually, the work at each group's makeshift stove was completed. The headmaster had the children make a space on the grass where they could all sit in a circle. One soup pot and one rice pot were placed in front of each group. But Totto-chan refused to have her group's soup pot taken away until she had first performed the action she had set her heart upon. Taking off the hot lid, she declared rather self-consciously, "Ooh, that's hot!" and put the fingers of both hands to her earlobes. Only then did she say, "You can take it now," and the pot was duly carried over to where the children were sitting, wondering what on earth was going on. No one seemed at all impressed. But Totto-chan was satisfied all the same.
Everyone's attention was fixed on the bowls of rice in front of them and the contents of the steaming soup bowls. The children were hungry. But first and foremost, it was a meal they had made themselves!
After the children had sung, "Chew, chew, chew it well, Everything you eat," and had said, "I gratefully partake," all became quiet in the woods.
There was no sound but that of the waterfall.
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“You're really a good girl, you know.”
That's what the headmaster used to say every time he saw Totto-chan. And every time he said it, Totto-chan would smile, give a little skip, and say, "Yes, I am a good girl." And she believed it.
Totto-chan was, indeed, a good girl in many ways. She was kind to everyone - particularly her physically handicapped friends. She would defend them, and, if children from other schools said cruel things, she would fight the tormentors, even if it ended with her crying. She would do everything to care for any injured animals she found. But at the same time her teachers were continually astonished at the amount of trouble she always got into as she tried to satisfy her curiosity whenever she discovered anything unusual.
She would do things like making her pigtails stick out behind under each arm while marching to morning assembly. Once, when it was her turn to sweep the classroom, she opened a trapdoor her sharp eyes had noticed in the floor and put all the sweepings down the hole. It had originally been for inspecting the machinery when it was a real train. But she couldn't get the trapdoor closed again, and caused everyone a lot of trouble. And then there was the time someone told her how meat was hung up on hooks, so she went and hung by one arm from the highest exercise bar. She hung there for ages, and when a teacher saw her and asked what she was doing, she shouted, "I'm a piece of meat today!" and just then lost her hold and fell down so hard it knocked all the wind out of her lungs and she couldn't speak all day. Then, of course, there was that time when she jumped into the cesspool.
She was always doing things like that and hurting herself, but the headmaster never sent for Mother and Daddy. It was the same with the other children. Matters were always settled between the headmaster and the child concerned. lust as he had listened to Totto-chan for four hours the day she first arrived at the school, he always listened to what a child had to say about an incident caused. He even listened to their excuses. And if the child had done something really bad and eventually recognized it was wrong, the headmaster would say, "Now apologize."
In Totto-chan's case, complaints and fears voiced by children's parents and other teachers undoubtedly reached the ears of the headmaster. That's why, whenever he had a chance, he would say to Totto-chan, "You're really a good girl, you know. A grown-up, hearing him say it, would have realized the significance of the way he emphasized the word “really.”
What the headmaster must have wanted to make Totto-chan understand was something like this: "Some people may think you're not a good girl in many respects, but your real character is not bad. It has a great deal that is good about it, and I am well aware of that." Alas, it was many, many years before Totto-chan realized what he really meant. Still, while she may not have grasped his true meaning at the time, the headmaster certainly instilled, deep in her, a confidence in herself as “a good girl.” His words echoed in her heart even when she was engaged in some escapade. And many times she said to herself, "Good heavens!" as she reflected on something she had done.
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Mr. Kobayashi kept on repeating, the entire time she was at Tomoe, those important words that probably determined the course of her whole life:
“Totto-chan, you're really a good girl, you know.”
His Bride
Totto-chan was very sad.
She was in third grade now and she liked Tai-chan a lot. He was clever and good at physics. He studied English, and it was he who taught her the English word for fox.
"Totto-chan," he had Said, "do yoU know what the English word for kitsune is? It's 'fox.' "
"Fox."
Totto-chan had luxuriated in the sound of that word all day long. After that, the first thing she always did when she got to the classroom-in-the train was to sharpen all the pencils in Tai-chan's pencil box as beautifully as she could with her penknife. She didn't bother about her own, which she just hacked at with her teeth.
In spite of all that, Tai-chan had spoken roughly to her. It happened during lunch break. Totto-chan was sauntering along behind the Assembly Hall in the region of chat notorious cesspool.
"Totto-chan!"
Tai-chan's voice sounded cross, and she stopped, startled. Pausing for breath, Tai-chan said, "When I grow up, I'm not going to marry you, no matter how much you ask me to." So saying, he walked off, his eyes on the ground.
Totto-chan stood dazed, watching until he and his large head disappeared from view. That head full of brains that she admired so much. That head that looked so much bigger than his body the children used to call him "The Improper Fraction."
Totto-chan put her hands in her pockets and thought. She could not remember doing anything to annoy him. In desperation she talked it over with her classmate Miyo-chan. After listening to Totto-chan, Miyo-chan said, maturely, "Why, of course! It's because you threw Tai-chan out of the ring today at sumo wrestling. It's not surprising he flew out of the ring the way he did because his head's so heavy. But he's still bound to be mad at you."
Totto-chan regretted it with all her heart. Yes, that was it. What on earth made her beat the boy she liked so much She Sharpened his pencils every day! But it was too late. She could never be his bride now.
"I'm going to go on sharpening his pencils all the same," Totto-chan decided. "After all, I love him."
“Shabby, Old School”
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There was a jingle--a sort of singsong refrain—that was popular among elementary school children. They did it a lot at her previous school. As the children went home after school, they would go out the gate looking back over their shoulders at their school and chant:
Akamatsu School's a shabby old school;
Inside though, it's a splendid school!
When children from some other school happened to pass by, these pupils would point their fingers at Akamatsu School and chant:
Akamatsu School's a splendid school;
Inside though, it's a shabby old school!
And they would end by making a rude noise.
Whether a school was shabby or splendid in the first line depended on whether the building was old or new. The important part of the chant was the second line. The part that said what the school was like inside. So it didn't really matter if the first line said your school was shabby on the outside. It was what it was like inside that mattered. The jingle was always chanted by at least five or six children together.
One afternoon after school the Tomoe pupils were playing as usual. They could do anything they liked until the final bell, when they had to leave the school grounds. The headmaster thought it was important for children to have time when they were free to do whatever they liked, so this period after classes were over was longer than at other elementary schools. That day some were playing ball, some had made themselves all dirty playing on the iron bars or in the sandbox, some were tending the flower beds, some of the older girls were just sitting on the steps chatting, and some were climbing trees. They were all doing just what they wanted. Among them were a few, like Tai-chan, who had stayed behind in the classroom to continue a physics experiment and were boiling flasks and doing experiments in test tubes. There were children in the library reading, and Amadera, who liked animals, was scrutinizing a stray cat he had found, turning it on its back and examining inside its ears. They were all enjoying themselves in their own ways.
Suddenly, a loud chant was heard outside the school:
Tomoe School is a shabby old school;
Inside, too, it's a shabby old school!
"That's terrible," thought Totto-chan. She happened to be right by the gate. Well, it wasn't really a gate, as it had leaves growing out of the posts. But at any rate, she heard them very clearly. It was too much. Imagine calling their school shabby both inside and out! She was indignant. The others were indignant, too, and came running toward the gate.
"Shabby old school!" reiterated the boys from the other school, as they ran off making rude noises.
72
Totto-chan was so-infuriated she ran after the boys. All by herself. But they were very fast, running down a side sneer and disappearing as quick as a wink. Totto-chan walked back to school disconsolately. As she walked, she sang:
Tomoe School is a wonderful school;
A few steps along, she added:
Inside and out, it's a wonderful school!
She liked it, and it made her feel better. So when she got back, she pretended she was from another school and shouted through the hedge in a loud voice, so that everybody could hear:
Tomoe School is a wonderful school;
Inside and out, it's a wonderful school!
The children playing in the grounds at first couldn't imagine who it was. When they realized it was Totto-chan, they went out to the road and joined in. Finally they all linked arms and marched along the roads surrounding the school chanting together. It was their hearts that were in unison even more than their voices, although they didn't realize that then. The more they went around the school, the more they entered into the spirit of it.
Tomoe School is a wonderful school;
Inside and out, it's a wonderful school!
The children little knew, of course, what happiness their chant was giving the headmaster, as he sat listening in his office.
It must be the same for any educator, but for those in particular who truly think about the children, running a school must be a daily series of agonies. It must have been even more so at a school like Tomoe, where everything was so unusual. The school could not escape criticism from people used to a more conventional system of education.
In such circumstances, that song of the children was the nicest gift they could possibly have given the headmaster.
Tomoe School is a wonderful school;
Inside and out, it's a wonderful school!
That day the final bell rang later than usual.
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