Pathway to Japanese Literature

← Back

• View English Version
• View Japanese Version

Original Title	白い壁
Author	本庄 陸男
Genre	Modern Short Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In the stark, white-walled classrooms of post-quake Tokyo, Mr. Sugimoto faces a daunting task: teaching the "low-ability" children, cast aside by a system obsessed with appearances. His students—Tomiji, Chuichi, and others—are products of poverty and tragedy, their lives etched with the scars of a city rebuilt on fragile foundations. Sugimoto, an accidental educator burdened by his own past, yearns to connect with these marginalized souls, but the rigid curriculum and the Principal’s relentless pursuit of perfection stand in his way. The fragile peace shatters when a child’s desperate artistic scrawl defaces a pristine white wall, exposing the raw truths hidden beneath the school’s immaculate facade. Now, Sugimoto must fight not only to unlock his students’ potential but to shield them from a society determined to brand them as defective. What hope remains for these forgotten children when the very walls meant to protect them become symbols of their oppression?