Pathway to Japanese Literature

This is something I spoke and had taken down in shorthand.
I didn’t have time to write it myself.
Though I’m not good at speaking—and it may not have turned out well—I believe this will serve as a practical corrective regarding Soviet Russia’s daily life, which has been distorted and misrepresented by various demagogues since the 1917 Revolution.

Upon entering Russia, what first struck me was how utterly novel everything appeared. Moreover, regarding Russia both before and after the revolution, I had acquired some understanding through literature and did not feel I had come to wholly unfamiliar terrain. On the very evening I arrived in Moscow, snow was falling. From the sled’s vantage point—amid heavy snowfall and nighttime darkness—there arose vivid impressions one might describe as quintessentially Russian literary.

Regarding the issue of Russian households, the household founded on the capitalist private property system had of course collapsed.
However, households where each member, as an independent social individual, fulfilled their obligations to society through shared collective responsibility were developing robustly.
Yet there was no such thing as a household in the ordinary sense.
In other words, the ordinary households we saw were ones where the household head was the father.
In such households, the father took care of the mother and children in the family.
Once the father died and there was no property, they ended up relying on relatives.
By placing absolute responsibility on the household head, when he died, the children were left to wander the streets.
That was, in other words, a household entirely under the private property system.

However，in Soviet Russia，the husband，as a worker，had unemployment insurance，health insurance，and a pension.
If there was a family，he received an increased percentage of such benefits corresponding to it.
When a child entered school—or rather，when they entered a vocational school—by graduation they possessed the protection of their trade union as full-fledged technicians and workers.
Thus，both parent and child possessed social protections as independent workers，and this was a right held by all Soviet citizens.
Therefore，such people could live without relying on fathers or children.

However, because they are people who share mutual affection, they become couples and live together.
Children stay with father and mother because they find greater happiness that way.
Therefore, unlike in other countries, it does not mean making households into castles to fend off life's turbulent storms.
A household constitutes a small collective bearing social responsibility; in such households, there exists far greater security knowing society will protect the children whether one becomes a father or I were to die.
They can truly engage in production with peace of mind.

As for the stability of life, I too agreed with the direction of building Soviet socialism—if one was a diligent salaried worker or laborer, it offered greater stability than anything found in Japan.
This stability was not protected through personal connections but safeguarded by an organized system of trade unions, Labor Ministry ordinances, and various other mechanisms that ensured a high safety margin.
When improper action was taken against a worker within a union, others would apply their collective rights against it; since such mistreatment became everyone’s concern, those nearby never stayed silent.
Because they actively raised issues about these matters, such points remained comparatively secure.

For example, workers could be dismissed without notice in cases such as unavoidable reductions in factory production, theft committed against the factory by a worker, or imprisonment lasting three months or more.
Otherwise, with the worker’s consent, employers had to grant a grace period until alternative employment was found in certain cases.

For women these protections applied even more strictly; those five months pregnant or more could not be dismissed.
Through factory employment, they received four months of paid leave from their trade union—two months before childbirth and two months after.
They also obtained childbirth preparation allowances and nine months’ worth of milk subsidies post-delivery.) Furthermore, those nursing infants under one year old were protected from dismissal until completion of that period.
The elderly qualified for pensions.
Workers became eligible for pensions at fifty-five or sixty and could retire from their occupations.
Particularly rational were provisions guaranteeing discharged soldiers who had been workers prior to enlistment livelihood support until securing post-military employment.
Additionally, specially designated “rest homes” existed for workers, with Soviet industry-specific trade unions sending laborers to these facilities for recuperation periods spanning two weeks to one month.

Furthermore, in Soviet Russia, women as productive units possessed completely equal rights with men and were economically independent.
In terms of women occupying exactly the same position as men as productive units, it was only natural that various other aspects underwent transformation; however, women’s suffrage in other countries and the freedom Soviet women had attained differed fundamentally in nature.
Therefore, even elements like freedom in romantic relationships or the expanded status of women within households ultimately stemmed from this foundational fact: as productive units, women possessed the same technical skills and positions as men.

As you know, in pre-revolutionary Russia, brides married while singing sorrowful songs as they braided their hair, and women’s illiteracy rate was high.
Church priests enforced absolute obedience from husbands.
Therefore, even in the post-revolutionary present, women themselves naturally understood their general knowledge level remained lower than men’s due to these historical reasons.
Thus they pursued various activities with great enthusiasm—club study groups, literacy eradication initiatives, and actively training to become skilled factory workers.
In Soviet Russia above all, both men and women receive equal wages for equal labor.
Equal wages demand equivalent technical skills.
Hence when women’s skills don’t match those of male skilled workers, their actual wages inevitably become lower.
Among female workers, this scarcity of skilled technicians is seen as clear evidence of their own cultural backwardness, driving them to strive earnestly for technical improvement.

Soviet production itself was not production for exploitative middlemen intervening between labor and its fruits. What circulated back to themselves was divided and undertaken collectively; thus, service within Soviet social production meant serving their own communal needs. The proportion between productive forces to be contributed and those received in return was being made as equitable as possible—an ideal they consciously pursued.

For example, households inevitably impose numerous tasks on women.
Laundry, cooking, childcare—in Soviet Russia, they strive to socialize such tasks as much as possible.
Rather than each person buying meager ingredients in their own kitchen—spending time to prepare barely palatable meals—Moscow has established large-scale kitchen factories where ingredients undergo scientific analysis: determining precise slaughter times for beef and calculating optimal boiling durations before cooking and distributing these meals affordably.
Such practices represent what all earnestly idealize and what women deeply desire—through this implementation, the burdens weighing upon housewives would vanish.
The aim lies in wholly socializing these matters under socialism.
This carries profound significance for household daily life.

The acts of eating and drinking were preparatory actions for life; in countries like Japan where entire days vanished into these preparations, such tasks proved excessively numerous—might this explain why women's advancement remained comparatively stunted? Moreover, I believed men demanded too much in these so-called interests.

Currently in Soviet Russia, the shortage of communal laundry and dining facilities remained a drawback; even kitchen factories prepared meals for tens of thousands daily. Unless conducted on such a massive scale, it would hold no significance. If Moscow had two or three such facilities in each district, personal kitchens would become entirely unnecessary. However, they had not yet reached that point. By the end of the Five-Year Plan, five or six large kitchen factories were scheduled to be built across Moscow; even so, the results were remarkable, and even then the number of people eating at such public dining facilities was exceedingly large. In 1930, an average of 1.3 million people per day were eating at public dining facilities.

With the ideal of providing meals through public cafeterias for seventy-five percent of urban workers and fifty percent of their families by the end of the Five-Year Plan, they were steadily advancing toward this goal.

These kitchen factories were located in Moscow, Ivanovo-Voznesensk (a major factory city), Nizhny Novgorod, Dnepropetrovsk, and other places; such locations had become centers of new Soviet culture.

Looking at childcare education, as an example, new housing construction cooperatives worked toward the ideal of incorporating daycare centers into the buildings they erected. As a result, such facilities had recently proliferated significantly, with some districts containing several in areas of high concentration. Moreover, since factories maintained their own daycare centers, they avoided difficulties.

In the past, Russia was highly autocratic.
Therefore, even to enter middle school, children of the lower classes—such as those of cook-peasant women—were excluded.
Therefore, even to enter middle school, they had to resort to measures like being adopted.
In the past, enrollment was ordinarily limited to sons of nobles, landowners, military personnel, technicians, or major industrialists; now they are pursuing the ideal of making education for the proletariat—for workers—entirely state-funded.
Therefore not only elementary schools but also vocational schools require no tuition fees as trade unions provide subsidies for their studies.
Therefore children of workers and farmers are given priority in enrollment since their living expenses are guaranteed to a certain extent—young people are of course delighted.
There are those who often claim that Soviet educational policies will hinder the development of individuality.

Of course, the fundamental educational policy uniformly implemented Communist education that linked academia and production.
This raised the question of what became of individuality within such a framework.
Respect for individuality was, in essence, a matter of expression—where and in what manner an individual’s unique talents manifested.
Each individual’s unique expressions toward a single matter were expressions of individuality.
Those expressions differed just as each person’s voice differed.
Now, as for what kind of education elementary schools provided, the theme was singular.
To explain what that meant, for example, the grade plan presented the theme of “Spring.”
Then, they presented themes such as what kind of work adults did in cities and rural areas during spring, and how children could assist in that work, teaching these in connection with practical issues.

Since education was fundamentally linked to labor, and since its primary aim was to clarify the relationships between production and humanity, and between nature and humanity through labor, the theme of “spring” was not approached through poetic tropes like “spring veiled in mist,” but rather through the perspective of how adults worked in fields and cities during spring, and how children could assist in such labor.
For example, in spring, children went to parks to hang bird nests.
To express such social labor work, some children wrote essays; others who could not compose essays drew pictures; while still others, finding a picture in a magazine interesting, cut it out, pasted it into a notebook, and wrote a song beside it to convey their understanding.
Thus, while the theme was singular, the methods of expression proceeded by deeply respecting the child’s nature and inherent expressive abilities.
The fact that it had to be done this way was indeed the case economically speaking.
Forcing an individual to employ modes of expression unsuited to them constituted a tremendous expenditure of energy.

Soviet Russia had resolutely established a single fundamental guiding direction toward building a socialist society while meticulously addressing matters of individual respect within this framework.
The great entity requiring preservation remained singular.
This was none other than the collective interest of socialism-building proletarians.
Within these parameters both aspects of individuality—directing personal capabilities toward social utility and determining effective modes of expression—were being fully implemented respectively.
Anarchic individualism proved as nonexistent as pampered bourgeois sons themselves.

America, as everyone knows, practiced mass production.
The same held true for Soviet Russia.
Yet there already existed those in America expressing dissatisfaction with mass production—a phenomenon of considerable interest.
However, this critique did not apply to Soviet Russia.
The reason lay in differing purposes: American mass production and Soviet mass production served fundamentally distinct ends.
Their natures proved entirely dissimilar.
America's mass production of goods sprang from capitalists' desire to flood markets with cheap commodities, while Soviet Russia's mass production emerged from the urgent need to satisfy the proletariat's rapidly expanding purchasing power as swiftly and abundantly as possible.
With neither economic surplus nor temporal surplus available, they consequently lacked the capacity to cultivate finely differentiated preferences.

Soviet Russia advanced single-mindedly along its program.
This created strain, and while some might have considered where such extremes might lead, in Soviet Russia, a program established two years prior was never simply sustained unchanged for five years.
The Soviet Union’s practical policies were fundamentally unified yet dialectically highly flexible.
Thus, even if one were to say they proceeded single-mindedly—unified in purpose toward their objectives—when certain people spoke of it, they implemented their policies with such resilient flexibility that one might have wondered where their ultimate goal lay.

Eugenics—eugenics—was being meticulously addressed as a matter of profound societal importance.
First, Soviet Russia had long maintained an exceedingly high rate of tuberculosis.
Additionally, there were of course those with venereal diseases, and they were vigorously applying eugenic principles to improve children and future generations.
Regarding efforts to enhance adult health and raise robust children, they established forest schools, factory-affiliated sanatoriums, and relocation therapy; moreover, those not yet ill but at risk from current working conditions labored by day before attending night sanatoriums after their shifts.
There they received baths.
They received nutritious food.
They then rested in temperature-regulated rooms before returning to daytime work the next morning—through repeating this cycle over set periods, they avoided contracting otherwise inevitable illnesses.

The current goal of Soviet hygiene was prevention; they were fervently implementing the principle of addressing issues before they became illnesses rather than treating them after they developed. Therefore, attention had to be paid even when children were infants; it had to be paid before they were born; and mothers had to pay attention to their own hygiene before having children. The efforts to cyclically improve health conditions were tremendous; if one visited places like the Maternal Protection Institute, one found them exceptionally well-equipped.

Moreover, when giving birth, one could enter maternity hospitals free of charge.
Upon leaving the maternity hospital, a health consultation office existed in the district where the mother and child resided. To this office circulated a card from the maternity hospital detailing the child’s developmental condition at birth, the mother’s health status during breastfeeding, and whether there was any hereditary venereal disease.
They provided free monthly health checkups for children.
Until the child reached a certain stage of growth... if abnormalities arose in either the child’s or mother’s condition, the health consultation office would report to the hospital, allowing them to receive treatment free of charge.
The Soviet Ministry of Health maintained the goal of providing free medical care to all citizens.
Sanitation preparations in rural areas inevitably lagged behind, and under this Five-Year Plan, they were establishing various measures including significantly increasing clinics and new regulations to dispatch doctors to local regions.

Next, regarding romantic relationships, the first thing that had changed was that they were free.
In Soviet Russia, romantic relationships were free.
France was also free.
The difference lay in this: France’s freedom in romantic relationships arose from late-stage capitalism’s individualistic notion that love need not bind one another.
A man would become involved with a woman, grow tired of her, and discard her.
Even if a woman became pregnant, the man bore no responsibility.
Yet women had nowhere to appeal—this was love that drove them to leap into the Seine with their infants. France’s techniques of romance might have evolved from women’s economic necessity in outnumbering men, but socially, such matters remained personal.

While it was said that romantic relationships were free in Soviet Russia, the reason lay in men and women being economically independent members of society—each bearing their own social responsibilities—which thereby established this freedom. However free such relationships might be, when a man became involved with a woman who then became pregnant or gave birth, he could not simply vanish and consider the matter concluded. Child-rearing expenses were deducted from the man’s monthly salary through the labor union. Such social obligations existed. If the man acted deceitfully and the woman could not receive the subsidy, they could file a lawsuit; should the man have parents, child-rearing expenses could be obtained from their household. (However, they could not lay hands on the land. This was because land constituted the foundation of agricultural production and belonged to individual farm households; thus, it could not be seized for child-rearing expenses.)

Of course, not everyone in Soviet Russia understood social responsibility, so there were numerous instances of misconduct.
Therefore, some men kept their legal wives while maintaining other women.
In essence, these were concubines; there existed those who kept concubines.
However, while the form might appear identical, whether a woman relied on male support for sustenance or whether a mutually agreed-upon independent female production unit entered such a relationship made a significant difference in social meaning.
As for the romantic notions among current young Communist Youth League members—both male and female—the War Communism era had been an intensely turbulent period when society sought to create anew while dismantling the old.
Consequently, their approach to romantic relationships had become, in certain respects, highly mechanical.

Rather than examining how much social solidarity responsibility individual romantic relationships held, they had been more urgently focused on dismantling the religious notion of bourgeois monogamy—a system born from private property that deemed old-era romantic and marital norms as absolute.
However, now that they advanced into a period of construction, it became clear that romantic relationships, family life, and marriage were founded upon each individual's social responsibility as members of society.
Therefore, suppose a Communist Youth League member were to indiscriminately pursue one woman after another.
As for whether they would leave that unchecked on grounds of romantic freedom—it was entirely the opposite.
In cases where someone engaged in overly antisocial behavior, within the Communist Youth League they either faced comradely sanctions or were urged to reflect.
If one ignored women's social value, they could of course be expelled.
However, expulsion did not occur simply because that alone became the primary issue.
In other words, such conduct was seen as one instance of that man disregarding his social solidarity responsibility.

Their sexual relationships were first and foremost a matter of hygiene; they had entirely discarded practices such as arbitrarily defining sexual desires through religious frameworks or constructing peculiar moral standards around them.
The fact that men and women were mutually attracted—that this emotion derived from sexual desire—was being clearly understood in this manner.
Therefore, when one’s own sexual desire stimulated them and they developed an interest in another person, they considered separately whether they had been drawn by that individual’s value as a member of society.
Errors in this regard had significantly decreased, and this point was clear.

In France, within the bourgeois framework, women were essentially contemplating how to most profitably utilize their sexuality.
This consequently explained the state of France’s women’s rights movement.
However, in Soviet Russia, such bourgeois gender distinctions among both men and women were diminishing.
The reason lay in labor dynamics where women collaborated with men as equals, while domestic life maintained no division of work between genders from elementary school onward.
When eating lunch—the meals provided at school—both boys and girls intermingled to wash dishes and handle post-meal tasks together.
They likewise cleaned rooms together, plowed fields collectively, and gathered plants side by side.
Coeducation began from infancy in nurseries.
Through these practices too emerged a naturally distinct atmosphere—since working alongside female peers from childhood forged fundamental sensibilities that achieved exceptional clarity.

There was no place that protected women's essential sexual needs as thoroughly as Soviet Russia.
Exaggerations of sexuality extending even to clothing like those seen in France—such things naturally did not exist there.
This absence itself struck me as inherently healthy.

Women and men fundamentally differed in their Adam's apple structures.
Their muscles and skeletal frameworks too showed distinct sexual divergence.
Men found women's distinctive traits agreeable; women took pleasure in masculine characteristics.
This constituted beauty intrinsic to sex itself.
They guarded these qualities fully within one another.
Female bodies remained soft and rounded where male forms stayed angular and bony.
This represented both sex's inevitable differentiation and its aesthetic virtue.
Thus there existed sufficient beauty when bodies functioned optimally within natural limits while maintaining health.

Soviet young people were beautiful in that respect.
Therefore, just because the sexual exaggeration seen in capitalist society had disappeared did not mean beauty had diminished.
Thus, even if one were to go to Soviet Russia, there was absolutely no need to worry about beauty.
The atmosphere remained bright and cheerful throughout my three full years there, during which I felt no sense of inferiority or distinction between men and women in work.
Wherever men were working, women worked alongside them.
Likewise, wherever women were working, men were always present too.
Consequently, Soviet youth had grown so unfamiliar with the concept of men and women working in entirely separate fields for different wages that they likely could not comprehend the emotional reality of couples living under such conditions.

Thus, in expressions of romantic relationships too, the difference between Paris and Moscow lay in this: during rush hour at a Paris metro entrance, if one stood observing, women would arrive first and wait at the ticket gates. Then a young man would come. They would embrace in a prolonged kiss before parting ways—the woman and man going their separate directions—an expression the French employed. Yet Soviet young people did not kiss in public streets. First and foremost, their interpretation of such acts—their very conception of romantic techniques—differed entirely.

In Soviet Russia, romantic relationships between individuals were not the primary issue to be presented before a society that demanded each person as a production unit; therefore, their approach to such matters differed.
They parted ways to go somewhere for work.
This was only natural.
For one thing, such intense kissing was unhygienic.
Children are taught from childhood that their mouths harbor many germs.
Such slogans had become a yardstick in hygiene education.

Communist Youth League members do not shake hands.
Pioneers also do not shake hands.

What came first and foremost was this: whether one spoke of freedom in romantic relationships or the elevation of women’s status within households, it became clear that none could fundamentally take root until relations of production changed and women truly emerged within society as organized units of production.
Though love was called free, being no public matter meant it remained one’s private affair.
When such matters became social problems involving individual responsibility, they only entered public discourse through the societal obligations borne by women and men as members of society.
To treat romance as one’s daily occupation would earn immediate condemnation from those same societal members.
Clara Zetkin’s *Reminiscences of Lenin* documented how during War Communism’s era, Lenin had grown deeply troubled by young party members misinterpreting “freedom in love”—how promising youths chasing after skirts led him to lament their reduction of romance to mere physiology.
Yet in this regard today’s youth had progressed remarkably toward soundness—a testament to stabilized social conditions serving as clear evidence that Soviet Russia now entered a renewed construction phase.

Furthermore, films were also utilized as a means to inform the public about how to build a socialist society through art.
The history of how Soviet Russia had reached its present state, the dissemination of knowledge about production, the spread of hygiene knowledge, news of how the current Five-Year Plan was being implemented—the distinctive feature lay in how these elements were artistically expressed.
At the same time, they were highly advanced both artistically and technically.
Unlike in Japan, where it was mere entertainment, they utilized amusement in a socially effective manner—in other words, using it educationally.
And yet, they contained abundant artistic value.
Therefore, when one watched Soviet films, one came to understand just how much knowledge could be disseminated through art and how works created with such intent could attain high artistic quality, making it an immensely instructive experience.

Having previously discussed general school education, today I would like to talk a bit about art education and children’s theater.

When we were children, there existed children’s theater productions where we saw traditional tales like *Kachi Kachi Mountain* and *The Lump-Removing Jiji* performed at Yūrakuza Theater.
They were never particularly engaging.
Since that time, Japan has seen little development of dedicated theatrical spaces for children.

Currently, Shochiku was vigorously pushing various new initiatives through its sales strategies, but it did not possess a single children’s theater troupe truly conceived for the people of the next era. Despite having such an extensive organization, they focused solely on capitalist theater; thus, even when they staged socialist-leaning scripts to gain popularity, it remained fundamentally rooted in a social democratic stance—merely serving their goal of selling numerous tickets and securing profits.

However, in Soviet Russia, theater, kino, and music all truly belonged to the people—for their joy, for the advancement of their culture, and for the people themselves to express their emotions outwardly—and there existed both art education and professional artistic organizations.

The Arts Department of the Soviet Russian Ministry of Education oversaw it, and there existed what was called the Play Repertoire Review Committee.
And so when the season arrived—that season spanning from autumn to the following spring—they determined at that committee which theaters would carry out how much of their repertoire and in what order, then proceeded to select scripts to implement.
Workers and salaried employees—such individuals received tickets at half-price through their trade unions.
In some cases, they received them entirely free of charge.

Therefore, theaters always reserved a certain percentage of seats for trade unions.
Foreigners like us who came afterward had to go to the ticket window and pay the amount stated there to see the play.
Thus, we ended up paying at least double what trade union members did to see plays, which in turn made arrangements for the trade unions and the workers.

There were two children’s theaters in Moscow, one in Leningrad, and one called TRAM (Theater Working Youth); this time, they organized a new Pioneer troupe as part of their recent work.

The two in Leningrad and Moscow were plays performed by adults for children, enacted by professional specialists.
A point of great interest was that the repertoire performed there staged scripts with themes closely tied to issues pertinent to the entire Soviet Union at that time—just as in adult theaters.
Thus, as the Five-Year Plan in Soviet rural areas vigorously addressed collective farm issues, children’s theaters also tackled these matters—the Five-Year Plan and rural problems, along with mechanization and electrification—within the scope of children’s understanding when presenting them.

Thus, while implementing social education in this manner, children's emotional responses—since these differed from adults'—such as how long they could focus their attention and for how many minutes, were things adults who had grown up could no longer easily grasp; therefore, an Education Department existed, and when I visited it, I met a white-bearded old man who had studied child education and psychology for many years. As its director, he was collecting psychological statistics—recording where children laughed during plays, how long it lasted, how much they laughed, and when they began growing bored—as performances progressed.

Therefore, the psychological success or failure of those scripts could be clearly discerned. Through this method, they proceeded to systematically study the psychological rhythms inherent to child education. Such aspects proved deeply intriguing. Moreover, children could gain admission at minimal cost—for twenty kopecks, or through school-organized groups entirely free of charge. Each elementary school would take turns... Furthermore, they had the children document their impressions through drawings or written accounts, which the Education Department then collected. These materials served as valuable references for understanding what left the strongest impact on young audiences.

When I saw it, they were performing *Children of India*.
It addressed colonial issues, aiming both to inform of how Indians were oppressed by the British in colonies and to demonstrate how the power of science and intellect could make human life more convenient—thereby conveying why people must fully acquire such intellect for practical living. To achieve this, an Indian child who had never seen an X-ray was depicted: a Soviet scientist and his son were living in India, and when the son playfully took an X-ray image, the Indian child’s hand appeared as nothing but bones.
When he wailed, thinking he had died, the lights went out, the X-ray vanished, and upon returning to his original self, the Indian child was utterly astonished.
The children watching it were also very intent.
When the Indian child felt relieved, they too would join in the relief and burst into applause, which possessed a very effective quality.

Then, in the same *Children of India*, for anti-religious education purposes, a young Indian girl was offered up as something resembling a human sacrifice at an unusual temple. Her friend—the boy who had been amazed by seeing the X-ray—wanted to help her and went to seek aid from the scientist's son. The boy infiltrated the temple, exposed the idol as mere artifice, and rescued the girl. In one scene, reminiscent of Atsumori's distant view at Dan-no-ura in Japan, a motorcycle emerged from the front of the stage, traveled far into the distance, and was shown crossing a high bridge that diminished in size as it receded. There, it transformed into a marionette. They demonstrated highly progressive techniques while earnestly producing stagings with powerful artistic effects.

The stage’s structure was a special one, resembling ancient Greek stages and Noh theater stages—open on three sides and protruding into the audience seating.
Therefore, the stage stood intimately close to the audience and could expand endlessly when necessary.
Because of this design, events onstage felt proximate to viewers—the distinction blurred—allowing a powerful connection between performance and spectators.
There, just as in adult theaters, they crafted stage set models for diverse productions.
They staged both foreign translations and works by Russian authors.

A point of interest was that they always ensured children understood the objectives the Soviet Union as a whole strove for in daily life—educating them through scripts so that children felt they were members of society just like adults—and that there was absolutely no deception in how themes were handled.
They did not coddle the children.
Of course, they presented it clearly.
However, the socialist perspective did not yield an inch.
They pressed forward on communist principles.
That was what was interesting.

Unlike in other countries, they do not make the significant mistake of having adults devise reading materials for children, plays for children, or music for children through their own sentimentalism, then impose these on children by rendering them saccharine, simplistic, or fantastical.

This constitutes a point of interest, and it equally applies to literature for children—what are termed fairy tales.
As for these so-called fairy tales—stories like *The Goat Sage* that Iwaya Sazanami broadcast over the radio this New Year—such narratives simply do not exist in Soviet Russia as children’s stories.
The reason they do not exist is that such fantasies—ones children themselves would never encounter unless conveyed by adults—along with peculiar gambler’s mentalities (as seen in tales where borrowing a hoe to dig soil yields gold, centering on individual windfalls), and notions that incite personal ambition (such as a child studying relentlessly to push others aside and falsely position themselves as the singular “best” child)—all such elements have been systematically removed from their stories.

Of course, since children themselves are inherently quick to associate and imaginative by nature, they harnessed their ambition and curiosity—and here was how they guided such tendencies.

For example, a certain difficulty arose within collective life.
Suppose the children went on an excursion.
Then there was a river, and even though they had to cross it to reach the station and take the train home, there wasn’t a single boat.
Looking around, there was no bridge either.
But the train’s departure time was pressing.
What were the children to do?
There, everyone pooled their wisdom, and among them was a smart child who devised a solution—for instance, proposing that they build a raft using the large planks and sticks over there to cross.
Then, that child’s wisdom also served admirably as a personal discovery within the collective.
Thus, it was not that this single child became a good child; rather, everyone benefited, and their lives were invigorated through the children’s wisdom.
That was how they taught.

For example, even in imagination, it wasn’t about riding a crane to fly through the sky—now, we were riding in an airplane!
Looking down, we saw how many factories of various kinds Moscow had and its power plants.
What connection could there be between that power plant and the electric lights in our homes?
Did anyone know?
In this way, children could steadily draw imaginings from such facts.

Without adults making efforts to bring in things absent from their own lives as fodder for children's fantasies, children can vigorously develop associations through the everyday objects around them and strengthen their imaginations.
Thus when I speak with twelve- or thirteen-year-olds, I am astonished by how systematically organized, far-reaching, and internationally oriented their knowledge proves to be.
Nothing is superfluous.

Moreover, Soviet education was education connected with labor.
Thus, for example, when we went on school excursions in Japan, the teacher would simply tell us to bring a certain amount of money for the trip to such-and-such place and to arrive at school by a specific time—but we knew nothing about which train line to take, how many minutes it would take, or how many miles it was from Tokyo.

However, Soviet children would conduct their own research through their committees when planning excursions.
They investigated matters like train fares and distances from Moscow.
Thus they came to understand far better than we did how to assess their geographical position, grasp spatial relationships between urban and rural areas, and comprehend local production systems.
Through this process they cultivated such practices as habitual.
That Soviet children were truly developing into people of a new era became an undeniable fact.
Therein resided the Soviet future's strength.

Then there was music education—in music as well, there were efforts for its specialized development and making it accessible to the general populace, and furthermore, in most clubs there existed music study groups where the people themselves could play in their own bands for their own enjoyment, during gatherings, or at demonstration marches.
There, they mainly focused on wind ensembles; if not those, then groups centered around guitars and balalaikas—and so they went there several times a week after work to study.
For example, during May Day or Revolution anniversary celebration demonstrations, each factory led with its own band and marched forth.

For the development of specialized music, Soviet Russia maintained music schools of exceptionally high standards. When the performance season arrived there, people even came from foreign countries to participate actively in them. These were wholly specialized institutions, graduating cohorts of experts each year while continuously producing new performers and composers.

In Soviet Russia, music had recently come to address both expressing the general spirit of the proletariat and utilizing characteristics inherent to the Russian nation.
Interestingly, during the revolutionary period, there had been a strong tendency to present directly and unmediated such elements as the proletariat's cries of anguish and their joys and sorrows upon liberation.

When this reached a point over a decade into their construction phase, various forms of stabilization emerged—giving rise to diverse research questions—and thus they began asserting that alongside music of the international proletariat, they must also create music utilizing national Russian characteristics.
However, this did not at all mean utilizing only Russian musical traits in a nationalistic manner.
Russia sought to express the shared emotions of the world proletariat by adding its own sonic imprint.
That was what it meant.

Then, in painting as well—for example, in the realm of visual arts—there were indeed study groups in workers’ clubs both for the self-refinement of proletarian art itself and for the people to acquire pictorial means of expression.
There, they occasionally held exhibitions and went out to visit various art exhibitions.

However, though Soviet people had likely been this way since long ago, they were more adept at music and literature than at painting, in which they were not particularly skilled.
Therefore, instead, Ukrainian woodblock prints had some truly fascinating examples.
What was particularly interesting, however, was that paintings created by such club art study groups—though technically quite crude—nonetheless incorporated within their crudeness an abundance of new themes emblematic of Soviet life in its nascent stage.

For example, there was a painting I saw at an exhibition—a rural interior scene. What kind of interior scene was it? The holy icons had been removed.
Instead hanging there was a portrait of bearded Marx.
And what were this old man and woman doing before it? There was a painting depicting the elderly couple kneeling and bowing to Marx, just as they would have knelt and bowed before holy icons.
Such themes are ones that only a Soviet proletarian painter could have discovered.
It vividly illustrated how new and old elements intermingled in real life, with new forces gaining ascendancy—something I found deeply intriguing, something that made me both laugh involuntarily and feel a surge of goodwill all at once.

Soviet painting exhibitions were held in Paris and various other places serving as introductions to Soviet art.

Thus they took Ukraine’s woodblock prints—which were quite excellent—to Vienna or some such place and held an exhibition.
Ukrainian woodblock prints are highly unique and fascinating.

Then cinema too—like all other arts—was naturally a weapon of class.
For example last spring saw the first talkie produced in Soviet Russia.
As for these talkies—having seen American ones in Berlin and England—I found their use of sound highly unsatisfactory.
They were ordinary.
They would prolong unnecessary scenes for several seconds merely to include singing.
Then again when an object fell on screen a clattering sound accompanied its descent.
It was merely explanatory.
It reminded me of unskilled benshi from silent films who’d announce “He has now ascended to the second floor” while showing such images.
American talkies generally used sound this way.
The brilliance of Soviet talkies lay precisely in rejecting such explanatory alignment with visuals.
They employed sound three-dimensionally—to express objects and convey emotion.
This technique proved remarkably compelling,
possessing depth and intensely powerful realism.

The film of Lenin’s funeral—this was existing documentary footage to which sound had been added—through its audio vividly conveyed how profoundly the world’s proletariat had been moved by Lenin’s death. To put it simply: a factory whistle’s hoot; a blizzard raging. A flag fluttered. A whistle hooted. Funeral cannons boomed repeatedly. It was a highly effective use of sound.

Part of it was a speech about the Five-Year Plan delivered at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater.
It simply filmed people and speeches as they unfolded.
It was quite interesting.

The creators of Soviet talkies were remarkably modest about their works.
There was a story from when they saw American talkies.
They were all disappointed, lamenting that our techniques could never match America’s—but from a third-party perspective like ours, though America might have better machinery (I cannot say for certain) and perhaps more advanced technology due to their head start—the Soviet talkies were entirely superior in how they integrated elements from sound and sight.
Therefore, in such handling of sound, I believe how Soviet talkies would develop in the future would serve as a significant reference for countries like Japan that were about to produce talkies.

Of course, since no one wants to watch boring movies, films must always remain entertaining regardless of which loyal Soviet worker they're shown to—yet within that entertainment, they weave various educational components.
They deliver hygiene education, instruction about production expansion, satirical critiques of worker discipline, and numerous other initiatives.

Thus, for children they created humorous educational films... All part of planned production, with activities also involving producing a certain number of educational films per year.
They produced a certain number of historical films.
How many films concerning the history of the October Revolution were produced?
How many comedies and films dealing with foreign issues were produced?
In this manner they formulated an annual production plan and proceeded with various activities accordingly.

Therefore unlike in Japan—where profit-driven companies had churned out a great many films in an exceedingly short time to meet movie theater demands through shoddy mass production—such tragedy did not exist for Soviet creators.
Thus whether Pudovkin or Eisenstein, they took exceedingly long periods to create their masterpieces.
It remained unknown how many of their films had been excerpted from numerous drafts that never reached our eyes.
Therefore there was much hidden time and effort.
There now existed an issue regarding this.
It was said Kino needed to learn production at a somewhat quicker pace.

For example, what kinds of hygiene-related films exist? Russian cockroaches were already notorious enough; bedbugs too proliferated abundantly.
When one watches Kino films,there appear bedbugs so enormous they seem capable of devouring humans whole.
These vermin demanded extermination.
Where such creatures primarily dwell became presented through narrative storytelling.
Workers returning exhausted from their day's labor would find themselves unable to sleep upon their pillows due to relentless itching.
Soon dawn would break,and heading sleeplessly to factories,tragedies occurred where machinery entrapped them.
This demonstrated why workers must maintain cleanliness for both life discipline and personal safety.
Thus they taught what pesticides eradicate bedbugs,and how kitchen cockroaches must be systematically eliminated.

Under the Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Union was building thousands of new radio relay stations and Kino stations.
For enhancing individual cultural development, Kino and radio were more direct, cost-effective, and popular means than theater.
Theater required trained technicians.
Moreover, it needed lighting and dedicated spaces.
With radio broadcasts, people could gather and listen even in the fields; furthermore, collective farms in rural areas had now become cultural hubs.
Thus, Kino and radio were concentrated in collective farm clubs, and as production took place in rural areas, new culture advanced.
In this way, new culture reached the countryside alongside tractors.

What I strongly felt upon observing various aspects was that in places like Soviet Russia where production was truly rationalized and labor conducted in socialist fashion—whether factories or farms—there existed not a single instance of mere labor exploitation. In every place where they worked, without exception, there existed both political education and cultural education. I thought this was truly something to envy.

[January 1931]